St. Matthew 22:34-40: But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the prophets."
It is quite common in recent church history, especially in more liberal theologies, to see this passage as the Gospel in a nutshell. In other words, love God and love others is the Gospel.
Certainly, being a statement and command of Christ, loving God and loving others is of supreme importance. No Christian would dispute that. However, loving God and loving your neighbor is not the Gospel. The Gospel, or good news, is never a command, nor is the Gospel our actions, however loving they may be.
To be even more clear, those who claim that this passage in St. Matthew is a concise statement of the Gospel have actually missed the Gospel altogether.
Just read the passage. The Pharisee asked Christ, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" Jesus answered the Pharisee that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of your being. And the second one is to love your neighbor as if they were yourself.
In very plain language, these are commandments. In broad terms, anything that is a commandment is law, not Gospel. Gospel promises. It does not command. That is the office of the law. This is why, in our Lutheran Confessions of faith, we have excerpts in the Epitome and the Solid Declaration regarding the third use of the law. There is no third use of the Gospel or anything like that. The new obedience of the Christian is dealt with in terms of both law and Gospel, but it is always the law that makes the demands and tells us what should be done, never the Gospel. It is always the law that shows us what we ought to do and what we have not done. It is always the law that shows us our need to repent because it is precisely that law that shows us how short we really fall.
Let's push this a little further. Jesus' statements are a summation of the Ten Commandments. Love the Lord your God is a summary of the first table of the Law; commandments 1-3. Love your neighbor as yourself is a summary of the second table of the Law; commandments 4-10. In other words, if we hash this out to its conclusion, a theology that claims that Matthew 22:37-40 is the Gospel is ultimately doing the same exact thing as saying that the Ten Commandments are the Gospel. This is, ironically, a form of "Pharisaical Christianity." It's Gospel-less. Ultimately, this sort of theology teaches salvation by keeping the Law. How is this any different than the Pharisees? Hence, liberal theology that claims this is the Gospel is teaching a false Gospel.
Far from evicting obedience from the Christian faith, the Gospel - the real one - provides for the only sort of obedience that is genuine. Obedience done from love because our obedience does not contribute to our justification. We can never be declared righteous before God by that, because God's standards in this arena are perfection. Hence the work of Christ for us (the Gospel). Even so, our obedience in this life is never perfect. We are still simultaneously sinner and saint, after all. We need a righteousness that is above anything we could ever obtain through our love and obedience to commandments. We need a righteousness that is perfect. Only Jesus obtained that, and only Jesus can give us that.
That is why in the Divine Service we confess: "Most merciful God, we confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean. We have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not love You with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We justly deserve Your present and eternal punishment. For the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Forgive us, renew us, and lead us, so that we may delight in Your will and walk in Your ways to the glory of Your Holy Name. Amen." (LSB - Divine Service I)
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Thank you.
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