Matthew 22:34

Verse 34 opens with “But”, the Greek dé, a small connecting word that moves the story on, and here it turns from one group of questioners to another. Jesus is in Jerusalem in the last week before his death, at Passover, answering challenge after challenge in the temple (Matthew 21–22). By tradition this was the Tuesday of that week. The Pharisees and the Herodians had asked him about paying tribute to Caesar (Matthew 22:15–22). Then the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, brought him a puzzle meant to make the resurrection look foolish, and he answered them from the Scriptures and the power of God (Matthew 22:23–33).

Matthew says that Jesus “had put the Sadducees to silence”. The verb, phimóō, means to muzzle, and it pictures a mouth stopped shut. Jesus answered them so completely that the argument was over. The Pharisees “had heard” of it, and akoúō is the ordinary verb for hearing, which also covers taking notice of something. That is what they did, for the defeat of their rivals moved them to act. “They were gathered together”, synágō, describes a deliberate meeting with a purpose, as the Pharisees joined to find a new way to challenge him. Their name, Pharisaîos, comes from a Hebrew root meaning “to separate”, and they were known for strict keeping of the law and for their concern with ritual purity.

Their gathering belongs to a pattern of opposition that runs through the Gospels. Luke records the same hostility from the Pharisees (Luke 11:53–54), John records their unbelief (John 7:45–49), and after the resurrection the council raged in the same way against the apostles (Acts 5:33). In the next chapter Jesus pronounces his woes on the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy (Matthew 23). Though they were outmatched again and again, they kept on, and their opposition ended in their part in his crucifixion.

Out of this gathering “one of them” steps forward, a single man (heîs, one) speaking for the group, and he is “a lawyer”. A nomikós was an expert in the law of Moses, often a scribe, who gave his life to studying, interpreting and teaching the Torah and the traditions around it. He was a theologian of God’s commands, so his challenge was a theological one. He “asked him a question”, and eperōtáō is the plain verb for asking or questioning someone. Matthew gives the motive in the next words: he was “tempting him”. The verb peirázō means to test, try or tempt, and here it is a test meant to find fault. It is the same verb used when Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil (Matthew 4:1–11), and the lawyer’s test belongs to that same spiritual battle. Luke also records a lawyer who tested Jesus with a question about the law (Luke 10:25–28).

The leaders kept testing Jesus because they saw him as a threat to their authority and to their hold on the people, and they were unwilling to accept his claims. Each question was built to trap him into saying something that sounded rebellious against Rome, false to the law, or divisive among the people, so that they could discredit him. The trap set here gave him the opening for one of his best-known teachings.

Jesus answers from the law the lawyer knew best. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God” is a quotation of Deuteronomy 6:5. That verse belongs to the passage called the Shema, from the Hebrew word for “hear”, which begins “Hear, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4–5). Devout Jews recited it twice a day as their confession that there is one God, the LORD, and that he is owed the whole allegiance of his people. By quoting it, Jesus shows that his teaching stands in line with the law of Moses, and he opens its deepest meaning.

The verb for love, agapáō, means to love in the social and moral sense. It is a love of the will and of commitment, a love that seeks the good of the one loved and shows itself in what we do. God asks for the love of the whole person, and Jesus names its parts so that every one of them is included.

The heart, kardía, is the inner core of a person, and figuratively it stands for the thoughts and feelings, the desires, the will and the moral character. To love God with all the heart is to give him our deepest affections and intentions, sincerely and without hypocrisy. The soul, psychḗ, is a person’s life itself, the whole living self, so to love God with all the soul is to give him our very life. The mind, diánoia, means deep thought, both the faculty of understanding and its use. To love God with all the mind is to use our understanding and our reasoning to know him, to think on his word and to grasp his will, so that our love rests on the truth. The repeated “with all thy” before each of these leaves no part of us outside this love.

Mark gives the same command with strength added (Mark 12:30), and Luke has it as well (Luke 10:27). John shows us where such love comes from when he writes that God is love (1 John 4:7–8).

Jesus then says, “This is the first and great commandment.” “This” points back to the command he has just quoted. Prōtos, first, means first in order and foremost in rank, and here it is rank, for this command stands at the head of all the others. Mégas, the lawyer’s own word, comes back to call it great. Entolḗ, commandment, means a charge or command, something authoritatively commanded, and so this love is a binding duty laid on us by God. Jesus answers exactly what the lawyer asked, in the lawyer’s own terms.

Loving God with the whole self is the chief command because God is supremely worthy of our love and we depend on him for everything. It is the command that sets the core of what God desires from us, and our keeping of his other commands grows out of it. Jesus says the same to his disciples: “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). It also puts everything else in its order, as when he tells us to seek first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33).

Jesus was asked for one commandment, and he gives two. “And the second is like unto it.” Deúteros, second, means second in order or rank, so the command to love our neighbour stands after the command to love God. Yet it is “like unto it”. Hómoios means like, similar in kind or character, and Jesus uses it to bind the second command to the first, so that the two belong together and the second shares the weight of the first.

The command itself is a quotation of Leviticus 19:18. The verb is agapáō again, the same love of the will that seeks another’s good. The neighbour, plēsíon, is literally one who is near or close by. The measure is “as thyself”, hōs, as, and seautoû, the reflexive pronoun for the one addressed.

The apostles take up this command as the summary of the law. Paul writes, “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:8–10), and he says that all the law is fulfilled in this one word (Galatians 5:14). James calls it the royal law (James 2:8). The same teaching on love and true righteousness runs through the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5).

Jesus ends with the reason these commandments are great: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” The verb kremánnymi means to hang or to be suspended, and Jesus uses it as a picture. As a door hangs on its hinges, or a heavy weight depends on a strong support, so the whole of God’s word to Israel depends on these two commands and finds its stability and its meaning in them. The preposition en, “on”, marks them as the point of support, and entolḗ, commandments, is the same word as in verse 38.

Nómos, the law, here means the five books of Moses and the whole body of God’s revealed will given in them. Every command in them, whether moral, ceremonial or civil, is an expression of love for God or love for our neighbour. The commands against murder and theft grow out of love for our neighbour, and the commands about worship and reverence grow out of love for God. The messages of the prophets share the same heart. Jesus came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17), and here he shows its true purpose.

In joining a command from Deuteronomy to a command from Leviticus, Jesus set love at the head of all God’s instruction and showed the unity of his will. The lawyer came looking for one commandment to set above the rest, and Jesus gave him the whole law back, held together by love.

Jesus gave this answer as the one who lived it. He alone loved the Lord his God with all his heart, soul and mind. It was his food to do the will of the one who sent him (John 4:34), and he became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8). He loved his neighbour perfectly as well. He healed the sick, fed the hungry, welcomed outcasts and taught the lost, and he laid down his life for his friends, the greatest love there is (John 15:13). God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

Where Adam failed under testing, Jesus, the second Adam, met every test without sin, which makes him the spotless Lamb of God (John 1:29). He fulfilled all righteousness (Matthew 3:15), and “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:4). He also gave his disciples a new commandment, “That ye love one another; as I have loved you” (John 13:34–35), and so set his own self-giving love as the measure of ours.

He makes this love possible in us. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost (Romans 5:5). The new covenant writes God’s law on the hearts of his people (Jeremiah 31:33), and God gives them a new heart and puts his Spirit within them so that they walk in his ways (Ezekiel 36:26–27). We bear this fruit by abiding in Christ, the vine (John 15:5), as God conforms us to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29).

The silencing of his questioners also points ahead. Christ is the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), and the word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any twoedged sword (Hebrews 4:12). On the cross he disarmed the principalities and powers and triumphed over them, silencing the accuser himself (Colossians 2:14–15). In his resurrection he won the victory over death (1 Corinthians 15:54–57), and God has exalted him so that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord (Philippians 2:9–11).

In answer to a trap, Jesus gives us the whole will of God in two commands, and both come from God’s own law. They show us who God is. He wants to be loved by the whole person, heart, soul and mind, and he wants that love to reach the people around us. They also gather his many commands into one, so that every command in Scripture can be read as a way of loving him or loving our neighbour. When a choice is hard, the two questions these verses raise, whether this shows love for God and whether it shows love for my neighbour, lead us toward his heart.

They show us the one who kept them, too. Jesus loved the Father with all his heart and loved his neighbours all the way to the cross, and by his Spirit he puts that same love into his people. The command that searches us comes from the God who has first loved us, and in Christ we take it up as people already loved.