Love: The Summary of Law and Gospel

Trinity 18| Matthew 22:34-46| Pastor James Preus| Trinity Lutheran Church| October 4, 2026

Our Gospel lesson is divided into two by two questions: one asked by a Pharisee; the other asked by Jesus. The Pharisee asked a question about the Law. Jesus asked a question about the Gospel, namely, about the identity of the Christ. And thus, our short Gospel lesson sums up the entire doctrine of Holy Scripture: The Law and the Gospel. To understand the Bible, indeed, to understand the Christian religion, you must know what is the Law and the Gospel.

The Law is what God commands of us, summarized in the Ten Commandments. Of course, the Ten Commandments are not the only commandments in Scripture. In fact, the Pharisees counted 613 commandments in the Law of Moses. So, when this expert-in-the-Law Pharisee asked Jesus which commandment was the greatest, he really thought He was putting Jesus to the test. But Jesus proved His understanding of Holy Scripture and the true intention of the Law by answering, “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.”

With these two commandments, Jesus summarized all the commandments found in Scripture. And what do these two commandments have in common? One word. Love. Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love. With this single word, Jesus summarizes all the commandments of God. You could take all the 613 commandments counted up by the Pharisees and add a thousand more, and they would not command anything more or less than this one word: love.

These two commandments taught by Jesus are called the two tables of the Law. They summarize the Ten Commandments. The first three commandments: You shall have no other gods; you shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God; and remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy, all teach you how to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. The rest of the commandments: honor your father and your mother, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony against your neighbor, and you shall not covet, all teach you how to love your neighbor as yourself.

Yet, we could throw away all the commandments if we would simply learn this one command to love: love God; love your neighbor. What does the First Commandment mean, other than that we should love God alone as our God and not love any other more than Him? The Second Commandment forbids us to misuse God’s name, but rather commands us to call upon Him in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks. But if we loved God with all our heart, we would not need a prohibition to misuse His name or a command to pray to Him or praise Him? Our love for Him would sprout forth prayer and praise with joy all the time. Taking His name in vain would be unthinkable. If we loved God with all our heart, we would not need a command to go to church. Our joy and desiring in life would be to hear and meditate on His Word, to worship Him and to receive everything good from Him, including His Son’s body and blood for our forgiveness and salvation.

To love God means to love your neighbor. “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this command we have from Him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (1 John 4:20-21) If we loved God with all our heart, we would not even need the commandment to love our neighbor, because our love for God would overflow to our neighbor. How can we hate him whom our God loves? And if we truly loved our neighbor, we wouldn’t need any of the commandments teaching us how to love him. St. Paul writes in Romans 13, “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” (vss. 8-10)

If you loved your mother and father, you would gladly honor them and obey them without the command. If you loved your neighbor, you would not be afraid of being punished by the authorities, but you would obey the Law and help your neighbor out of care for him. The reason a man has an affair or views pornography is because he does not love his wife as himself, despite what he tells himself. Young people would not fornicate if they properly loved each other. If you loved your neighbor as yourself, you would not steal from him, or gossip about him, or even want what he has (which means you would not try to win his money through gambling). As Jesus says, “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” (Matthew 7:12)

To love God means to put His will before your own, to desire to hear His thoughts rather than your own, to hear His Word and serve Him before anyone else, including yourself. To love your neighbor means to do unto Him as you would have done unto you, to put His needs before your own. If we had love for God and our neighbor, we would not need any other commandments. And some are foolish enough to think that this is easy! Two commandments are easier to keep than 613! One word easier to remember than the Ten Commandments! But it is one thing to remember the command to love. It is quite another thing to love someone from the heart!

The prophet Jeremiah says of the human heart, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) Our Lord Jesus say in Matthew 15, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” (vss. 19) The world today thinks that the commandment to love means to simply follow your own heart. Yet, the Lord rebuked such teaching long ago when He wrote through the prophet Jeremiah against the false prophets, “They say continually to those who despise the word of the LORD, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’” (Jeremiah 23:17) To love God and your neighbor does not mean to follow your own heart, because as Scripture says, our hearts are by nature sinful.

And this is why Scripture added so many commandments! If our hearts were pure and holy, we would simply love God and our neighbor with no commandments. But since our hearts have become sinful, God adds commandments to teach us what it means to love. Yet, these commandments, whether ten or 613, do not give us the power to love. They teach us what active love looks like, but they do not change our hearts. Instead of increasing love in our hearts, the commandments increase our sins before our eyes. St. Paul writes in Romans 5, “Now the law came to increase the trespass…”. That is why, “no one will be justified by works of the law, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:20) So Jesus accurately summarized the entire Law with one word, but that one word does not free us from sin. Rather, that one word condemns us all.

Then Jesus asks the Pharisees a question about the Gospel. “Who is the Christ? Whose son is He?” “David’s” the Pharisees answer. What a simple question. God promised David in 2 Samuel 7 that He would raise up one of his descendants and establish the throne of His kingdom forever (vss. 12-13). This is why people called Jesus the Son of David. They were confessing Him to be the promised Christ. This is why Paul, when arguing that Jesus is the Christ, testifies that He was descended from David according to the flesh (Romans 1:3). Yet, Jesus then asks why David in the Spirit, that is, inspired by the Holy Spirit, called the Christ His Lord in Psalm 110, saying, “The LORD says to my Lord,” If the Christ is his son, why does David call Him his Lord? The Pharisees have no answer, but you do, don’t you? Jesus is not only a descendent of David according to the flesh (Romans 1:3), but He is also true God, the Son of God begotten from eternity (Romans 1:4; Romans 9:5). The Christ is David’s Son and David’s Lord, because He is true God and true man.

And this fact is necessary for our salvation. Christ needed to be true man, so that He could live under the Law for us, as St. Paul writes in Galatians 4, “But when the fulness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Christ needed to be true man, so that He could suffer for our sins in our place, as Paul again writes in Galatians 3, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’” (vs. 13) Yet, Jesus had to be true God, because the death of one man could never make atonement for the sins of all people (Psalm 49:7-9). Yet, because Jesus is God, Scripture says that His suffering and death makes atonement and takes away the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:1-2; John 1:29). It is impossible for our sins to become greater than the price Christ paid for them on the cross.

This is why this is good news. All Jesus’ enemies are placed under His feet. But Jesus is our brother in human flesh! That means that our human nature has been rescued from the pit of hell and brought to the heights of heaven, so that sin, death, Satan, and all the enemies who frighten us are under His feet. That means that through faith in Christ, they will soon be under our feet, as Scripture promises, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” (Romans 16:20)

The Law is all about one word: love. Yet, the Gospel too is summarized by the same word: love. St. Paul writes in Romans 5, “But God showed His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (vs. 8) And St. John explains in 1 John 4, “In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (vs. 10) Love summarizes both the Law and the Gospel. Yet, regarding this one word: love, what is the difference between the Law and the Gospel? The Law is the love God commands of us, the love we are supposed to do, but don’t. This is why the Law condemns us. The Gospel is the love God fully completes for us in Christ Jesus. This is why the Gospel saves us through faith. We have faith in God’s love for us in Christ Jesus.

Jesus fulfilled the command of love in the Law for us. He loved His God so perfectly, that He prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done,” as He went willingly to the cross to die for us (Luke 22:42). “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) And Jesus laid down His life for us, His friends. And so, we see that the Law and the Prophets depend on Christ, David’s Son and David’s Lord, who has perfected love in human flesh for us, to save us from our sins.

Scripture teaches that it is only through faith in Jesus that we may begin to love, as St. John writes, “We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) So, while our old Adam still needs the commandments to keep us in our place and to show us where our love is lacking, our new man finds the power to love not in the commandments, but in Christ alone. He is our Savior. He is our love. He shows us that God loves us. The Law shows us what we are lacking. The Gospel shows us that Christ gives us what we lack. May the love of Christ dwell in you all richly through faith, so that you may not fear judgment and show love toward one another with a good conscience. Amen.