The Greatest of These Is Love :: Ten Commandments
Have you ever had the thought that if Martin Luther wrote a Small Catechism, he must have written a Large Catechism too? Then ... did you follow that up by actually reading the Large Catechism too?
Luther never intended the Small and Large Catechisms to become what he called “church books.” He wanted them to be what he called “house books.” He wrote them for you and your house. He wrote the Small Catechism to teach us in a simple way. He wrote the Large Catechism to give fathers and their pastors an even better understanding. If you’ve never read and studied both, I urge you today to begin doing so. Our forty-day tour this year is entitled “Taking On Something for Lent: Luther’s Catechisms.”
It was Pastor Luther’s love for people that motivated him to write our catechisms. As he traveled around and visited congregations, he became appalled and dismayed to find that ... people who called themselves Christians ... didn’t know God’s Word. They didn’t know the Ten Commandments. They didn’t know the Apostles’ Creed. They didn’t know the Lord’s Prayer. They didn’t understand what Baptism, Confession, and the Lord’s Supper really are. They didn’t understand that all of these are true treasures of the church.
Pastor Luther prayed that people would be able to understand what God had done for them in Christ. Through the catechisms, they would begin to learn God’s Word. They would learn the sting of God’s commands and the sweetness of his forgiveness. Still today, one of the best ways to learn what’s taught in the Bible is to learn Luther’s Small Catechism.
Lent is a time for spiritual discipline. During this annual season, people often choose to give something up. as a type of spiritual discipline. But this year ... I pray that you will take on something instead. Let me suggest a spiritual discipline for you to consider: Read from Luther’s Small Catechism every day and read through Luther’s Large Catechism once. Along the way, I will preach on the so-called six chief parts ... although you should know there are really eight.
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We’ll start at the beginning ... with Love.
Everybody wants to love. They want to be loved. And they want to share love.
And with good reason, right? As the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, the great chapter on love ... Now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
No question above it ... love has a lot going for it. Love is patient and kind; it doesn’t envy or boast; it isn’t arrogant or rude. It doesn’t seek itself ... isn’t easily provoked ... and it doesn’t reckon evil. Certainly if we want to find love, we can learn much from the love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13. But I want to suggest a better starting point to learn about love: The Ten Commandments?
Now that may not sound so lovely. The Law. The Ten Commandments. All the warm, fuzzy feelings people get when you say “love” normally disappear when you say “Ten Commandments.”
Thou shall do it! Thou shall not do it. Where’s the love in that?
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Actually, love is all over the Ten Commandments. Jesus summarized them this way: You will 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 will love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets (Mt 22:37–40).
The first three commandments ... You will have no other gods before me ... You will not take the name of the Lord your God in vain ... and Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy ... these all tell you that you are to love God.
How? With all your heart, soul, and mind. And if we add Mark’s phrasing, your strength, too.
The last seven commandments tell you to love your neighbor as yourself.
Love defines how we are to relate to one another. When we love our neighbors ... our father and mother ... we’re going to honor them (the Fourth Commandment). When we love our neighbors, we aren’t going to hurt or harm them ... physically, psychologically, or emotionally (the Fifth). We aren’t going to steal from them (the Seventh). We aren’t going to take their spouses or their good names (the Sixth and Eighth Commandments). We aren’t going to covet their things ... and we won’t use the Law to make it look legal (the Ninth and Tenth Commandments).
This is love.
Pastor Luther captured Jesus’ teaching quite well in the Small Catechism. To explain the First Commandment, we learn to fear, love, and trust God above all things. If you can get that down, you’ve got it made! If you could fear, love, and trust in God above all things, you wouldn’t need the rest of the Bible! But that’s an extremely big “if.”
In fact, failing to love God above all things is the most common sin. In the Large Catechism, Luther points out: Many a person thinks that he has God and everything in abundance when he has money and possessions. He trusts in them and boasts about them with such firmness and assurance as to care for no one. ‘Mammon’ (you know, money and possessions) ... is the most common idol on earth. He who has money and possessions feels secure ... and is joyful and undismayed as though he were sitting in the midst of Paradise (LC I 5–7).
When I see beautiful homes on television and the magnificent locations where some people live, I can understand that the love of money often pushes God off his throne. It’s easy to think, If I only had a little more money, I could live like those people. It would be heaven on earth.
Lest we get smug while looking at the wealthy, Luther goes on to warn, On the other hand, he who has no money doubts and is despondent, as though he knew no God. For very few people can be found who are of good cheer and who neither mourn nor complain if they lack Mammon. This care and desire for money sticks and clings to our nature, right up to the grave (LC I 8–9).
The love of money is just one way of having another god. For some, it’s the desire for fame. For others, it’s their love of friends. For most of us, it is me, myself, and I. We all push God aside in some way. Whenever we love, trust, or fear something ... or someone ... more than God, we knock God off his throne. If anything, the Ten Commandments show us that our love is misplaced. They pierce your heart and your conscience. They declare us to be sinners. For I do not love God with all my heart and soul and mind.
So where’s love?
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Love really can be found only in the Ten Commandments when his Gospel comes along and tells us who loves according to the Commandments.
God has not abandoned us to despair. Although we cannot keep even the First Commandment, God tenderly invites us to return to him because he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in covenantal love (Ex 34:6). In love God gave us his Law in the Ten Commandments so that we would see our sin and our need for a savior, and then realize ...
WHERE WE DO NOT LOVE, GOD DOES!
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For God loved the world in this way: He gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (Jn 3:16). He did this in the fullness of time, sending Jesus, born of woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons (Gal 4:4–5).
Jesus lived under the Ten Commandments just as we do. More than that he obeyed them. And he understood them and explained them better than ever before. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught that our heavenly Father requires perfection (Mt 5:48). Although you and I fail miserably in every attempt to love perfectly as the Ten Commandments demand, Jesus loves perfectly as God’s Law requires.
As the sinless one, the perfect Lamb of God, he therefore was able to offer the perfect sacrifice ... his life for yours. While we deserve death as sinners, Jesus instead took that from you. He died on the cross for the sins of the whole world (1 Cor 15:3). Then in one more perfect exchange, he was raised for our justification, and gave us his robes of righteousness.
Thanks be to God.
1.
The beauty of Christ’s love and sacrifice is something that we can never fully grasp in this life. But it makes me want to say, “Thank you, Jesus, for your life ... Thank you, Jesus, for your death ... Thank you for your rest, and resurrection, and ascension, and your promise to come again. Thank you for loving us.
This is why we worship God and serve him only. This is why we call on his name with prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. This is why we come to church. This is why we love: He loved us first. This is what Lent is all about. Thanks be to God ... in Jesus’ name. Amen.