If I asked you to come up with a single-word
summary of the Ten Commandments, what word would you pick?
Maybe you’d choose the word “Law”, because that after all is
what the Commandments are – the written statement of God’s holy
Law. Maybe you’d describe the Commandments with the word
“difficult” or “impossible” – because ever since Adam’s Fall
it’s been an impossible challenge for us sinners to even begin
to keep the Law with the perfection of thought, word and deed
God demands.
Some people would choose the word “outdated” to
describe the Ten Commandments. They think that our ultra-modern
age has grown beyond a standard of conduct that reflects the
values of a “superstitious”, pre-technological society like that
of the Hebrews. Never mind the fact that our society is built on
a superstition of its own – the unfounded assumption that this
world’s going to get better and better until we create something
like heaven-on-earth. Never mind that with our advanced
technology we now have the capacity to totally destroy this planet
and all life upon it a thousand times over – something those
superstitious Hebrews couldn’t have done. And let’s conveniently
forget that our casual attitude to the Sixth Commandment –
Thou shalt not commit adultery -- has introduced disease
and death and brokenness into the lives of so many individuals and
families that the fabric of our culture has been torn apart. What
does all that matter? We’ve progressed beyond such outmoded
standards of morality as the Ten Commandments!
There are all sorts of words people could use to
describe God’s Commandments. Some of those words would be more
accurate than others, and some grossly inaccurate. But the Bible
-- which despite what some may think does not become outdated,
precisely because it is God’s unchanging Word -- offers its own
one-word summary of the Ten Commandments. That word is a simple,
common word. That word is “Love.”
That’s right, Love -- as in You shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and
with all your mind – the summary of the first three
Commandments. Love -- as in You shall love your neighbor as
you love yourself – the summary of Commandments Four
through Ten. Love is the summary of all the Commandments, and
when God tells us to love Him and love our neighbor, He’s speaking
to each one of us. He means that you and I and all other human
beings are to love Him with everything we are and love other
people as we love ourselves. It’s God’s commandment. It’s what
He demands of each one of us, at all times, in all places, in
every circumstance, toward every person. The Beatles sang “all
you need is love” and then they broke up because they couldn’t get
along. God says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; thou shalt
love thy neighbor,” and isn’t interested in our excuses.
In our entertainment-saturated society, we tend to
think of love as a feeling. Movies, books, television, and
popular song have catechized us to think of love that way. If a
young man’s heart performs a gymnastics routine every time he sees
a particular young woman, that’s love we think. If a young woman
is starry-eyed over a young man who dresses well, drives a snazzy
car, and has lots of money, that’s love. If someone makes me feel
good about myself, that’s love. If being with someone gives me a
rush of excitement, that’s love.
The only problem is that such feelings don’t last.
They’re fickle – here today, gone tomorrow, back again two weeks
later. You can’t build anything lasting upon excitement. A
deeper, more solid foundation is required.
Here’s how the Bible describes love in 1st
Corinthians 13:
Love is
patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is
not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it
is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always
perseveres. Love never fails.
That’s pretty unexciting stuff, isn’t it? Nothing
about feelings there! But that’s a description of how we
Christians are to love one another. It’s a description of the way
God loves us in His Son Jesus Christ. It’s a description of the
way Jesus loves us. Our Lord Jesus Christ showed the greatness of
His love by laying down His life on the Cross as the sacrifice for
our sins, for our many failures to love God and love our
neighbor. Christ our Savior lays down His life for us, and by
that redemptive act makes us His friends forever. In doing this
He didn’t think of His own well-being, His own safety, His own
personal comfort-level. He thought of us, in our need, in our
great peril, in our broken and empty and condemned condition.
God is love, the Scripture says, and God’s love for the
undeserving is nowhere portrayed more graphically than in the
gruesome sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It’s easy to love someone who’s nice to you, who
does good things for you, and when there’s something in it for
you. But the Bible tells us that God demonstrates His love
for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
While we were God’s enemies, He reconciled us to Himself by the
death of His Son. You don’t love Me, God said, but I
love you. You don’t give a flip
about My Word, but through My Son, the Word made flesh, I speak to
you the Word of Life. You go your own self-centered way, but
through the selfless sacrifice of My dearly beloved Son I show you
another way. I will teach you that love is more than feelings,
more than mere words. Love has feet. Love has hands. It goes
into action. It’s willing to suffer for the good of the one who
is loved.
This is how God showed his love among us,
today’s epistle says: He sent his one and only Son into the
world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we
loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning
sacrifice for our sins.
God’s love for sinners impelled Him into action.
He didn’t wait until we measured up. He didn’t wait for us to
turn our lives around. He didn’t wait for us to love Him first.
God took the initiative. He sent His Son while we were His
enemies. He nailed His Son to the Cross to take our sins away and
restore the relationship between a fallen sinful race and a holy
God who when it comes to love doesn’t know when to quit.
You and I are here in church today only because of
our Lord Jesus Christ -- the love of God Incarnate, the love of
God in action. We aren’t here to do God any favors. We’re here
because He’s done us the great favor of sending Jesus to be our
Savior. We aren’t here to make God’s existence richer and more
satisfying. We’re here because we’re sinners who don’t yet love
God and our neighbor as we’re supposed to, so we need God’s
forgiveness and help, again and again and again. We aren’t here
to boast before God of what wonderful people we are and how much
we love Him. We’re here to listen to the Gospel of God’s love in
Christ, to have our sins absolved, to eat and drink Jesus’ Body
and Blood for the forgiveness of our sins, and with the help of
the Holy Spirit to learn to love God and love each other a little
better. And who better to learn all this from than our Savior
Jesus Christ? As true Man and true God He loved God and His
neighbor perfectly. And He loved us enough to die in our place.
In the “Christian Questions with Their Answers”
that appears as an appendix to the Small Catechism, there’s this
question and answer we would do well to contemplate frequently.
Finally, why do you wish to go to the Sacrament [of the Altar]?
the question is. Here’s the answer: [So]
that I may learn to believe that Christ, out of great love, died
for my sin, and also learn from Him to love my neighbor.
Do you remember that old Buck Owen’s song, “Act
Naturally”? The last line of each verse says: And all I gotta
do is act naturally. That may be true of Buck Owens when it
comes to being put in the movies. But it’s not true of the life
of faith and love we were born into through Holy Baptism. It
doesn’t come naturally to us sinners. We have to be taught. We
have to learn it, sometimes through the hard school of painful,
bitter experience. We have to grow into it. And as a gift of
God’s love, the Sacrament of the Altar is one of the means the
Holy Spirit uses to teach us and help us grow in faith toward God
and love toward our neighbor, love toward our fellow members of
this Christian congregation. By receiving into our hands and
mouths Christ’s sacrificed Body and shed Blood, we have our sins
forgiven. We eat and drink the new life of the Gospel. We are
equipped and encouraged and strengthened in our call to love God
and love one another.
And it’s not a matter of our “acting naturally”
that makes it happen. It’s something supernatural -- God coming
to us as One of us, Incarnating Himself in our reality to usher us
into His infinitely greater, heavenly reality, through the earthly
reality of Jesus’ Body and Blood in the bread and wine of the
Sacrament. If our “acting naturally” could accomplish this we
wouldn’t need the Gospel at all. We wouldn’t need the Sacrament.
But as the Catechism reminds us, we need to learn to believe that
Christ, out of great love, died for our sin. We need to learn
from Him to love God and to love our neighbor. Teaching us these
things is part of what the Sacrament of the Altar is for.
So when the Scripture commands us Christians to
love one another, we have to realize that for us it’s impossible.
But not with God, for with God all things are possible.
And as we confess our sins, our failures, our shortcomings in
love, and receive the forgiveness and new life God abundantly
gives in the Gospel, we learn what true love is. True love is
Jesus, on the Cross for you and me. Jesus, in the Baptismal water
for you and me. Jesus, in the Absolution for you and me; in the
Bread and Wine for you and me. And united to Jesus through faith,
by grace, through Word and Sacrament, we make progress at learning
to love one another as our Savior Jesus Christ has first loved
us. Thanks be to God for the love of Christ!
In Nomine Patris. . .
