'But when the Pharisees had heard that He had put the
Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together.
35. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked Him a
question, tempting Him, and saying, 36. Master, which
is the great commandment in the law? 37. Jesus said
unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38. This is the first and great commandment. 39. And
the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. 40. On these two commandments
hang all the law and the prophets. 41. While the
Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them,
42. Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose Son is He?
They say unto Him, The son of David. 43. He saith unto
them, How then doth David in spirit call Him Lord,
saying, 44. The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My
right hand, till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool?
45. If David then call Him Lord, how is He his son?
46. And no man was able to answer Him a word; neither
durst any man, from that day forth, ask Him any more
questions.'--MATT.xxii.34-46.
Herodians, Sadducees, Pharisees, who were at daggers drawn with each
other, patched up an alliance against Jesus, whom they all hated.
Their questions were cunningly contrived to entangle Him in the
cobwebs of casuistry and theological hair-splitting, but He walked
through the fine-spun snares as a lion might stalk away with the
nooses set for him dangling behind him. The last of the three
questions put to Jesus, and the one question with which He turned
the tables and silenced His questioners, are our subject. In the
former, Jesus declares the essence of the law or of religion; in the
latter, He brings to light the essential loftiness of the Messiah.
I. The two preceding questions are represented to have been asked by
deputations; this is specially noted as emanating from an
individual. The 'lawyer' seems to have anticipated his colleagues,
and possibly his question was not that which they had meant to put.
His motive in asking it was that of 'tempting' Jesus, but we must
not give that word too hostile a sense, for it may mean no more than
'testing' or trying. The legal expert wished to find out the
attainments and standpoint of this would-be teacher, and so he
proposed a question which would bring out the whereabouts of Jesus,
and give opportunity for a theological wrangle. He did not ask the
question for guidance, but as an inquisitor cross-examining a
suspected heretic. Probably the question was a stereotyped one, and
there are traces in the Gospels that the answer recognised as
orthodox was that which Jesus gave (Luke x. 27). The two
commandments are quoted from Deuteronomy vi. 5 and Leviticus xix. 18
respectively. The lawyer probably only desired to raise a discussion
as to the relative worth of isolated precepts. Jesus goes deep down
below isolated precepts, and unifies, as well as transforms, the
law. Supreme and undivided love to God is not only the great, but
also the first, commandment. In more modern phrase, it is the sum of
man's duty and the germ of all goodness. Note that Jesus shifts the
centre from conduct to character, from deeds to affections. 'As a
man _thinketh_ in his heart, so is he,' said the sage of old;
Christ says, 'As a man loves, so is he.' Two loves we have,--either
the dark love of self and sense, or the white love of God, and all
character and conduct are determined by which of these sways us.
Note, further, that love to God must needs be undivided. God is one
and all; man is one and finite. To love such an object with half a
heart is not to love. True, our weakness leads astray, but the only
real love corresponding to the natures of the lover and the loved is
whole-hearted, whole-souled, whole-minded. It must be 'all in all,
or not at all.'
'A second is like unto it,'--love to man is the under side, as it
were, of love to God. The two commandments are alike, for both call
for love, and the second is second because it is a consequence of
the first. Each sets up a lofty standard; 'with all thy heart' and
'as thyself' sound equally impossible, but both result necessarily
from the nature of the case. Religion is the parent of all morality,
and especially of benevolent love to men. Innate self-regard will
yield to no force but that of love to God. It is vain to try to
create brotherhood among men unless the sense of God's fatherhood is
its foundation. Love of neighbours is the second commandment, and to
make it the first, as some do now, is to end all hope of fulfilling
it. Still further, Jesus hangs law and prophets on these two
precepts, which, at bottom, are one. Not only will all other duties
be done in doing these, since 'love is the fulfilling of the law,'
but all other precepts, and all the prophets' appeals and
exhortations, are but deductions from, or helps to the attainment
of, these. All our forms of worship, creeds, and the like, are of
worth in so far as they are outcomes of love to God, or aid us in
loving Him and our neighbours. Without love, they are 'as sounding
brass, or a tinkling cymbal.'
II. The Pharisees remained 'gathered together,' and may have been
preparing another question, but Jesus had been long enough
interrogated. It was not fitting that He should be catechised only.
His questions teach. He does not seek to 'entangle' the Pharisees
'in their speech,' nor to make them contradict themselves, but
brings them full up against a difficulty, that they may open their
eyes to the great truth which is its only solution. His first
question, 'What think ye of the Christ?' is simply preparatory to
the second. The answer which He anticipated was given,--as, of
course, it would be, for the Davidic descent of the Messiah was a
commonplace universally accepted. One can fancy that the Pharisees
smiled complacently at the attempt to puzzle them with such an
elementary question, but the smile vanished when the next one came.
They interpreted Psalm 110 as Messianic, and David in it called
Messiah 'my Lord.' How can He be both? Jesus' question is in two
forms,--'If He is son, how does David call Him Lord?' or, if He is
Lord, 'how then is He his son?' Take either designation, and the
other lands you in inextricable difficulties.
Now what was our Lord's purpose in thus driving the Pharisees into a
corner? Not merely to 'muzzle' them, as the word in verse 34,
rendered 'put to silence,' literally means, but to bring to light
the inadequate conceptions of the Messiah and of the nature of His
kingdom, to which exclusive recognition of his Davidic descent
necessarily led. David's son would be but a king after the type of
the Herods and Cæsars, and his kingdom as 'carnal' as the wildest
zealot expected, but David's Lord, sitting at God's right hand, and
having His foes made His footstool by Jehovah Himself,--what sort of
a Messiah King would that be? The majestic image, that shapes itself
dimly here, was a revelation that took the Pharisees' breath away,
and made them dumb. Nor are the words without a half-disclosed claim
on Christ's part to be that which He was so soon to avow Himself
before the high priest as being. The first hearers of them probably
caught that meaning partly, and were horrified; we hear it clearly
in the words, and answer, 'Thou art the King of glory, O Christ!
Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.'
Jesus here says that Psalm 110 is Messianic, that David was the
author, and that he wrote it by divine inspiration. The present
writer cannot see how our Lord's argument can be saved from collapse
if the psalm is not David's.