Now, I am not much of a boxer. The two times I was coerced into the ring as a kid turned into an unmitigated brawl – I fought, not boxed.
But the YMCA we used to go to as kids had guys who were boxers. They were tough graceful, agile, quick. As the boxers sparred they had to be defensive and ward off the other’s attack at the same time be positioning themselves and probing for their opponent’s weakness looking for the knock-out.
It was a graceful and strategic dance they did; I never got that. But the pros did. Most of us remember the best: Cassius Marcellus Clay, otherwise known as Muhammad Ali. He had style, agility, and grace, and he was strategically deadly.
We may not think of it as such, but in the gospel lessons for the last few weeks or so, Jesus is certainly in a theological sparring match with those who oppose him, first the Sadducees, and now the Pharisees. Questions and answers are the bobs and weaves and probing jabs and punches as they try to make the knock-out.
This morning has us witnessing a phase of this adroit and agile contest – round three with the Pharisees.
In the first two rounds, in the debates over paying taxes, and marriage in heaven, Jesus parried and countered and won the rounds.
Now they swing at Jesus with a question, which, if not parried and countered will certainly discredit him, prove him to be a heretic; it would be the knock-out blow.
An expert in the Jewish law asks – not with the intention of seeking truth but with the intention of trying to snare, or “test” or “tempt” him: “Teacher which is the greatest commandment in the law?”
The Jewish law was a codified system of some 613 laws, positive “must do’s” and negative “must not do’s” that defined what they considered to be a holy life. They might be thought of as things to do to gain God’s favor. What do I have to do to be right with God?
The problem was that to be righteous or holy – to be in that right relationship with God – one must keep the entirety of the law, all 613 laws. To break one law was to break them all. It was akin to those strings of Christmas lights we use for Christmas trees: if one breaks, the whole string goes out.
And so he is asking Jesus for a short cut: which one law, if I keep it, will fulfill all the others and put me in a right relationship – a safe relationship with God – make me holy? Jesus’ answer to this would mark him either as a faithful Jew, or a heretic.
Jesus answers: “You shall love the lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like unto it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Jesus declares the entirety of the law is fulfilled in these two commandments, actually two relationships – one vertical to God, the other horizontal, one to another,
neither of which is really new. Relationship has always been God’s intent. Love God with the entirety of your being comes directly from Deuteronomy 6:5 and is part of the Jewish daily prayer known as the Shema, and love your neighbor as yourself comes directly out of Leviticus 19:18. Jesus refocuses his listeners back to God’s original intent.
Jesus returns the concept of holiness from things you do to an attitude and relationship. If you truly love God—if he has your life, then you will naturally do the things you should including loving your neighbor because you want to, not because you have to. It is not what you do in your life that makes the difference; it is who you are living for that makes the difference.
The Pharisees hear Jesus answer and say nothing. Their punch was stopped cold.
Because they were doing all the right things they were convinced of their own righteousness; they did not see how this encounter convicted them. They, ironically, were breaking both commandments neither loving their neighbor (as they tried to trap Jesus, that he might be destroyed) nor loving God (for he was there standing before them, unrecognized and unacknowledged) in spite of the fact that Jesus has been fulfilling everything expected of the Messiah.
The power of sin as a condition, the desire to live life according to one’s own rules, with ourselves as the subject, and self-fulfillment as the goal is such that even when one is confronted with the truth, looks eye to eye into it, one not only does not recognize it, but rages against it to tear it down and submit it to one’s own desires. A powerful and dangerous thing is sin, as evidenced by the witness of these Pharisees.
And it is dangerous to us as well. Holiness, righteousness is not about what we do for Jesus, it is about what we allow him to do in us and through us. We have to experience Jesus’ knock-out blow to self.
One scholar describing the sinister and self-deluding nature of sin says “man as sinner actually hates God, hates man, and hates himself. He would kill God if he could, he does kill his fellow man when he can. And he commits spiritual suicide every day of his life.”
Jesus then takes the offensive – he throws a theological roundhouse that knocks them out of the ring. After this they wouldn’t ask him any more questions.
He asks them: What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” And they respond: “The son of David.” it was the expected response.
The prophets foretold that the Messiah, the anointed one, would be the son of David. Jeremiah prophesied the Lord would “raise up to David a righteous branch; a king who would do what is right and just – in his day he will save Judah and Israel will live in safety.” (Jer. 23:5)
The prophet Nathan spoke the word of God to David himself promising that “I will raise up your offspring to succeed you who will come from your own body and Iwill establish his kingdom…and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Sam 7:11-16)
They were right: The expected Messiah would indeed be a direct human descendant in King David’s line.
But here Jesus throws his knockout punch. Quoting from psalm110, the most quoted psalm in the New Testament, a psalm referred to by one scholar as the greatest and clearest of the messianic psalms, he asks them: “How is it then that David, inspired by the Holy Spirit, calls his son Lord?
Jesus asks: How can David, the father of the expected Messiah, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, write the verse in the psalm that affirms that his son, the Messiah, is Lord, literally God, and is placed by the Almighty God himself at his right hand, the place of authority assigned to a king’s ruling heir?
It could only be if the Messiah, David’s son, was more than a mere human descendant, more than a mere man.
Ironically the answer to this theological quandary stood before them, posing the question to which he himself was the answer,
But the Pharisees were stymied. Their spiritual blindness would not allow them to conceive the idea that God would become man. Nor would they allow, regardless of the messianic proofs demonstrated, that this Jesus would be he.
They are blind to the Messiah before them and thus blinded to their inability to either love God or their neighbor. In and of ourselves we have not the ability to completely love God, or our neighbor. We can’t fulfill the law, we can’t make ourselves holy.
That is why we need a savior. That is why we need a rebirth into new life. That is why we need to acknowledge Jesus and receive him as Lord.
I read a book by Charles Colson years ago, and I remember one story he related in that book,
the story of a Christian couple in Ireland that regularly visited a convicted criminal, an IRA terrorist, in prison to share with him the gospel of Jesus Christ.
As I remember it, this couple visited with this criminal weekly, they talked to him of Jesus’ love for him and how he could get forgiveness for the terrible crimes he had done, through the cross of Christ.
He eventually came to faith in Jesus Christ because of their loving and committed relationship to the Lord and their real love for this criminal. They loved Jesus; he gave them the grace to love this lost soul.
It was an unbelievable witness to God’s love and power indeed, for this criminal was in prison for setting off a bomb which had killed this couple’s daughter. Their love for God not only enabled them to forgive this man, but to minister to him and lead him to this source of amazing love.
How does this example measure up to our ability to truly love, to be a holy people? If you are like me you will admit most probably we fall short. We can’t make ourselves holy like the Pharisees were wont to do. We don’t have that power.
Scripture says: “This is how God showed his love among us: 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.”
To love God with all your heart soul and mind one must first respond to God’s love for us. it is only through Jesus Christ and accepting his work on the cross that the power of sin is destroyed in us, we die to self and thus may love God completely. In the cross, Jesus strikes the knock-out blow to sin, he destroys our self-centeredness, our self- dependency and then does he generate in us a love for others. We don’t fulfill the law, Jesus fulfills it in us.
Much like the Pharisees, though, sometimes we like to spar with Jesus, try to demonstrate our spiritual independence, try to have our own way in life. We really don’t want to acknowledge him in every area of our life nor depend on him.
Every day we need to surrender to Jesus, let him have the knock-out in our lives that our sin and pride be destroyed. Only then are we given new life and enabled to love him fully and share that love with the world. Sparring with Jesus is a dangerous thing. We actually can’t win and if we think we do win, we die; it is only in losing to Jesus allowing him to knock-out the self, do we then really live and love.
Has Jesus scored the knock-out in your life? Has sin and self been knocked to the mat? Because Jesus must be the undisputed champ in our lives.