The Two Great Commandments and Our Great Salvation (Mark Sermon 63)

This morning we’re going to begin to embark on a vital journey into what I think is the very heart of God and the heart of our salvation. Why did God create us to begin with? Why did God create all things? What is our true nature? What is our purpose and what is our destiny, our destination? The text we’re studying carefully for the next number of weeks holds a key to unlocking these central questions, these core questions, for, I believe that when all is said and done, it’s all about these two great commandments. More specifically, it is that in heaven our hearts will be glorified, totally conformed to Christ, so that we will perfectly fulfill the two great commandments, every moment of our existence for all eternity, that we will finally love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we’ll finally love our neighbors as ourselves.

I believe that these words rightly understood, sum up the law of God and the very heart of God. It’s why we were created and they define also a perfect life in God’s universe. They are our destiny in Christ. It all comes down then ultimately to one word “love.” The more I’ve meditated on our future in heaven, in a perfect world characterized by perfect love, vertically toward God and perfect love horizontally toward every redeemed person, I’ve seen how vital these two commandments really are. According to Jesus, they sum up the law and the prophets, and I have seen how much I have come to delight in them.

As Paul says in Romans 7:22, “In my inner being, I delight in God’s law,” and if you are born again, if you are redeemed, you do too. Or again, Psalm 119:97, “Oh how I love your law. I meditate on it all day long.” So I had an idea of preaching the sermon generally the way that I am going to preach it today, but I started to realize that as beautiful as these two great positive commandments are, we can’t simply stay positive and just say love God and love others. The comprehension of that word “love” is anything but simple because of the entrance of sin into the universe, our ability to define love properly and to love properly is fatally damaged, diseased. Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” The heart of sinful humanity is desperately wicked. It is diseased. It is beyond cure. In our sinful state, we cannot be trusted that “all you need is love.” Some of you’re old enough to know what I’m talking about. All You Need is Love and other such songs, which I’m not going to shame myself by quoting right now. They’re in my manuscript, but I’m not going to say them. This is all the world needs is love, just love.

Most sinners will be delighted to hear that message and then go on to love whatever they want, however they want, whenever they want, and call it love. We will love in ways that our holy God calls deeply corrupt, and we’ll cover it with a slogan like “Love is love.” Martin Luther, the great theologian, said very famously, “love God and do as you please.” Can I tell you generally, you will do that in heaven. Yes, and I’m looking forward to that. I’m going to talk about that, but we can’t hear that properly here on earth. “Love God and do as you please” in our modern, corrupt age. That seems wonderful. Do whatever you want. Whatever your heart leads you to do, whatever makes you happy, whatever you truly love. Our hearts and minds and souls are drunk with sin and fatally, our judgment is fatally impaired.

This week as I was preparing for this sermon, I read a pretty tragic article in Christianity Today. The author of the article was writing about a book written by Shannon Harris, who’s the former wife of Joshua Harris, who some of you will remember wrote a book called I Kissed Dating Goodbye.  He was a leader of what came to be called in a weird sort of way, “the purity culture” as though being against fornication was some new thing, but anyway, purity culture and the book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Sadly, Joshua Harris has since renounced the Christian faith and apparently so has his former wife, Shannon. They’re divorced and she spoke in her book, which the article was about in the strongest terms about healing from a culture of Christian shame over our hearts and over our choices. She was specifically hard on Calvinism, which she called worm theology, we’re nothing but worms.  She said in her book, we must strive to connect to our own wisdom, to nature and to our own fulfillment in work and pleasure and to our own ways of being and doing. The author of the article in Christianity Today spoke approvingly of how refreshing it must be for her readers to think positively about themselves and their bodies including their sexuality. After years of hearing harsh sermons about our foolish hearts and our sinful flesh when asked what this connecting to our bodies and our own heart’s desires might look like in practice, Shannon Harris said, sometimes it might look like bringing your neighbor freshly made bread just to cheer them up, but other times it might look like following your own wisdom and seeking your own pleasure like binging on a sleeve of Oreos while watching porn or trolling someone you don’t like online. Instead of spending time with your kids, she asserts that we are stunning image bearers of God and we’ve been given beautiful hearts and beautiful bodies and we need to follow our desires wherever they lead.

As I read that, I was grieved not just about her, but about Christianity Today publishing an article like that. I saw that her theology was utterly corrupt, but it’s nothing new, nothing new. Follow your heart. Have you ever heard that phrase, “follow your heart”? One commentator on the article said that that was the first commandment of every Hallmark Special that there’s ever been— follow your heart.  The prophet Jeremiah, who talked about the desperately wicked nature of the human heart, saw in the idolatrous people of Israel and Judah, that same drive, “follow your heart.” God spoke to them through the prophet again and again [Jeremiah 7:24], but they did not listen or pay attention. Instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. That sounds pretty relevant, doesn’t it? They were following their heart, but there’s some extra words here from Jeremiah—“they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts.” Nine times in Jeremiah, the same phrase is used “following the stubborn inclinations of evil hearts.” It’s a very strong theme in the book of Jeremiah. If all I do during these weeks that we look at the two great commandments is say, “love God and love others”, no matter how you define that, I would be failing as a pastor. I can’t do that.

Imagine two men sitting in a bar. One of them has been drinking heavily and the other is the designated driver. He’s had nothing but ginger ale to drink all night. At the end of the evening, the drunk man says to his designated driver, “Friend, give me the keys. I want to drive home.”  The sober friend asked, “Do you think you’ll be okay driving?” The drunk man assures him that his judgment is fine and he’s able to drive, and it won’t be any problem at all. In the spirit of the age, the designated driver handing over the keys to this drunk man based on his self-confidence and his ability to drive and operate the vehicle may very well be signing that man’s death warrant and that of some innocent bystanders.

That man’s judgment is fatally impaired. How much worse is our judgment when it comes to love naturally? Apart from the transforming grace of God, that’s what we’re like. As I initially conceived of the sermon, how the law of God, the two great commandments, interacts with us at different stages of our salvation, I wanted to just be positive, but I realized I can’t do that. I have to do both. I have to talk about the positive but also the negative. The law, the prohibitions, are essential to show us not only what love is but what love isn’t, and we need both.

Let’s start this morning with a simple summary of the encounter that Jesus had that opened up this vital topic. Look at Mark 22:28 and following, “One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating, noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer.  He asked him, ‘Of all the commandments, which is the most important?’  ‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus ‘is this, Here O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this, love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these .’  ‘Well said ,teacher,’ the man replied.  ‘You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart and with all your understanding, with all your strength and to love your neighbors yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.’ He said to him, ‘You’re not far from the kingdom of God.’”   Stop there.

So Jesus in the final week of his life has had one controversial encounter after another, but then along comes this man, called in another place an expert in the law, the laws of Moses, but this man is different than the others. He has a genuine heart after God. He really wants to know what is the greatest commandment. Jesus commends him as being not far from the kingdom of God. He comes to Jesus and says, “Of all the commandments, God has given us his people, which is the most important? He does not ask this as others have to justify himself, but he wants to understand the heart of God and he thinks that Jesus is a good teacher on this. I tell you, none better. He came to the right place and at the end of that encounter, this man shows a true yearning for intimacy with God. Jesus declares,”He’s not far from the kingdom of God.” He’s knocking on the door and you get the sense the door’s about to swing open to him.

Jesus gives his timeless answer: “The most important one is this, hear O Israel, the Lord our God, The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.”  Then Jesus added more than the man asked for, the second greatest commandment. “The second is this [verse 31] love your neighbors as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” Now in Matthew’s account there’s some additional information in the exchange. Jesus says, “This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it: Love your neighbors as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.” So the first commandment is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it, but not equal to it as God is infinitely more important than your neighbor. The first commandment is infinitely more important than the second, but Jesus then adds that all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. In other words, all the 613 commandments that the Jewish scholars counted in the Old Testament depend on these and are to some degree perfectly summed up by these two commandments.

But these two great commandments are more than merely God’s law given in the old covenant to the Jewish nation. They describe the perfect righteousness that Jesus gives us at the cross by faith, the beautiful life that God enables us to live by the spirit and the radiantly glorious perfection that we’ll enjoy in heaven. So that’s today’s sermon, the two great commandments and how they intersect with us at every stage of our salvation. That’s what we’re going to walk through today.

I. The Stages of Salvation

So let’s talk about the stages of the salvation. Jesus came into the world [Matthew 1:21]. The angel told Joseph, you’ll give him the name Jesus because He will save his people from their sins. That’s Jesus’ mission, to save us from our sins or to expand it a little bit, to save us and the universe from everything that sin has done to us and to the universe.  That’s what Jesus came into the world to do and so, for us, in terms of our own sin, He came to save us from the penalty of sin, from the practice of sin and from the very presence of sin.

Those translate into the three great stages of salvation: justification, sanctification, glorification. These are the three stages. We don’t get our salvation all at once. Justification is the instantaneous work of God based on our faith in Christ and in his bloodshed on the cross, the instantaneous work of God in declaring us not guilty before him of all of our sins, putting it simply, forgiven, forgiven and seen to be righteous in his sight, not by works, but by faith in the blood of Christ.

Sanctification is a gradual process by which justified people are transformed more and more into Christ’s likeness, Christ-like mind and heart leading to a Christ-like lifestyle. It is a mysterious process worked by cooperation between the regenerate person who has a new heart and a new nature, and the indwelling Holy Spirit, a mysterious cooperation between the two.  We are to be led by the spirit to put sin to death by the Spirit and the Spirit’s works. Positive virtues summed up by the two great commandments, positive virtues in us such as the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithful, self-control. This is sanctification, gradual transformation of lifestyle, mind, heart, life. It works by practice, by habit, by the ministry of the word of God, by intense effort fighting the good fight on the part of the Christian, it never ends in this life. We’ll never be perfect in this life. It’s a constant seeking after Christ-like perfection.

“Sanctification is a gradual process by which justified people are transformed more and more into Christ’s likeness, Christ-like mind and heart leading to a Christ-like lifestyle. It is a mysterious process worked by cooperation between the regenerate person who has a new heart and a new nature, and the indwelling Holy Spirit.”

Glorification is the instantaneous work of God, whereby by his sovereign power, he instantly conforms the Christian to absolute perfection in the likeness of Christ. It happens generally in two stages. First at death when the spirit is separated from the body and the body goes to corruption, but the spirit is instantly made perfect and brought into the presence of God, it will never sin again.  The spirit absent from the body, present with the Lord, is pure and perfect in conformity to Christ, but the salvation isn’t finished yet. It happens at the end of the age, at the coming of Christ. When the dead in Christ are raised, those that are still alive also mysteriously instantly transformed. All of them receiving resurrection bodies to Christ’s resurrection body. That’s it. That’s the finish line. Meanwhile, some really awesome things are happening with the universe as well. It’s made new, new heaven, new earth. I would say it’s resurrected like our bodies into perfection. That’s where we’re heading. It sounds magnificent. Those are the stages of salvation.

II. The Two Great Commandments and Justification

Now, what I want to do is I want to line up the two great commandments with each stage because the law functions differently at each stage. When I was practicing this unbelievably long sermon yesterday, and it is long, but when I was practicing it, I realized when I got to sanctification, I myself became a little discouraged at how long I’d been talking. I want you to know the sermon’s not equally weighted, just I’m warning or encouraging you. I don’t know what word here, but much more on justification than sanctification and glorification.  Also, I want you to know it’s like a hot air balloon. I’m pitching things out of the gondola every minute here on my outline, so I’m doing fine. So let’s talk about the two great commandments.

First of all, in justification, prior to justification, the law, the two great commandments, the law convicts us and brings us to Christ for salvation. The law diagnoses our heart condition and shows us the depths of our disease. We cannot simply be positive. As I’ve said, we cannot simply say love God and love others. We need the prohibitions and the Ten Commandments are mostly negative. Nine out of the ten of them are negative.

We are to have no other gods beside the true God for to have any other gods is to worship an idol. We are not to make any physical representations of God, no idols. We are not to take the name of the Lord in vain. We are to do no work on the Sabbath. We are to honor our father and mother. We are not to murder other people. We are not to commit adultery. We are not to steal. We are not to bear false witness and we are not to covet anything that belongs to anyone else. Nine of the ten of them are negative. If all we do is say to people “Love God and love others,” they’ll think they already do in their definition of love. Broadly and weirdly, we are so defiled in our minds, we cannot possibly define love properly.

In Romans 1 through 3, Paul unfolds this and shows how corrupt, sinful humanity is by the things they actually love in their lostness. For example, Romans 1:26 says, “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.” Now that word “shameful lust” in the King James version is “vile affections;” things that people love that they shouldn’t, or again, in the ESV text, “dishonorable passions” and that’s nestled in a discussion of homosexuality. “Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust. For one another, men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.” You can’t tell those people just love whatever you want or however you want. Paul then goes on to show how our depraved minds lead to all manner of strange affections. Loves that lead to wicked practices. “Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done. They become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They’re full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things, but also approve of those that practice them.” [Romans 1:28-32] Do you not see how it’s corrupt love that leads to depraved actions.

In Romans 7, Paul cites a negative command, a prohibition as showing him his sinfulness. In Romans 7,8, and 9, he said, “I would not have known what sin was except through the law for I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, do not covet but sin seizing the opportunity afforded by the command produced in me every kind of covetous desire.” Coveting is by definition loving something you ought not to love. And yet for all of that in Romans, Paul turns the whole thing around and says, all of the horizontal commands that are prohibitions can be summed up in this one command: Love your neighbor as yourself, all of them. Romans 13:9-10,  “The commandments,” do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet, and whatever other commandment there may be are summed up in this one rule. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.” So I’m not wrong, Christ isn’t wrong saying that the two great commandments sums everything up, but we still need the specificity of the prohibitions to diagnose the corruption of our hearts.

Ultimately though, if understood properly, the positive commands are crushing. There are people that can go through life and never murder and never commit adultery, although they still are going to yearn to murder through anger and yearn to commit adultery through lust as Jesus said in the Sermon of the Mount. “But who can rightly say, I have loved God with all of my heart, with all of my soul, with all of my strength and with all of my mind, every moment of my life, and I have loved my neighbor the way I love myself every day. Who could actually say that we did not do these things?”  Charles Spurgeon said this. Is there someone here so profoundly brainless as to reply:  “I intend to keep it. I believe I can perfectly obey it and I think I can get to heaven by obedience to it.” Man, you are either a fool or else willfully ignorant for sure. If you truly understand this commandment, you’ll at once hang down your hands and say obedience of that is quite impossible, thorough and perfect obedience of that no man can hope to reach, though some of you think you’ll go to heaven by your good works.

This is the first stone that you are to step upon and I am sure it is too high for your reach. You might as well try to climb to heaven by the mountains of earth and take the Himalayas to be your first step for to obey. This must ever be an impossibility, but remember, you cannot be saved by your works if you do not obey this entirely perfectly, constantly and forever. Well, someone replies, “I dare say, if I try and obey it as well as I can that will do.” No sir, it will not. God demands that you perfectly obey this and if you do not perfectly obey it, He will condemn you. Oh, someone cries out: “Who then can be saved?” That is the point to which I wish to bring you: who can be saved by this law? No one in the world.  Salvation by the works of the laws proves to be an impossibility.  None of you therefore will say you will try to obey it and so hope to be saved. I hear the best Christian in the world groan, “Oh God,” he says, “I am guilty. Should you cast me into hell. I dare not say otherwise. I have broken this command from my youth up even since my conversion. I have violated it every day. I know that if you should lay justice to the line and righteousness to the plummet, I would be swept away forever. Lord, I renounce my trust in the law for by it I know I can never see your face and be accepted.”

Then the law in this phase of our salvation hunts us down relentlessly to bring us to justice. I picture an avenger chasing my fleeing conscience. I picture Inspector Javert, a miserable prison guard who rose to become a prison inspector relentlessly and hunt down Jean Valjean. He would never turn away, could not, would not show mercy. So it is with the law of God. It cannot show mercy in this phase. In Pilgrim’s Progress, when Faithful is relating to Christian his testimony, he’s trying to get up the terrifying Mount Sinai that Christian also tried to ascend for his own salvation. Suddenly he looked behind him and saw a man chasing him as swiftly as the wind. He overtook Faithful and began beating him savagely.  He knocked him to the ground and laid him unconscious as if dead. When he awoke, he asked this man why he treated him like that. The man answered it was because of his secret inclination to sin. Then he struck him again, viciously on the chest and beat him back down to the ground once again. Faithful, laid at this man’s feet like a dead man. When he came to again, he begged this man for mercy, but the man answered, I do not know how to show mercy. This man would’ve finished Faithful off once and for all, but another man came and told him to stop.  Christian asked Faithful who was the man that told him to stop. Faithful, answered, “I did not know him at first, but I perceived that he had holes in his hands and his side, so I concluded he was our Lord Jesus.” Christian told Faithful the man who struck him was Moses, and he spares no one. He does not know how to show mercy to those that violate his law. Anyway, that’s a picture of how the law pursues sinners to death. It is not the task of the law to save you, to show mercy to you. It requires absolute and perfect obedience to every precept, large and small for your whole life. You all know it’s too late. It cannot show you mercy, the law will hunt down the sinner and pursue him until he finds the only refuge there is and that is the cross of Jesus Christ.

The law with its written code of regulations kills us. Colossians 2:14, “(The law) was against us and stood opposed to us.” Second Corinthians 3:6, “the letter kills.” Second Corinthians 3:7,  “The ministry that brought death was engraved in letters on stone.” Paul says in Romans 7, “Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.” So during our days of conviction, before our conversion, we realized that we have sin more than we can possibly recount. Day after day, we have failed to keep the Ten Commandments. We have failed to keep the two Great Commandments. We have not loved God with all of our hearts, all our souls, all our minds, all our strength. Not at all. Actually, our sinful mind was hostile to God, it didn’t submit to God’s law.  It couldn’t. We secretly hated his purity. We secretly hated his authority, his right to send us to hell. We have been disgusted by or bored by aspects of his Word. We have pursued created things rather than the creator. We have lived for pleasure and money and pride and various secret lusts. Furthermore, we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. We have been selfish with our time, our energy and our money. We’ve hated other people, been angry at them, irritated by them. We’ve coveted their possessions and their accomplishments and achievements in their people. We have seethed with resentment at people’s affronts and we’ve sought revenge in our own ways. We’ve slandered them, gossiped against them, secretly connived to ruin them.

The record of the infamous is far longer than we can possibly imagine on the basis of them. The law hunts us down to kill us.  It chases our consciences, accuses us with no remedy. It drives us to the cross. It drives us hard to the cross and the Lord is drawing us in that process to salvation. The Holy Spirit is given to convict the world of guilt. Essential to that are the relentless claims of the two Great Commandments, for that is how God defines sin. The second commandment is that you love your neighbor as yourself.  On Judgment Day Jesus will say to many, “I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger. You did not invite me in. I needed clothes and you did not clothe me. I was sick and imprisoned and you did nothing to help me. You just walk right by.”  Those are failures of the second Great Commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. The Spirit presses these claims on us, shatters our self righteousness and makes us spiritual beggars and brings us to Calvary.

What do we find at Calvary? First, you see a man crushed under the wrath and the justice of God because we have transgressed these commandments. That’s what you find there. You find a man who is willing to take your punishment on himself in your place. That’s what you find there, all of the wrath that we deserve for our violations of the two Great Commandments, He absorbed. He drank the cup of God’s wrath. He cried out,”My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” because we didn’t keep these commandments.  He was seen positionally to be the most unloving man in history who absolutely did not love God with all of his heart, soul, mind and strength, and did not love his neighbor as himself, positionally as our substitute, though He was perfectly righteous. What do we find at the cross? We find a man, the only man in history who has ever perfectly obeyed these two commandments. He was the most loving man who ever lived vertically and horizontally every moment of his life. He loved his father, cherished his father. He said, “I always do what pleases him.”  Think about that, “I always do what pleases him.” He also gave himself horizontally day after day to other people. I often picture some of these crazy days that Jesus had in his ministry, the relentless press of a crowd desperate for physical healing. Think of what it would be like, and He seems like he healed people for the most part one at a time. I have no evidence there were any mass healings. He touched people, gave a word to lepers, blind people, paralyzed people. What was a day like? At the end of the day, I picture him exhausted and there’s one more person coming, Jarius, and he’s got a daughter who’s dying and there’s no self pity. Not “do you realize what kind of day I’ve had? Come back tomorrow.” There’s none of that. He gets up, He will go.

Has anyone ever loved his neighbor like Jesus? The ultimate picture and proof of both the vertical and the horizontal is his death on the cross. He said that the world must learn that He loved his father and obeyed him. They would see it when He  died, and it was for us that He died. What’s so beautiful is that this perfect righteousness, this perfect obedience to the two great commandments is offered to us as a gift freely. That’s incredible. Do you see that positionally, He’s offering perfect obedience for his whole life to you as a gift. It’s called imputed righteousness. Listen to Romans 5:19, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man, Adam, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man, the many were made righteous.” Righteous equals obedient. By faith in Christ, Jesus makes you obedient to the law of God, positionally as though you have never violated his law. Do you realize what good news that is? All the times you have failed to love vertically and horizontally were put on Jesus. He paid for it with his perfect righteousness. He won by a life of love. He offers you a beautiful robe of righteousness. “Here, put this on. You’re going to need it on Judgment Day. Put it on, now.” How beautiful is that?

Right now, I want to invite anyone who came in here trusting in his or her own righteousness to throw it away and look to Christ only for forgiveness of sins. Look to Christ only for salvation. Trust in him alone. I was on a plane coming back here, sitting with a man. We had a great conversation. He’s about my age, Roman Catholic, very religious. He’d been on a number of pilgrimages to Rome, went up that staircase on his knees. I said, “Why did you do that?” We’d already talked about the gospel. He said, “Well, it can’t hurt.” I think it can. I’m not meaning physically. I’m sure it hurt physically, but if you’re trusting in your works to save you, you cannot come to Christ.

III. The Two Great Commandments and Sanctification

Secondly, two great commandments and sanctification.  Once we have been crushed by God’s law and brought to faith in Christ at that moment, God’s sovereignly takes out the heart of stone and gives us a living heart, a heart of flesh, and moves us to obey his commands and keep his statutes and that specifically means the two Great Commandments. Suddenly, the law instead of standing opposed to you as your greatest enemy now becomes your greatest friend in defining a good life, a righteous life, a blessed life, and the indwelling Holy Spirit is given to combine with your new nature, that heart of flesh that’s been given, and in a mysterious combination. The Spirit moves you to obey God’s laws as it says in Romans 8:4, “In order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to the spirit.”

We now live out the law. Day by day in our sanctification, the Holy Spirit energizes us and moves us and says basically day after day after day of your Christian life, love God and love others. He says that to you every day, love God and love others. Every moment of every day, the Spirit pushes us more and more to love God. And we see, as I mentioned at the beginning of my sermon, the beauty of God’s laws, the perfection of them in my inner being. I delight in God’s law. Romans 7:22 and Psalm 119:32, “I run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free. Your statutes are my delight. They’re my counselors. I delight in your decrees. I will not neglect your word. Direct me in the path of your commands. For there I find delight. I delight in your commands because I love them.”  Psalm 119, that’s a regenerate heart, crying out, “I love your law. It’s my best friend. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” [Psalm 119:105] It shows me what to do. Or Psalm 19, “The law of the Lord is perfect. Reviving the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise, the simple, the precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous. They’re more precious than gold, than much pure gold. They’re sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.” So the Spirit instructs us daily on what love for God looks like: to delight in God’s very being, to delight in his word, to delight in his purposes in the world, his intentions for you to delight in these things. All of those bring to us a deep desire to please God day after day one. [John 15:10], This is love for God to obey His commands and his commands are not burdensome.

The Spirit also convicts us when we fail, doesn’t He?  When our hearts are hard and distant from God, when we nail it in corporate worship, “these people worship with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” That’s us. Sometimes  the Spirit’s there to convict us when our actions dishonor him, when we violate some of the prohibitions that we know are still part of the moral law of God, when we lust, when we’re lazy, when we’re selfish, when we’re angry, carnally angry, when we say things we wish we hadn’t said and we regret it. The Holy Spirit convicts us, saying, “That was not loving.” It was not loving, and He’s convicting you and bringing you again and again to this perfect standard of loving God with all of your heart, soul, mine, and strength. Love your neighbors yourself. That’s what He does. The battle within us is a battle over these two Great Commandments [Romans 7], “So I find this law at work when I want to do good. Evil is right there with me for my inner being. I delight in God’s law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Brothers and sisters, someday you’re going to be delivered from this body of death and the war will be over. You’ll be done fighting.

VI. Two Great Commandments and Glorification

What’s it going to be like in heaven? I’ll tell you what it’s going to be like.  Heaven will be a world of love and you’ll spend eternity, perfectly loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your heart will be so expanded toward your brothers and sisters in Christ redeemed. They will shine like the sun and so will you. You will delight in their beauty and in their achievements. You’ll not be jealous of them. You’ll want to hear their stories, how God saved them. Your heart will be so expanded to take them in yourself that when one part of the body is honored, the whole body will be honored with it. And I picture this way, I’m just telling a story about myself. I’m an introvert. I know that’s a little weird. Here I am in front of all these people, but I’m an introvert. It doesn’t mean I don’t like people. I do. I love people, but I think what it means is you’re kind of energized by being alone. But I picture being so healed from the dark side of whatever that is, that I’ll be sitting on some beautiful hill on the new earth and suddenly 50 people will come along. Ordinarily I would get up and find another quiet spot, but I’ll be thrilled that all 50 of you are there and if another 50 come along, that’ll be even better.  The best of all will be vertical. You’ll see the face of God directly. And God alone will be the joy of our eternal home. He will be our one desire. Our hearts will never tire of God and God alone. That’s what we’re going to spend eternity doing.

“Heaven will be a world of love and you’ll spend eternity, perfectly loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your heart will be so expanded toward your brothers and sisters in Christ redeemed.”

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for this time that we’ve had to study your word, to study the law. We thank you, oh Lord, that this law, which was at one point, our enemy that stood opposed to us, was against us, has now become our sweetest and deepest friend in defining a pure and holy life. We thank you that Christ’s righteousness has been given to us as a gift, and now is being worked in us actually by the Spirit and will be given to us directly and completely and perfectly at the end. Give us hope, oh Lord, help us to realize that our battle with sin is not in vain. Someday we will triumph. We will be more than conquerors through him who loved us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

This morning we embark on a vital journey into the very heart of God and the heart of our salvation. Where did we come from? What are we truly? Where are we going? What is our purpose for existence?

The text we will be studying carefully for the next number of weeks holds a key to unlocking these questions. For I believe when all is said and done, it is all about these Two Great Commandments… more specifically, it is that IN HEAVEN our hearts will be glorified, totally conformed to Christ so that we perfectly fulfill the Two Commandments every moment of our existence for all eternity. That we will love the Lord our God with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our minds, and with all our strength. And that, secondly, we will love other people—our neighbors—as we love ourselves. I believe that these words, rightly understood, sum up the Law of God, and therefore the very heart of God. They are why we were created, they define a perfect life in God’s universe, they are our destiny in Christ.

It all comes down to one word: LOVE

The more I have meditated on our future in heaven, in a perfect world characterized by perfect love toward God and love toward every other redeemed person, I saw how VITAL these Two Great Commandments really are. According to Jesus, love for God and love for others sums up the entire law of God.

Romans 7:22 “In my inner being, I DELIGHT in God’s law!”

Psalm 119:97  Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.

But I came to realize we can’t simply stay POSITIVE, saying Just Love God and Others.

The comprehension of that one word, LOVE, is anything but simple. Because of the entrance of sin into the universe, our ability to define love properly, and to love properly, is fatally diseased.

Jeremiah 17:9  The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

The heart of sinful humanity is desperately wicked, diseased, and beyond cure. In our sinful state, we cannot be trusted to define love properly… so we cannot hear properly “All you need is LOVE” and “What the world needs now is love, sweet love”. We sinners will immediately be delighted with that message and then go on to love whatever we want however we want whenever we want and call it LOVE. We will love in ways that the holy God calls deeply corrupt and cover it with the slogan “LOVE IS LOVE.”

Martin Luther said very famously, “Love God and do as you please.”

To our modern corrupt age, that seems wonderful. Do whatever you want, whatever your heart leads you to do, whatever makes you happy, whatever you truly love.

The problem is, our hearts, minds, and souls are drunk with sin and our judgment is fatally impaired.

Ephesians 4:17-19  So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.  18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.  19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

This week, I was reading a tragic article in Christianity Today. It was about a book written by Shannon Harris, the former wife of Joshua Harris, the man who wrote “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” and who was the leader of the “purity culture” of a few decades ago. He has since renounced the Christian faith, and so has she. In the article, Shannon Harris spoke in the strongest terms about healing from a culture of shame over our choices. She particularly blamed Calvinist theology, a theology of shame over bad choices, what she called “worm theology”. Like, we’re all nothing but WORMS. She said “We must strive to connect to our own wisdom, to nature and our bodies, to our own fulfillment in work and pleasure, and to our own ways of being and doing.” The author of the Christianity Today article spoke approvingly of how refreshing it must be for her readers to think positively about themselves and their bodies (including their sexuality) after years of hears harsh sermons about “our foolish hearts” and our “sinful flesh.”

Asked what this connecting to our own bodies and our own hearts desires might look like in practice, Shannon Harris said “Sometimes it might look like bringing your neighbor freshly made bread, just to cheer them up. But other times, it might look like following your own wisdom and seeking your own pleasure, like binging on a sleeve of Oreos while watching porn. Or trolling someone you don’t like online instead of spending time with your kids.” She asserts that we are stunning image bearers of God and have been given beautiful hearts and bodies and need to follow our desires wherever they lead.

I saw that her theology was utterly corrupt… and frankly nothing new. “FOLLOW YOUR HEART”… one commenter on the Christianity Today article said that was the First Commandment of every Hallmark special.

The prophet Jeremiah saw it in the idolatrous people of Israel and Judah centuries ago. God spoke to them through the prophets again and again…

Jeremiah 7:24  But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts.

NINE TIMES in Jeremiah, the prophet uses that same phrase… they “followed the stubbornness of their evil hearts”. People have been “following their hearts” all throughout the dark history of the human race.

So, if all I do here is say “Love God and love others” no matter how you define that, I would be failing as a pastor.

Imagine two men sitting in a bar. One has been drinking heavily, the other is the designated driver… he’s had nothing but ginger ale all night. At the end of the evening, the drunk man says to his designated driver friend, “Give me my keys… I want to drive home.” If the sober friend, in the spirit of the age, trusts this man’s confident self-assurance of how well he can drive and hands him the keys, he is most likely signing his death warrant and maybe that of some innocent others who will be the victims of his fatal errors in judgment as he drives under the influence.

His judgment is FATALLY IMPAIRED. How much MORE is our conception of love!

So, as I initially conceived of this sermon… how the Law of God interacts with us DIFFERENTLY at every stage of our salvation, I was only going to talk of the Two Great Commandments POSITIVELY… but I realize that the NEGATIVE aspects of the Law—the prohibitions—are essential to show us what love IS and especially what it ISN’T.

Now, let’s start this morning with a simple summary of the encounter Jesus had that opens up this vital topic:

Mark 12:28-34  One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”  29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’  31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”  32 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him.  33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”  34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

Context:

Final week of Jesus’ life; he come to Jerusalem to fulfill his ministry, which is to save his people from their sins. He has entered the holy city, Jerusalem, to the cries of “Hallelujah! Hosannah”… meaning “Praise Yahweh! And O Save!!” Jesus then cleansed the Temple from the corrupt religionists who had turned that sacred house of prayer into a den of thieves. This brought an already tense relationship between Jesus and the Chief Priests, Teachers of the Law, Pharisees, Sadducees to a boil. They are extremely angry at him.

Jesus took advantage of the cleansed Temple to teach the people and to heal the people. A series of adversaries looking to trip him in his words came… the Chief Priests asking him about his authority; the Pharisees and Herodians asking about paying taxes to Caesar; the Sadducees asking about resurrection from the dead.

Now along comes an expert in the Laws of Moses… but this man is different than the others. He really wants to know the truth from Jesus.

He sees the wisdom Jesus has displayed in his disputes with his enemies and he truly wants to know his insight on the Laws of God…

“Of all the commandments God has given us, his people, which is the most important?” He does not ask this to justify himself, but rather so he can understand the heart of God. At the end he shows his true spirit of yearning for intimacy with God and Jesus declares that he is not far from the Kingdom of God. He is knocking on the door, and soon it will swing open to him.

Jesus gives his timeless answer:

Mark 12:29-30  “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

There is no commandment greater than this one. It is the reason we were created, the reason God sent Jesus into the world to save us. It is the core of our existence and it is our destiny as redeemed persons for all eternity… what we will be and do forever in heaven.

Jesus then added more than the man asked for… the second greatest commandment:

Mark 12:31  The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Matthew adds Jesus’ additional comments:

Matthew 22:37-40  Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  38 This is the first and greatest commandment.  39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

See that! The first commandment is the “FIRST AND GREATEST commandment.” The Second is LIKE IT… but not equal to it.

As God is infinitely more important than your neighbor, so the first commandment is infinitely more important than the second.

Then Jesus adds, “All the Law and the Prophets HANG on these two commandments.” In other words, all the 613 commandments in the Old Testament depend on these and to some degree are summed up by them.

BUT these two great commandments are more than merely God’s law given to the Jewish nation. They describe the perfect righteousness that Jesus gives us at the cross by faith, the beautiful life God enables us to live imperfectly now by his Spirit, and the radiantly glorious life we will live eternally in heaven.

That’s today’s sermon: the two great commandments and how they intersect with us at every stage of our salvation and on into eternity.

I. The Stages of Salvation
A. Jesus’ Mission: To Save His People from their SINS

Matthew 1:21  She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

Everything sin has done to us and to the universe. But specifically focused on us as individuals. Christ saves us from the penalty of sin, the practice of sin, then finally, the very presence of sin.

B. Salvation Comes in Stages

1. We don’t get our salvation all at once

C. The Three Stages Named and Described

1. Justification

a. Instantaneous work of God

b. Comes by faith in Jesus Christ and NOT BY WORKS

c. At that moment, we are forgiven, declared not guilty of all our sins… positionally righteous in the sight of God

d. Not by works… by faith in the sovereign power of God based on the shed blood of Christ on the cross

2. Sanctification

a. Gradual process by which justified people are transformed more and more into Christlikeness—Christlike mind and heart, leading to a Christlike lifestyle

b. It is worked by the indwelling Holy Spirit, and is a mysterious cooperation between the Spirit and the Christian

c. The moment a sinner is justified by faith in Christ, they receive the gift of the Spirit of Christ within them

d. The Holy Spirit then leads and guides and works with the Christian to learn new habits of holiness

e. It is both negative and positive; negatively, putting sin to death by the Spirit; positively, putting on Christlike virtues, like the Fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control

f. It works by practice, by habit, by the ministry of the Word of God, by intense effort on the part of the Christian

g. It never ends in this life… it is a constant seeking after perfection

3. Glorification

a. Instantaneous work of God, by his sovereign power, instantly conforming the Christian to absolute perfection in the likeness of Jesus Christ

b. It happens in two stages: first, at death, the spirit/soul of the dead Christian is separated from the body and instantly perfected… while the mortal body, the corpse, sinks into corruption; the spirit/soul of the Christian is said to be absent from the body, present with the Lord, and it is made perfect

c. But the full work of salvation still is not completed in that person until the resurrection of the body

d. That happens at the end of the world, at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ

e. The body is raised from the grave and instantly transformed into Christ’s perfect image

This resurrection body—imperishable, glorious, powerful, and spiritual, is the end of our salvation… we will spend eternity with perfect minds, hearts, souls, in perfect bodies in a perfect world no longer in bondage to decay and corruption… a New Heavens and New Earth.

So, salvation comes in stages.

Now, I want to line up these two great commandments with each of these three stages and see how they function.

II. The Two Great Commandments and Justification
A. Prior to Justification: The Law Brings Us to Christ for Salvation

1. The Law Diagnoses Our Heart Condition and Shows Us Our Disease

2. We CANNOT simply be positive!!! We need the negative commands summed up in the Ten Commandments to teach us what sin is…

No other gods besides ME… no idols… do not take the name of the Lord in vain… no work on the Sabbath … honor your father and mother… do not murder… do not commit adultery… do not steal… do not bear false witness… do not covet

If all we do is say to people “Love God and love others” they will think they already do; they will define love broadly and weirdly; we are so defiled in our minds that we cannot possibly define love properly

Paul clearly unfolds in Romans 1-3 how corrupt sinful humanity is by things they actually LOVE:

Romans 1:26-32  Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.

Just that word “shameful lusts” (KJV “vile affections”; ESV “dishonorable passions”)… then defines it in reference to homosexuality:

Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.  27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

Then Paul goes on to show how our depraved minds lead to all manner of strange affections and evil practices…

28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.  29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,  30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;  31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them

In Romans 7, Paul cites a NEGATIVE command as the proof of his need for a Savior: “You shall NOT covet”… coveting is all about corrupt LOVE:

Romans 7:7-8  I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”  8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire.

So, sinners like us CAN’T BE TRUSTED to define LOVE.

3. Yet as Paul said later in Romans, the Prohibitions of the Law Were ALL Failures to Love Properly

Romans 13:9-10  The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

4. Yet, ultimately, these two great and positive commands of the law are especially crushing… to love God with every fiber of our being every moment of our lives…and to love our neighbor with the same kind of diligent zeal with which we love ourselves… WE DID NOT DO THESE THINGS!!

5. Anyone who thinks he did, he is brutally self-deceived!

Charles Spurgeon:  Is there someone here so profoundly brainless as to reply, “I intend to keep it, and I believe I can perfectly obey it, and I think I can get to heaven by obedience to it?” Man, you are either a fool, or else willfully ignorant; for sure, if you truly understand this commandment, you will at once hang down your hands, and say, “Obedience to that is quite impossible; thorough and perfect obedience to that no man can hope to reach to!” Some of you think you will go to heaven by your good works, do you? This is the first stone that you are to step upon—I am sure it is too high for your reach. You might as well try to climb to heaven by the mountains of earth and take the Himalayas to be your first step; … for to obey this must ever be an impossibility. But remember, you cannot be saved by your works, if you can not obey this entirely, perfectly, constantly, forever.
“Well,” someone replies, “I dare say if I try and obey it as well as I can, that will do.” No, sir, it will not. God demands that you perfectly obey this, and if you do not perfectly obey it he will condemn you. “Oh!” someone cries out, “who then can be saved?” Ah! that is the point to which I wish to bring you. Who, then can be saved by this law? Why, no one in the world. Salvation by the works of the law is proved to be a clean impossibility. None of you, therefore, will say you will try to obey it, and so hope to be saved. I hear the best Christian in the world groan out his thoughts—”O God,” he says, “I am guilty; and should you cast me into hell I dare not say otherwise. I have broken this command from my youth up, even since my conversion; I have violated it every day; I know that if you should lay justice to the line, and righteousness to the plummet, I must be swept away forever. Lord, I renounce my trust in the law; for by it I know I can never see your face and be accepted.

6. And, the Law Hunts Us Down to Bring Us to Justice

a. I picture an avenger, chasing my fleeing conscience

b. I picture Inspector Javert in Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, Les Miserables; he was a prison guard who rose to become a police inspector; he is ferociously relentless in hunting down the hero in the story, Jean Valjean; Javert prides himself on his commitment to JUSTICE… he would not hesitate to arrest his own mother or father if the law warranted it

c. So it is with the Law of God… it cannot show mercy

In Pilgrim’s Progress, when Faithful relates his testimony, he was trying to get up the terrifying Mt. Sinai, when suddenly he looked behind him and saw a man chasing him, swift as the wind. He overtook Faithful and began beating him savagely. He knocked him to the ground and laid him unconscious as if dead. When he awoke, he asked this man why he treated him like that. The man answered it was because of his secret inclination to sin. Then he struck him again viciously on the chest and beat him back down to the ground. Once again, Faithful laid at this man’s feet like a dead man. When he came to again, he begged this man for mercy. But the man answered, “I do not know how to show mercy.” This man would have finished Faithful off once and for all, but another man came by and told him to stop.

Christian asked Faithful, “Who was the man who told him to stop.” Faithful answered, “I did not know him at first, but I perceived that he had holes in his hands and his side. So I concluded that it was our Lord.”

Christian told Faithful, “The man who struck you is Moses. He spares no one and does not know how to show mercy to those that transgress his law.”

Anyway, that is a picture of how the Law pursues sinners to death. It is not the task of Law to show mercy. It requires absolute and perfect obedience to every precept, large or small.

The Law will hunt down a sinner and pursue him until he finds the only refuge there is from the Law’s relentless demands… the cross of Christ.

Now, the laws given on Mt. Sinai are perfectly summed up in the Two Great Commandments

7. The Law Kills Us

Colossians 2:14  the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us

2 Corinthians 3:6  the letter kills

2 Corinthians 3:7  the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone

Romans 7:9-11  Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.  10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.  11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.

During our days of conviction, we realize that we have sinned more than we can possibly recount… day after day we have failed to keep these Two Great Commandments

We have not loved God with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our minds, and with all our strength. Not at all. Actually our sinful mind was hostile to God, secretly hating his authority, his purity, his relentless ways, his power to send us to hell. We have been bored by his Word or hostile to it. We have pursued created things rather than the Creator. We have lived for pleasure and money and pride and various secret lusts.

Furthermore, we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have been selfish with our time, our energy, our money. We have hated other people, angry at them, coveting their possessions or their pleasures or their positions or their people. We have seethed with resentment at people’s affronts and sought revenge. We have slandered them, gossiped against them, secretly connived to ruin them.

And the record of these infamies is far longer than we can possibly imagine.

So… the Law hunts us down… it chases our consciences… it accuses us with no remedy. It drives us to the cross. Drives us hard to the cross… if the Lord is drawing us to salvation.

The Holy Spirit comes into the world to convict it of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment. (John 16:8)

Central to that are the relentless claims of the Two Great Commandments. For that is how God defines sin—failure to love; righteousness—perfect love for him and others; judgment will be based on that:

“I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not invite me in. I needed clothes and you did not clothe me. I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”

Those are failures of the Second Great Commandment.

The Spirit presses these claims on us, shatters our self-righteousness, makes us spiritual beggars. And brings us to Calvary. To the cross of Jesus Christ.

B. At the Cross, We Find a Man Slaughtered Because We Didn’t Keep the Law

1. All of our sins were put on him

2. All of the wrath we deserved for our violations of the Two Great Commandments, he absorbed. He drank the cup of God’s wrath and righteous judgments

3. He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Because he was our substitute.

4. He was seen by God to be the most UNLOVING MAN in history. But that’s only because our sins were laid on him

5. Of himself, he was PERFECTLY RIGHTEOUS

C. At Justification: We Find a Perfectly Righteous Man

1. Jesus perfectly fulfilled the Two Great Commandments

2. He was the most loving man that ever lived

a. He loved God the Father at every moment; he said “I always do what pleases him.”

b. That meant he loved God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind, and with all his strength.

c. He also gave himself day after day to other people… to serve them, meet their needs

i) I often picture Jesus physically exhausted after a long day meeting the desperate needs of huge crowds…. People who were pressing in on him so hard he could barely breathe…

ii) It’s evening now; most of the people have gone home; but some last suffering person, like Jairus whose little daughter was dying, coming and begging him to go with him; and Jesus, with literally no sigh of self-pity or a single syllable of resentment gladly getting up to go and heal one more person that day

iii) Jesus was a friend of all sinners… welcoming anyone who felt their need

d. His ultimate proof of love for BOTH God and other people was his death on the cross

John 14:31  the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me

D. Consider… this is the OBEDIENCE that Jesus gave to us as a gift

Romans 5:19  For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

Jesus was perfectly obedient to the Two Great Commandments… and he GAVE that obedience to us… that righteousness was given to us as a gift, instantly imputed to us as though WE had obeyed the Two Great Commandments every day of OUR lives

2 Corinthians 5:21  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God

III. The Two Great Commandments and Sanctification
Once we have been crushed by God’s Law and brought to see our need… brought to trust in Christ’s cross… once we have been JUSTIFIED by faith… suddenly the Law changes entirely

A. Instead of Standing Against Us, It Now Comes to Our Aid and Defines a Holy Life

B. The Indwelling Holy Spirit is Given to Us to Cause us to Walk Moment by Moment in perfect obedience to the Law

Romans 8:4   in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit energizes us and leads us moment by moment. He dwells within us and speaks these two commandments every moment of every day: “Love God… love others!!”

C. The Holy Spirit empowers us to fulfill these two great commandments

1. Every moment of every day, the Spirit pushes us to love God more and more

a. We love God by being drawn to his being in delight, yearning to please him, delighted in his purposes and plans

b. We see the beauty of God’s perfect law… these Two Great Commandments

Romans 7:22  in my inner being I delight in God’s law

Psalm 119:16  I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.

Psalm 119:24  Your statutes are my delight; they are my counselors.

Psalm 119:35  Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight.

Psalm 119:47   I delight in your commands because I love them.

Psalm 19:7-10  The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.  8 The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.  9 The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the LORD are sure and altogether righteous.  10 They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.

c. The beauty of the Law of God guides us every step of our daily lives in Christ

Psalm 119:105  Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.

D. The Spirit Instructs Us Daily on What Love for God Looks Like

1. Delight in God’s very being

2. Delight in God’s glory

3. Delight in God’s Word

4. Delight in God’s Purposes in the World

5. All of that leads to a deep desire to please God… to obey his commands

1 John 5:3  This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome

E. The Spirit Also Convicts Us Daily in Ways We Fail to Love

1. When our hearts are hard and distant from God

2. When our actions dishonor him

3. When our words question him or displease him

4. When we are unloving toward others… selfish,

5. When we commit any of the sins the law exposes… gossip, slander, covetousness, lust, anger, pride, laziness, pleasure-seeking, idolatry

6. The Spirit reveals that we have not loved God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength…

7. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves… and his convictions burn in us and drive us to repentance and a change in life

F. The Battle Within is a Battle Over the Two Great Commandments

Romans 7:21-25  So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;  23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.  24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?  25 Thanks be to God– through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin

Someday, Jesus Christ himself will liberate us forever from our sinful minds, hearts, and bodies… we will be “Saved to sin no more!”

IV. The Two Great Commandments and Glorification
A. Heaven is a World of Love

Jonathan Edwards culminated his seventeen sermons in 1 Corinthians 13 with a forty-page message entitled “Heaven is a world of love.”

In heaven, the love we have for God will be perfected… what we feel now as a spark in our hearts will be a roaring bonfire

B. In an Instant, We Will Be Made Perfectly Righteous… Which Means Perfectly Obedient… Which Means Perfectly Loving

C. In Heaven, these Two Commandments are Perfected in Us

1. The glorified saints will perfectly fulfill God’s law every moment of our heavenly experience

2. We will love God with all our perfected hearts, all our perfected souls, with all our perfected minds, and with all our perfected strength

3. We will love our neighbors as we love our selves… perfectly in all respects!

D. The NEGATIVES will be obsolete!! We will be infinitely beyond any desire to worship an idol… or to kill a brother… or to covet a brother’s heavenly possession; we will be as beyond these sins are we are beyond some now… like HIJACKING an airplane or ARMED ROBBERY of a city bank; most Christians don’t need to be told “You shall not HIJACK an airplane!” So it will be will ALL CORRUPTING ACTIONS in heaven.

E. In Heaven, our enflamed hearts will never tire of seeing the glory of God manifest

F. In Heaven, we will be expanded within our souls to take in brothers and sisters from every nation on earth and love them fervently and perfectly for all eternity