The Greatest Legal Minds ...

In our day “the law” is a written aspiration of seeking justice.  We use the law as a tool to attempt to insure fairness and equality.  But even the greatest legal scholars among us will recognize that our entire body of laws are simply, not perfect.  This would make sense.  Since man is not perfect, the devices of his imagination are likely not to be perfect either.  In the field of art, we glory in these imperfections and unusual perspectives.  But in the field of law, we attempt to fix the imperfections as we stumble across them, or suffer from their application.  But no matter how much we continue to revise our laws, to attempt to find a better justice than the one we had before, our work on them is never quite finished.  One could find it interesting that while our laws can trace their roots all the way back to the tablets of stone Moses first carried down the mountain – our “evolution” of them has resulted in only more opportunities for improvement over time, not less.

In the days of Moses, “the law”, was the first revelation given to the people of earth, of what it means to love.  For a people fresh from slavery, who never had the freedom to think and act as they chose, God tried to reveal to them in the tablets of stone (and in His very tangible presence, with daily miracles of His care), what the base definition of love is.  That Ten Commandment law then, was the first guide rails, in answer to the question – what does it mean to love God, and to love each other.  But herein is where most of us jump the rails; the law, was NOT a definitive list, it was merely a beginning.  If the legal code of the United States is written across volumes of books today, imagine how much bigger it would be, if we were to attempt to define what it means to love on top of all the other statutes.  The Ten Commandments were a start, a beginning, NOT a comprehensive definition of how to love.  Common sense would build on this law, and provide a next step, in how to make love deeper, richer, and better.  For instance, if I love you, I would not think to steal from you.  Common sense would tell me, that as I get to know you, I will find out what you like, and try to share those interests with you, simply because it makes you happy.  Theft is the farthest thing from my mind.  Giving and trying to improve your life (because that makes me happy too) is at the top of it.

When you think in those terms, when you feel passionately in those terms, other crimes drop from you like scales off of a snake.  When I love you, I do not think to enslave you, I do not think to rape or abuse you, all of the evil that can be done to you, is NOT what I would see happen to you, not by the world, and especially not by me.  The Ten Commandments enumerate a starting point, but when love is my way, my list gets substantially longer.  This does not represent a flaw in God’s law, it represents true obedience to it, and the genius of it.  We were never meant to be satisfied with how great we can love.  We were always meant to discover an even greater love for others, every single day of our lives, not just in this life, but in the eternal one to come.  That thought should overwhelm you.  It is meant to.  To know that your ultimate state of bliss can only be measured today, for tomorrow it will become greater, is beyond the limits of our imagination.  Yet our reality to come.

Which takes us to the purpose of the law in heaven.  The “law” of God, that is to say the “love” of God, will never disappear throughout all of eternity.  We will not lie to each other throughout infinity.  We will speak only truth forevermore.  The reason – because truth is what love speaks – and lies only damage what we say we love.  We will not steal anymore, because stealing hurts others, and our internal passions will never be to hurt, but to uplift.  And here is another mind blower.  There is NOTHING in the law about how “much” you can give to somebody else.  There are no caps on giving.  The sky is the limit.  And giving will be natural, theft unthinkable.  When this is true, the law, or His love, is the core of who you are.  And while the law never disappears, we will need it no longer, because we would not think to transgress it.  For us the need of the law itself is gone, because the focus of our minds and hearts is on how to love others greater, not how to love less.

Here on earth, where God’s love looks restrictive, meaning it points out something I want to do, but am not supposed to do – this is where even the term “law” comes from.  The law here on earth only restricts my evil.  In that sense, the law is truly the beginning definition of what it means to love.  All our laws are designed to keep my selfishness from invading and harming your life.  For it is self-love that creates the need for any law in the first place.  Take away all self-love, and you can take away the need for any law forevermore.  But when you do love self, and not so many others, the law acts as a mirror to show you, how actions you take reflect a lack of love for others in your life.  It is evil that sees God’s law as restrictive.  And for evil, it is.  Evil, that is self-love, wants to do whatever it wants, regardless of who else might suffer because of it.  That is the nature of all evil in the first place.  The two ways of thinking could not be any more diametrically opposed.  God’s love that loves only others, and Evil’s ideas of love that focuses only on self regardless of others.  When those two ideologies exist, there is need for a law.  Once evil is gone forever, the need for the law will go, as the thinking behind it will obliterate the need for it.

The Pharisees thought themselves masters of the law.  Not because it had penetrated their hearts so that they only loved others.  But because they knew every word that was written, and every habit of action, that might prove they kept the law.  Sound familiar?  In the modern Christian churches which still teach the applicability of His laws (rightly so), His laws are more often taught with accompanying lists of do’s and don’ts.  Further actions defined in order to offer proof, that you are in fact, obeying His laws.  Any descension from the lists, and you are doomed to hell (usually forever).  This application of the law focuses on punishment and the fear of punishment, as your motivation to curb your behavior (if not your enthusiasm).  This is because love itself, is just not understood.  And love for others is not something that has ever been a natural part of how you think.  But without this kind of love, true obedience is just not possible.  It takes reformation of our thinking, of how we love, of what we want, before true obedience is possible.  That comes only from surrender to Jesus of our will, of our thinking, of how we love, and who we love.  Total surrender brings total reformation and re-creation, and then love brings a natural state of obedience, a harmony with His laws of love.  The Pharisees had no personal experience with this, nor did they want one.

If Jesus could not be trapped in matters of popularity (taxes), or in matters of doctrines (resurrection, and how women are to be treated), then perhaps they could trip Him up in a matter of law.  For let’s face it, everyone of us has broken His law at some point in our lives.  Most of us breaking it every day.  They reasoned the human part of Jesus had to be subject to this.  But they forgot His humanity only cloaked His divinity and Jesus had lived a spotless life, though tempted perhaps worse than we are, yet without a single transgression.  The love in Jesus, was not a love for Himself.  It was a love for us.  And a burning passionate love for us, could just not be compromised by an action that might hurt us.  So Jesus remained pure, and their attempts at trapping Him were going to leave them disappointed.  Never the less, they assembled the greatest legal minds of their day, and began to devise a strategy to trip Jesus up in His own law.  Silly when you think about it.  But evil often starts with a silly or ridiculous premise, and degenerates from there.

Matthew picks up the last trap for Jesus in chapter twenty-two of his gospel to the Hebrews in verse 34 saying … “But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. [verse 35] Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, [verse 36] Master, which is the great commandment in the law?”  This was a well-conceived trap.  Which law would you pick as the greatest idea defining love.  If you say do not kill, you leave the body of your neighbor alive, but steal his wife, lie to him about it, and injure him greatly anyway.  If you pick a different law, you can simply kill your neighbor to end any disputes about the damage you do to him.  It devolves down to one of those worst of two evils scenarios.  In that case we would likely pick the do not kill him commandment, reasoning that if he lives, at least he is alive.  But this focus comes from a punishment perspective, not from a true love of others one.

Jesus answers them in verse 37 saying … “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. [verse 38] This is the first and great commandment.”  Why is this the first one?  Think about that for a moment.  If the goal of harmony with the law of God is to love others completely, and love myself not at all.  Then why be taught to love God first?  Could it be that God is love?  And love comes “from” Him, and only “through” you.  Perhaps you are a conduit of His love, not the originator of your own.  Could it be, that for humans steeped in the evil of self-love, the only cure for it, is to come to God first?  Without experiencing the liberation of re-creation, the work of Jesus in us and for us, we are powerless to love anything other than ourselves.  Sin is an addiction that makes no logical sense, yet we find ourselves bound in chains to it anyway.  Only Jesus can break our chains for us, through our surrender to Him.  We cannot free ourselves, we must be made free.  Coming to God first, directing our love to Him first, can allow Him to do the work we need to be saved from ourselves, FIRST.  Only afterwards, is love for anyone other than me, even a real possibility.  Trying to love others first, is nothing more than hidden motives, buried in selfishness that I probably don’t even see.  My love for you, will be a result of my love for Him.  I cannot truly love you, unless I love Him first.

Jesus continues in verse 39 saying … “And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [verse 40] On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  Hear closely His own words, that the second commandment is “like unto it”.  Meaning the distinction between the first and second is very subtle.  We must love God first in order to build our own connection to the source of love itself.  But that connection to love was not meant to be turned inwards to ourselves.  It was meant to be turned outwards to the entire world.  Loving our neighbors when we once thought only to love ourselves.  If you were to make a priorities graphic to illustrate this.  You would place a drawing of God at the far left and call that priority one.  Then draw an infinity symbol on its side (it looks like a figure eight).  Under that infinity symbol would be labeled everyone else.  Then at the far right a stick man drawing of you.  You would be priority last.  And that is how it should work, and will work, when Jesus re-creates in you, what it means to truly love.  Jesus restates here for us, that all of the law, and all of the prophets were trying to get this simple message across.  Love God first, love everyone else next.  Self-love is the thing we are trying to rid ourselves of, as every evil can be traced back to it.  And the only freedom from self-love is a surrender to Jesus.

But Jesus had a question for the “masters of the word” before they scurried away.  The story continues in verse 41 saying … “While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, [verse 42] Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The Son of David.”  Jesus was not referring to Himself here, He was simply asking the Pharisees a generic question about “the Christ” they believed would be coming to deliver Israel from the Romans.  The Pharisees responded rightly that the Messiah would be from the lineage of David.  Jesus continues in verse 43 saying … “He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, [verse 44] The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? [verse 45] If David then call him Lord, how is he his son? [verse 46] And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.” 

First of all this stumper left the Pharisees, the lawyers, and the Sadducees speechless.  It was tradition in that day to refer to the King as “Lord”.  And this term only worked upwards in the genealogy.  Solomon would have referred to David as “his Lord”.  David would only have referred to Solomon as his son, or his prince, or the anointed and chosen of God etc.  So if the Messiah as the Son of David, yet referred to by David while under the influence of inspiration (so no doubting he misspoke or something) as His Lord, that would imply the Messiah existed before David, and then again after Him, or as an eternal being, the Son of God.  This was yet another attempt at Jesus trying to use the things the Pharisees loved, namely scripture, to invite them back to Him for reconciliation.  He was revealing who He really was to them, in a way they could understand.  But none were ready to accept.  At least not yet.

The traps all in the past now, I wonder if we understand our own relationships with His law.  We are bound to it forever.  But is the law part of the core of who we are, or do we see it as a restrictive set of conditions we have no idea how to live up to?  That difference is night and day.  It is the difference between walking in darkness, and having experienced the salvation of Jesus in you.  Jesus is NOT saving you from hell.  Jesus is saving you from yourself, and your self love.  He is teaching you how to really live.  How to live in harmony with His laws, making them only a beginning for you to explore what it means to love others.  That journey of exploration is meant for the here and the now, not just for the afterlife.  To be free to love others brings such a state of bliss and happiness it has no words to describe.  Even in a world of sin, you can still be made free from the slavery of self.  That is the Kingdom of heaven Jesus told us was here already.  Become the 2-year-old that runs to the arms of Jesus your Father, trusting in Him to save you, and making you free to love for real.  There is nothing better than this, and it can begin this moment as you surrender this work to Him and watch what He does in you.