Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity - October 4th, 2026

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

When someone is telling you what to do, whether it be a parent or a boss, almost no one wants to hear those words, “Because I said so.” It implies that they have authority over you, but it can come across as bossing you around. Even if it is true, like with the case of parents over children, no child likes to hear those words. Sometimes it is necessary, out of love. Parents do know what’s best, and sometimes they don’t have time to explain their reasoning. Sometimes they do, and parents sometime turn these commands into teachable moments. This becomes more important as the children grow older. Still, even for high schoolers, that “because I said so” can still be invoked and ought to be heeded.

A shorter word for these commands is “the law.” Our nation, our state, and our families have laws and punishments for breaking laws. God has laws too. His ultimate reason for the law is that he loves us. He set up the law to protect us and those around us from our own sinful, destructive behavior. God does not always explain his law, but we can intuit some of his reasons. Incest, we now know, leads to birth defects. Eating raw pork can give you trichinosis. But for centuries, the Israelites needed to accept these laws “because God said so.” St. Paul describes this in Galatians as being under a “guardian until Christ came” (Gal 3; 4:3). Like children, the Israelites did not always like obeying God’s law because He said so. They didn’t see the love behind it. God speaks words of love in two ways: first, He speaks the law because he doesn’t want us to sin and hurt ourselves and others and drift away from Him. Second, He speaks the gospel to those who are sorry for their sins, forgiving us and pointing us to His Son Jesus. We as Christians need both law and gospel, and God speaks both words to us.

The problem is, we don’t often see the law as pointing to love. We have a tendency to want to use it to make ourselves feel better. Our Gospel text begins with a lawyer of the Pharisees testing Jesus with a question: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” (36). This question pretty much summarizes the Pharisees. They were obsessed with the law, what God commanded and how to live. Historically, they had a point: when the people stopped believing in God, they disobeyed his law, and God’s punishment was exile to Assyria or Babylon.

But their obsession over the law led them down some bad paths. First, they added other laws to keep them from breaking the main laws—613 of them. Then, they debated which law took precedence over another. They also shunned those who couldn’t keep their man-made laws, calling them “sinners.” Worst of all, they treated the Messiah as just a king who will get rid of the Romans and institute the law. They had no interest in seeing greater spiritual significance behind the Messiah. We’ll get to that, because that’s where Jesus is going in his response to the Pharisees.

But for the Pharisees and us, thinking about the purpose of the law is helpful. Jesus summarizes the law in this way: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (37–39). Instead of 613 commandments, Jesus boils all the law down to love. God says that we shall love God with our whole being, and love our neighbor like we love ourself. But we also come to the conclusion that we don’t do this. We don’t love God like we should. We often forget Him or ignore Him or don’t turn to Him as we should. We also don’t love our neighbor as we would like to be treated.

So God uses the law both to tell us what right and wrong are, but also that we have not kept the law. The law acts like a mirror to tell us when we’ve fallen short. The law itself is good; we are sinful. And sinners don’t like being told that they are wrong. But look again at what Jesus says: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (37). How many of us can honestly say that we do this? We might brag that we love God, but our sinful nature is always looking out for itself. Our heart does not fully desire God and His will. Our soul sometimes follows the body’s passions and desires. Our mind thinks things it should not. On top of all of this, we certainly do not treat others as we would like to be treated. Perhaps we can echo St. Paul when he considers his sinful nature and says: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom 7:24–25).

Yes, it is thanks to God through Jesus that we have an answer to the law and its accusations. That answer is what Jesus wants to talk about. The Pharisees only like talking about the law, but Jesus redirects them. He asks, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” (42). This seems like an innocuous example, so the Pharisees reply with a Sunday-School answer for their day: “The son of David” (42). It is true. God promised David that one of his sons would sit on his throne forever. Jesus is that King. So Jesus has a wrinkle for them: “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet”’? If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” (43–44).

Basically, David wrote this psalm about God the Father saying to the Messiah, who would be Jesus, that he will sit at His right hand. But the “my Lord” there, as the Messiah, is also David’s son. No dad would willingly call his own son “lord” or “master”—and yet David does. The reason for this is that David recognizes that his great-great-etc.-grandson will be divine. That’s the only way for a kingdom to be established forever and ever. If you were David, and God made that promise to you, then of course you would have no problem calling your great-great-etc.-grandson “Lord,” because he would also be God. But because the Pharisees were so obsessed about the law and what to do, they missed some of these great Old Testament passages that make the case of what the Messiah would be and do.

This teaches us about reading the Bible too. The Bible does have law—it tells us how to behave. Jesus sharpens the law to apply to our heart, so we don’t come away thinking that we’re better than other people or can earn our salvation. But the Bible also wants to give you the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is true God and true man, born of the Virgin Mary. He came to suffer and die and rise again to save you. Jesus intentionally lived the perfect law of God in your place. He loved His Father so much that he obeyed Him and went to the cross to redeem all of sinful humanity. Jesus loved his neighbor as himself. Even though they hated him, I think you see here Jesus loving the Pharisees by telling the truth. That’s what love does. It “speaks the truth in love” (Eph 4:15). Jesus answers the Pharisees’ question with complete, biblical honesty. He then discloses a truth about himself that they had not recognized.

We too can open our Bibles and read it looking for connections to Jesus. The Old Testament gives us prophecies, promises, and pictures of Jesus. He is the purpose of the Old Testament: to prepare the Israelite people to welcome the God-man. This is a bit of an Advent theme, but God also gives us the law to prepare our hearts to receive Jesus. We do not do what we should, think what we should, or believe what we should. The law is good because it shows us God’s standard. We can repent knowing that we have a God who loves us and forgives us. We dare not choose our own way, refusing repentance. God wants us to be honest about our sin, so He can cover it with the forgiveness won by Jesus.

In the end, the law is not only God saying, “Because I said so.” Do we sometimes need to hear those words? Yes. Are there reasons for God’s law? Yes. Breaking his law is self-destructive. But God always forgives those who repent. If we ever ask how our many sins could be forgiven, God points us to Jesus on the cross and says to us, “Because he suffered the punishment for them.” That is how Jesus is our Lord—our eternal King in whom we trust.

Now may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.

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