Word of Salvation – Vol. 24 No. 34 – May 1978

The Greatest Is Love

Sermon by Rev. H. L. Hoving, B.D., on Lord's Day 2

Scripture reading:  Psalm 119:169-176, Colossians 3:1-17

Psalter Hymnal: 162; 249; 239; 390

Congregation, one thing is for sure: when we confess the Biblical truth summarized in the Lord's Day 2, we are out of tune with today's world.  In a permissive society where everyone is supposed to do his own thing, it is completely unacceptable that some higher authority should give binding commands.  And it is equally unacceptable that good people would have a natural tendency "to hate God and their neighbour".  "I am doing my best; what can God have against me?"  "I am a decent woman; why should I be bothered with church and all that?" and so on.  The natural man does not understand the things of the Spirit.

In L.D.2 the Church is confessing, that is: the Church responds to the Word of God.  The Bible makes it clear that God created all things and appointed man to be in charge of a world that is to the praise of His glory.  And God Himself sets the norms for this praise.  Every creature owes God allegiance.  And the Church confesses: Yes Lord, we must obey your commandments, for You are God, our God, and we are Your people.

But then we also must confess the sad truth that we are not capable of obeying the rules of God.  The Bible tells us so, and experience proves it.

We must confess our sins and misery.  Of course, it would be quite useless to have a sermon about sin and misery, and nothing more.  Then we would repeat the words of Paul in Romans 7: "I am carnal, sold under sin" and the words of answer 5: "I am prone by nature to hate God and my neighbour."  And we could repeat all the thunder and lightning of Mount Sinai where God gave the Ten Commandments to His people.  And we would eventually leave the Church in distress: Woe is me, I am lost, I am a miserable sinner, and God will punish me....!

Surely, this truth of the Word of God has to be proclaimed in the world; and sometimes even in the Church.  But as a CONGREGATION we are believers; and we should indeed know to say: O, my sin, O, my sin!  But also: O, my Saviour!

My sin – O the bliss of this glorious thought –
My sin not in part, but the whole
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more.
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul! 

We surely must know how bad our sins are: without the knowledge of sin through the law of God we will not know our misery and we will not flee to Jesus for salvation.  Yet, the confession of L.D.2 is made by the same Church that first confessed L.D.1: "I belong to my faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ, and no one and nothing can separate me from the love of God in Him!"

Let us study the law of God and consider our obedience and disobedience; let us have a thorough knowledge of sin.  However, not to remain in that state of misery, crying and lamenting.  We must know our sin and misery in order that we cling to Jesus the more.  The more I know my sin, the more I realise my need for forgiveness and reconciliation with God, the more I will learn to love my Saviour, For Jesus did not only die to secure for me the forgiveness of my sin; He also rose again and sent His Holy Spirit in order that I may overcome even my sinful nature.

And when I realize, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, how bad the consequences are of a sinful nature without the Saviour, the more I see how urgently we have to warn our unbelieving neighbours and friends who think that they are decent enough to be acceptable to God.

The first question in L.D.2 is: "Whence do you know your misery?"  This does not mean the same as: how do you know that you are miserable?  That man is miserable is a fact of universal experience.  Read the newspapers; study history: you will find misery everywhere.  What a misery behind the road-toll statistics.  What a misery behind the headlines concerning racial tensions, famines, civil wars, persecution.  Of course we can shrug that off and say: Well, we live in Australia, and we are rather well off, really; enough to eat and to drink, and the future may even be better.  Thank God for what He gives us.  And it surely does not mean that there is no misery for us.  Do you know what misery there is in Church families?  Health problems, tension between husband and wife, conflicts between parents and children, agony because children turn away from Jesus.

The question of the Catechism is: Whence do you know your misery, that is: what norm do you apply to know, to determine your misery?  What is NORMAL?  The answer is: the law of God is the norm.  All that is in harmony with the law of God, the Creator, is normal in His creation.  And all that is contrary to the law of God is abnormal, that is: sin and misery.  Of course, this is the answer of the Church that believes the Word of God.  As members of the Church you and I believe the Word of God and accept God's promises and God's commandments; we accept the message about God's love and about God's wrath.  For cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things written in the book of the law, to do them.

Without faith we would have a different answer to the question.  And that would always be a superficial answer.  We might blame communism for a lot of misery in the world.  Or we might blame capitalism; or the government; or the labour unions.  Without faith we would consider our misery in the light of men and conclude that things are not too bad.  And, like so many people do, we would find comfort in our quite happy circumstances.  And then never cry for true comfort, never long for salvation, never flee to Jesus.

Thank God that He gave us His law to show us what is normal.  To show us how we can live in peace and harmony with our Creator; how we may occupy our place as people created in His image.  And that is by grace alone, through faith alone, by Christ alone.

Then we also know that our misery is that we cannot live in harmony with God; that we cannot occupy our place in His world according to His design; our misery is that we are misfits in God's world.  That is what we learn when we are confronted with the law of the Creator.  Without this law we are blind to our sin and misery.  We are often like the boy who asked his mother to close the curtains because there was so much dust in the room when the sun was shining.  Not so clever, for the dust was there just the same.  Without the revealing light of God's law we are blind to the dust in our hearts.  The law tells us honestly how bad we are, how far removed from the original design of God.  As such the law hits us like a stick, till we are on our knees and cry for mercy, for salvation.  So we learn to thank God for giving His law as the norm, the rule for our lives for now we know that we are abnormal, miserable sinners who miss the mark.  And thank God for Jesus Christ in Whom we may go back to normal, that is, to a new life in new obedience, in harmony with God.

When the second question is: “What does the law of God require of us?” we would expect the answer: "God spoke all these words.... and then the Ten Commandments.  That would be a good answer, of course.

But the Catechism does not give this answer yet.  That will be done in the third chapter, when we ask the question how we, saved sinners, should live as God's children in grateful obedience.  In L.D.2 the Catechism restricts itself to mentioning the summary, the basic contents of all God's commandments, quoting Jesus' words recorded in Matthew 22: You must love God and love your neighbour.

As you know, Jesus said this in answer to a question put by a Pharisee concerning the importance of the various commandments.  The different schools of the Pharisees had developed a system of hundreds of commandments and precepts, with all sorts of distinctions between important and less important ones.  And not all agreed on the question which was the most important of all.  Therefore this Pharisee wanted to know what Jesus thought of it.  In His reply Jesus made it clear that this question was based on a fundamental error.  They did not understand the law.  God's law is not a series of great and small commandments.  You cannot classify them or make a selection.  When you ask for the greatest commandment, then you must take the whole.  And the whole of God's commandments is based on love.  Love is the root, the essence of every precept.  From the record in the New Testament we know that the great mistake of the Pharisees was that they thought they kept the whole law, while they did not know the true love to God, and even less love for their fellowmen whom they called: 'the people that do not know the law'.  As Jesus said: "These people serve Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me." Their obedience was outward; not an obedience which is rendered out of love from the heart.

Now we know ourselves well enough, do we not, to realize that we, too, can be very Pharisaic?  How we need to learn the lesson Jesus taught when summarising all the commandments of God.  Love the Lord your God: - that is the great commandment, underlying all other commandments.  We must love Him Who created the world to the praise of His glory; we must love Him Who revealed His law and His plan of salvation; we must love Him Who is merciful and just, righteous and faithful -  we must love the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Our whole life - heart, soul, mind and strength - must be directed toward God.  Everything we think and say and do must be motivated by the desire to be in harmony with God.  Our will in harmony with His will; our desires in tune with His desires.  That is the great commandment, and that involves the whole man and is all-inclusive.

And the Bible makes it clear that not loving God wholeheartedly means that we hate God.  We cannot compromise, or serve two or three masters.  God is a jealous God Who tolerates no rivals; He does not want to share our love with someone or something else.  That is the great commandment; the root of all commandments and precepts.  And although it looks as if Jesus gives two commandments, in reality there is only one.  For the second is like the first, and the first is like the second.

The commandment of love to our fellowmen is rooted in the commandment of love to God.  The love to our neighbour must be motivated by our love to God.  You cannot love your neighbour unless you love God.  It is one of the tragedies of modern theology that concern for fellowmen is emphasized as true religion, often without the Gospel of the cross.  And, in all honesty, too often in the past the Church has been so much concerned with the relationship between God and man that it overlooked the relationship between man and man.  You cannot have the one without the other.  By the same token, you cannot love yourselves without loving God.  To love oneself without loving God would mean that we would do everything to please ourselves, to follow our own desires.  And that is exactly against all God's commandments.  In fact, that is the basic sin: to follow self and to satisfy our own desires.  But to love yourselves because you love God means that you do your utmost by the grace of God to live in harmony with God.  Because that is life.  So we must also love our neighbour.  Because we love God, we love our neighbour as ourselves, that is: we do our utmost that our neighbour may have the same harmony and peace with God and be a happy child of God like we are.

Love is the root of all God's commandments.  On these two commandments, or on this double commandment, depend the whole law and the prophets.  All the law and the prophets, that is the whole of the Old Testament, so that we can say: the whole Bible depends on this double commandment.  Take love away and you take God's Word away.  If you do not accept this love and live in this love, then everything else in the Bible is without value for you.

Remember 1Corinthians 13: Whatever I may do for the Lord or for my neighbour even if I died as a martyr for Christ's sake and my motive was not love: it is worthless, without value.  Do you believe this?  Then you know how great your misery is.  For what is the truth of our lives apart from Jesus Christ?  Apart from salvation?  And even as Christians we so often fail; we must confess that we often think and say and do things without this great love, and even against this commandment.

When the Catechism then asks: "Can you keep all this perfectly?" then the believer must answer: "In no wise, for I am prone by nature to hate God and my neighbour".  I do not and I cannot keep this perfect law of God.  And that explains all our misery.  For within the scope of God's law we live according to the designs of our Creator, in His favour, receiving His blessings.  Outside the scope of His law we can only meet God's wrath and curse and punishment.  And by nature I am outside the scope of God's law.  A misfit in God's world.  Inclined to do the opposite of what God wants me to do.  By nature, that is, as a descendant of Adam and Eve, as belonging to the human race, apart from the second Adam.  And 'prone' does not mean that I every now and then am inclined to hate; it means that it is our very nature to hate.  Unless God does something about it, that will be our life's pattern.  And the end will be: condemnation.  For to live in disharmony with God means death.

We can, of course, only confess this after the Holy Spirit has opened our eyes to the truth.  After the Holy Spirit has confronted us with the Word of God.  Knowing the salvation of God in Christ, we confess: Father, we have sinned against You; we are not worthy to be Your children.  And then the GOSPEL is the answer of the Father: Yes, My children, you are worthy, for Jesus took your sins away.

Brothers and Sisters, do you know your misery?  Do you seek confrontation with the law of God and confess before God how badly you have sinned against Him?  And do you realise that these sins are the cause of all our misery; in fact, of all the misery in the world, because sin causes separation between God and us, between Creator and creature?  All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  In confrontation with the law of perfect love, we, believers, cannot just say: that is true about unbelievers.  We, too, fall short, again and again.  When we are taught by the Holy Spirit to see ourselves as we are, or, as we would be without the love of God for us in Jesus, our Saviour, then we know how to abhor and humble ourselves because of our sin; then we know the cry: O my sins, O my sins!  O wretched man that I am.

Then we are also prepared to listen to the Gospel again for those who cry to God from the depths of their misery receive an answer from God; the answer of the Gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation.  Indeed, the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  And we learn again to sing: My Saviour, O my Saviour!

Can you keep the law of God perfectly?  In no wise; by nature I hate.  Did Jesus keep the law of God perfectly?  Yes, He did!  And He kept the law for you and for me.  I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

AMEN.