Have respect, O Lord, unto the covenant:
And forget not the congregation of Thy poor forever.
Arise, O God, plead Thine own cause:
Forget not the voice of Thine enemies.
O God, why hast Thou cast us off forever?
Why doth Thine anger smoke against the sheep of Thy pasture?
—Psalm 74:20a, 19b, 22a, 23a, 1
A writing for the Holy Gospel, Luke 10:23–37:
“Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” [Jesus] said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And [Jesus] said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
Luke 10:27-28
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” the lawyer asked. Perhaps he asked smugly, or perhaps he was genuinely curious. “Have you read the Law?” Jesus asks in response. To some, this might be a puzzling response. A man asks what he must do to earn eternal life, and Jesus responds with the Law. Certainly, this is a bewildering response, but what Jesus asks is important. “What does [the Law] say?”
The lawyer responds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” Jesus says to the lawyer, “Do this, and you will live.” How can this be? Has Jesus instructed the lawyer to earn eternal life? Surely the Savior, whose blood would soon be poured out and whose body would soon be broken in our place on the cross, would know that this cannot be! The Godman whose love would drive Him to free us from the curse of the Law still prescribes the Law.
What must one do to inherit eternal life? Jesus immediately invokes the Law. “Have you read the Law? What does it say to do?” And yet even in this Law, love is prescribed. “Love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” The Law is God’s righteousness, and love is God’s command. We are to love God, as well as our neighbors. This is the Law.
And while that is the Law, we cannot do it. Simple as it sounds, we cannot love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. From conception, we are naturally inclined to despise God and His Law and desire sin and evil. We are inherently predisposed to hate the Law and act against it.
As a result, eternal life cannot be earned. Our works can earn nothing but the fervor of the devil, whose ravenous tricks and treachery doomed Adam and Eve to fall and likewise condemn us to the same natural fate. God’s natural design in us is lost, and we have become by nature His enemies—until Christ our Lord reconciled us to the Father and won salvation in our place by taking upon Himself the cross. God’s image is thus restored, and the Gospel frees all from the bondage of sin who come to Him in faith.
Hence, Jesus’ response to the lawyer’s question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” is not based on the Law, but on the Gospel. “Love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” This Gospel is God’s righteousness, and love is God’s gift to us in faith. This is not merely His love for us, but our ability to love Him and our neighbors. We are to love God, as well as our neighbors. This is the Gospel—and it is given through faith.
Jesus’ response to the lawyer by no means instructs him to earn his salvation. Our Lord has not commanded works-righteousness; He knows that we cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Him or come to Him. If the Law were our only portion, we would surely perish.
To love God and our neighbor is not only a Law-based command. It is certainly commanded by God, and it is inscribed on every human heart as an intrinsic virtue to which we all must aspire. Yet above all, this is a Gospel-based exhortation, for we know that without His strength we cannot love God and our neighbor. All that we do is in vain when the Gospel is not present. For only through faith can we love and serve God and honor our neighbors—and it is through the Gospel alone that we inherit eternal life, only on account of Christ and His suffering.
The lawyer is not finished. He desired to justify himself, presumably out of guilt because he recognized that he could not fulfill this Law. “And who is my neighbor?” he asks. Jesus responds with the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan, who stopped along his journey to help an injured man who had been robbed, beaten, and stripped. Only the Samaritan was willing to show mercy to this man, which demonstrated that he was the man’s neighbor.
In many civilized cultures today, our neighbors are only those who live within a certain radius. We often fail to think of our brothers and sisters in the faith, the Church, as our neighbors. We often fail to see the injured, destitute, and brokenhearted as our neighbors. We often fail to show mercy to our neighbors, following in the steps of the One who showed His mercy to us through the cross. As He has been merciful to us, so must we be merciful to others.
Jesus preaches the Law and the Gospel. The Law reveals our sin, and the Gospel reveals our Savior. We find our hope and comfort in the Gospel, and we find our instruction and works through faith in the Law. Neither are mutually exclusive; both are necessary, for both are God’s will. The balance of faith is this: we preach Christ crucified for us, and we are sanctified in the Spirit as doers of the Law to His glory.
We cannot earn salvation. Jesus clearly taught this—and it is our duty to teach it also. For though we cannot love God and our neighbors by any means of our own, we are loved dearly by Love Himself, our Father in heaven, who sent His Son to die in our place and take upon Himself our iniquities. Only through Him are we given the faith that makes us bold to love God and our neighbors, and through which we inherit eternal life. All we do is because of and for the sake of the Gospel; all we do, we do in Christ alone.
Luther on Luke 10:23–37:
Now I think you understand what it is to love God with all the heart, with all the soul and with all the mind. To love God with all the heart is to love him above all creatures; that is, although many creatures are quite lovely, as they please me and I love them, nevertheless, I am to despise and forsake all these for God’s sake, whenever God my Lord desires it.
To love God with all the soul is to devote your entire bodily life to him that you can say when the love of any creature, or any persecution threatens to overpower you: All this I will give up, before I will forsake my God; let men cast me away, murder or drown me, let what God’s will is happen to me, I will gladly lose all, before I will forsake thee, 0 Lord! unto thee will I cling more than to all thy creatures, or to anything that is not thyself. I will risk all things together with what I have and am that I may not forsake thee. The soul in the Scriptures signifies the life of the body, which acts through the five senses, eating, drinking sleeping, waking, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and everything that the soul does through the body.
To love God with all our strength is to devote all our members and whatever we may be able to do through our bodies to the love of God, and sacrifice all rather than do anything contrary to his will.
To love God with all the mind is to take to nothing except that which is pleasing to God. By which is meant the self-conceit which man has that the same be directed to God and that all things be pleasing to him.
—Martin Luther, Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, Luke 10:23-37, taken from Church Postils
Hymn of the Day for Trinity 13 (TLH 349)*:
1. Jesus, Thy boundless love to me
No thought can reach, no tongue declare;
Unite my thankful heart to Thee
And reign without a rival there.
To Thee alone, dear Lord, I live;
Myself to Thee, dear Lord, I give.
2. Oh, grant that nothing in my soul
May dwell but Thy pure love alone!
Oh, may Thy love possess me whole,
My Joy, my Treasure, and my Crown!
All coldness from my heart remove;
My every act, word, thought, be love.
3. O Love, how cheering is Thy ray!
All pain before Thy presence flies;
Care, anguish, sorrow, melt away
Where'er Thy healing beams arise.
O Jesus, nothing may I see,
Nothing desire or seek, but Thee!
4. This love unwearied I pursue
And dauntlessly to Thee aspire.
Oh, may Thy love my hope renew,
Burn in my soul like heavenly fire!
And day and night be all my care
To guard this sacred treasure there.
5. Oh, draw me, Savior, e'er to Thee;
So shall I run and never tire.
With gracious words still comfort me;
Be Thou my Hope, my sole Desire.
Free me from every guilt and fear;
No sin can harm if Thou art near.
6. Still let Thy love point out my way;
What wondrous things Thy love hath wrought!
Still lead me lest I go astray;
Direct my work, inspire my thought;
And if I fall, soon may I hear
Thy voice and know that love is near!
7. In suffering be Thy love my peace,
In weakness be Thy love my power;
And when the storms of life shall cease,
O Jesus, in that final hour,
Be Thou my Rod and Staff and Guide
And draw me safely to Thy side!
*This hymn appears in LSB (#683) with only four of its original seven verses.
Collect of the Day for Trinity 13:
Almighty and everlasting God: give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity; and that we may obtain that which Thou dost promise, make us to love that which Thou dost command; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.