Every Hebrew child learns one key passage of God’s Word. For one stands out above the rest of the Old Testament’s canon.
Certainly, Hebrew children will hear and study the Law of Moses in a larger, more formal, setting at synagogue. A Hebrew child will also have a deep connection with the 10 Commandments. But above the Law of Moses, above the 10 Commandments recorded in Exodus 20, stands the Shama.
Deuteronomy 6:4-ff. “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one. You shall love the Lord God with all your heart and with all your soul and will all your might.”[1]
This is the single most important, foundational, passage of God’s Word for the Hebrews. And again, it is a passage that they will all learn and consider for as long as they are alive.
These are the same words that the Pharisees will literally carry on their bodies; on their clothes. The words are so important to the Hebrew people that no one cross-stiches them on pillows or blankets to be used casually in their homes—as we might today. No, they are carved into the walls of their homes in a sacred, central, place. “Hear O Israel… Love God fully and completely.”
Now fast forward around 14 or 1500 years to the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry. The Jewish people are still working on, still considering, what the Shama means for them. They are still wearing the Shama around and they are still teaching it to their children.
But there are times when the amazement of God’s Word loses its power—somewhat. It is still true, it is still transformational, but the rote-ness of it, the way it is repeated, can cause God’s Word to dimmish in the minds of the people.
And by the time of Matthew 22, nearly 1500 years since Moses first spoke the words at God’s call, the potency of this command, this verse, has weakened.
Historically in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has entered the Holy City for the final time, and the social pressure is rising around him. His miracles are attracting more attention; the messianic secret can no longer be kept. The larger crowds are more demanding. The desperation of the Pharisees to hold onto their self-appointed religious power is building and boiling in their hearts. Our text confirms that after this exchange they [the Pharisees and Sadducees] did not “dare to ask him anymore questions.”[2]
So, I wonder what happened in this passage that stopped the questioning? What did Jesus say that was so profound?
Move 1- love
To get at the question more personally, let’s first think about what it means to ‘love’ as Jesus spoke about in this text—a text that echoes first that sacred passage of Deuteronomy 6, the Shama.
How do we love God? What does that look like?
Now the first answer that we often find to this question seems to bleed into comments and practices that define love practically. If I asked you the question of how you love God, you might reply that we love God by studying his word. We show that we love God by praying more, by obeying him, and teaching others to do the same. And while all of that is central to our faith and our relationship with God, the answer to how we love God is more than practical steps.
“Thomas Aquinas, the great theologian of the 13th century, defined love as velle bonum alicui [vella bonum aly cue] —to will the good of the other. Not to feel warmly toward the other. Not to tolerate the other. To actively, structurally, sacrificially orient your will toward the flourishing of another person. [Aquinas’] definition cuts through every sentimental misreading of the commandment [in the Shama first, and here by Jesus in Matthew 22]. For love is not a feeling that comes and goes. [it is not something to practice when we feel up to it]. Love is a choice, made again and again, in the direction of someone else’s good.
But Aquinas understood something else as well. The will cannot orient itself toward the other if the self is still crowding the center. You cannot will the good of someone you have quietly decided is beneath you. You cannot love. . . without first making interior room for the other person to matter as much as you do. That internal making-room has a name. It is called humility.”[3]
We love the Lord first, by humbly making room in all of who we are for Him. We love the Lord by creating space in our day, our lives, for the Lord to dwell as God wishes and not on the terms that I wish. This form of love is not accomplished by praying more or reading God’s Word more consistently. Instead, we make space in our hearts by the way we liver every single moment—space for God to dwell because we see that humility is our call. For like any relationship, our time with God needs a little extra space for it to just occupy and not to ‘do’ anything extraordinary.
Move 2- for others
But there is a second part to Jesus’ response which Aquinas spoke about already. Every faithful Hebrew would recall the Shama. They would understand their role in loving God, but Jesus takes this a step further by bringing our relationship with others into the conversation.
You can make space for God, and we call that love, but you cannot fully live into who God calls you to be, if you do not bring your neighbor into that posture and choice.
By stating in verse 39 that ‘the second [of the great commands] is like’ the first, Jesus does something interesting textually. He does not collapse the two commandments into one—as if loving God equals loving your neighbor. We need to honor this distinction as we think about this passage and hold the two commands up in their own separate places as Jesus taught.
First, we need to make room for God in our lives, but second, and this is the second step that is also more challenging for many of us, we must make room in ourselves, create a second room if you like, for our neighbors. They are not God and so they need their own space in and with us.
In our practice of humility, we must almost allow ourselves to only occupy 1/3 of our lives and attention… God taking His primary a third and our neighbors taking a second third.
This ‘making room’ extends into how we encounter other people. For if it was a bit challenging to think that we do not have room in our hearts for God, it is easier to state that we do not have room in our hearts for other people who do not treat us as we would like and who do not live as we live.
We love God by making room in our lives for God and, we love God by making space for our neighbors. We live humbly first. We make room in our lives and hearts for others to dwell. This means less self-oriented living and looking and living broadly. Letting other, god included, have the space they need in us.
Move 3- the leftovers
This would be enough; it is challenging enough. Our text today could stop at verse 40 which does feel like a natural transition point, but Jesus presses on into an area that feels out of place.
For again loving God and loving our neighbor is not an academic exercise that we can solve. Loving God and loving our neighbors as Jesus taught it does not involve a checklist of behaviors and choices—while there are certainly choices that are made in the relationship. Loving God and loving our neighbors requires a reorientation of how we build our days, how we honor our calling, and even, as our text ends, how we engage ideas and concepts that seems too complex for us.
We think differently about these things for the are not what we are accustomed to considering because that community around us does not think of them as we do.
The text ends with the Pharisees gathered in a huddle of sorts trying to make sense of what Jesus just taught. And in the midst of their struggle to understand how to be humble and love God and their neighbors as Jesus is teaching, he asks them a question.
“Whose son is the messiah…” David or God’s??
We know that they cannot answer the question in verse 45, “if David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And I doubt that we could answer that question with all of God’s Word before us, but I do not think that we are meant to. I also do not think that the Pharisees were meant to answer it either. Instead, that idea of humility in love that I have been thinking with you about… perhaps that is how we are proceed.
For even mighty King David became less; he made room in his life and story for God to dwell (unlike Saul who did not). The giant killer became less. The one who danced before the Ark of the Covenant became less. And in his becoming less before God, David practices humility when he could demand superiority. David shows the love of God and the love of a neighbor that Jesus speaks about just a few verses ago, by not having to stand before everyone and proclaim his greatness but by making room for others… and we have a name for that choice: love.
And I wonder if that is a final lesson for us in this passage?
We do not just make room for God when we think God is watching, and we do not make room for our neighbors when we feel we are being called to. But by practicing humility in every moment of our lives, we become less and in that moment our love, as Matthew 22 speaks about it, is displayed.
Conclusion
Again, this type of love is not something that we are called show or share when it feels good, but instead we are called to consistently practice this type of humility. And in doing so we show our hearts to God and to the members of our community.
DM
[1] Deuteronomy 6:4-5 ESV.
[2] Matthew 22:46b. ESV.
[3] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-30/commentary-on-matthew-2234-46-7. Accessed on October 21, 2026.
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