A sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, by Fr. Josh Leigeber.
In this past Sunday’s Gospel, a lawyer asks Jesus which commandment in the Law is the greatest. Our Lord answers that the first and great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Yet to begin with this question is already to have things backwards—to ask the second question first.
For, as Jesus indicates, apart from reconciliation with God, we cannot love Him or keep His commandments at all. Sin has turned mankind inward and separated us from the very source of love. Therefore, before we can love God or neighbor rightly, we must first be restored to God through Christ, who is Himself the love of God made flesh—the self-giving of the Father for our salvation.
Only in Christ, who fulfills the Law perfectly and gives Himself for us on the cross, is love rightly ordered and made possible again. Having received His love, we are restored as God’s children and enabled to love Him and one another in return.
“Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called the children of God.”
Listen to the entire sermon below.
All Saints Lutheran Church and School 