Today’s Scripture Readings

Gospel Reading

NRSV

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

Jesus is being tested again by the religious leaders in today’s Gospel reading. His response is to take the well-known command from the Hebrew Shema (Deuteronomy 6:5) and pair it with Leviticus 19:18b. The entirety of the law and the prophets “hang” on these two commands.

This is familiar to most of us, but something I was taught years ago by a mentor is to consider what Jesus says here in Matthew alongside John 13:34: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” John agrees with Matthew, but with an important emphasis. John shows us that our ability to love originates in God’s love for us.

In the first Johannine letter, we read these words: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God…” (1 John 3:1) God’s love can be recognised in his graciousness toward us, in redeeming us and in doing so “while we were enemies”, according to St Paul. In other words, we are able to love because we were loved first. This love wasn’t conditional on our performance; it was a gift.

It is in knowing and experiencing this gratuitous love that we are able to love in response: to love God, love ourselves, and love our neighbour. As St Paul says, “for the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all.” (2 Corinthians 5:14).

How do you experience God’s love as pure gift?