Princeton Presbyterian Church (EPC) Sermon # 1704
October 19, 2025
Mark 12.28-34 Click here for audio worship.
Dr. Ed Pettus
(This is an extended outline, not a verbatim transcript.)
“A Foundation of Love”
And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.
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At the Core
Today we consider what we call the greatest commandment. It is considered one of the core characteristics of the Christian life – love. It is at the core of the Christian life because it is at the core of who God is and what God does and has done. John tells us that God is love (1 John 4.8). It is John’s gospel where Jesus speaks to the love of God expressed in sending Jesus for our sake (John 3.16). When we look to the Old Testament, I would challenge you to count the number of times God’s steadfast love is proclaimed throughout. Love is at the core of our lives because Jesus is at the center of our lives. I would even phrase that more poignantly that Jesus is our life! He is our life according to texts like Colossians 3.1-4,
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Because love is a vital consideration for our life in Christ, it behooves us to know what love is and to know what love is not. The world has a very different understanding or, better said, misunderstanding of love. The church, in some quarters, has fallen into the world’s misunderstanding of love and accepted it as the love of Scripture. This has led to more divisions within denominations, most recently in the United Methodist and also in the Anglican Church. As you know we are a part of the EPC because of the distortion of love within our previous denomination and we seeking to protect the EPC from the same tolerance of non-biblical perceptions of God’s love and biblical definitions of love.
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What Love Is Not
First we consider what love is not. And I just want to list quickly some of the things that have infiltrated parts of the church universal to its corruption and idolatry. Tolerance is a high form of what love is not. Some seek to define love as acceptance and tolerance of all kinds of sexual immorality and many other behaviors that the Bible particularly calls sin and highest on those lists of sins are those that are unnatural, sins that distort the created order of things as God created them to be and thus deny God as Creator. Romans 1.21-22 reflects one of the ways seemingly believing people have completely distorted God’s definition of love. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools…” I find it troubling to think in any other terms than these when Christians tolerate sexual immorality and transgenderism as if they were a part of God’s creation. Love is not tolerance of all things. No one expressing their love to the loved one gets a romantic greeting card that proclaims, “I really tolerate you!”
Second, love is not just a feeling. Warmth and excitement and tingles can certainly be a part of the experience of love, but love is so much more than those feelings. Feelings can change, but love does not change in the same way feelings can. Yes, feelings can remain and may never diminish and may even increase, but love is always more than the feelings. For love is commitment, dedication, promise, covenant, and more.
Third, love is not just being nice. Yes, nice can be an aspect of love, but love does not always appear in niceness. In fact, being nice will more often excuse a sin rather than expose it. As one preacher has lamented, the 11th commandment is not thou shalt be nice. This is not to say we become mean, but it does point out that love is sometimes tough and requires discipline, lessons learned, and corrections made. We are called in to be gentle, but I would suggest we pay close attention to the various ways Jesus confronted people with their sin. He did not always come across as nice, but He revealed truth and showed grace. That was His way, as John points out in John 1, Jesus was full of grace and truth. This, I believe, is another way we show love as defined in Scripture.
There are many more things in this broken world that are wrongly defining love. When we know what love is from a biblical perspective, we are helped to notice all the places and ways the world gets it wrong.
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What Love Is
Seeking to define love is a monumental task. We sometimes know love by what we know it is not as well as what we experience in life. And we can search the Scriptures to help us know love. We have the most popular wedding text of 1 Cor 13.4-8, Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
We do not have the time today to expound on all that is here in these few verses, but suffice to say that love is persistent, sacrificial, and hopeful.
We can also look to Romans 12.9-13, Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
I lift this passage because of the one line to “abhor what is evil”. Love does not tolerate evil, does not excuse immorality and idolatry, but hates it! Love proclaims the truth in order to oppose the lies of the devil and the world.
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A Foundation of Love
Jesus gives us this foundational command in the gospels, what we call the Great Commandment to love God and love neighbor. Jesus had been responding to several questions as if He was on a discussion panel. The Pharisees asked him to respond to a question about paying taxes to Caesar, the Sadducees asked about resurrection, and a scribe asked Jesus about the greatest commandment. The Pharisees were religious leaders who held a strict adherence to the Torah. Sadducees were another group of religious leaders who often saw things differently than the Pharisees. The scribes had the task of copying the Scriptures, preserving the Scriptures, teaching the Scriptures, and they also served as lawyers writing legal documents and interpreting the Law of God in legal issues. They all had questions for Jesus on this particular day.
Jesus responds to the question of the scribe who asked, “what is the greatest commandment?” Jesus does not borrow from the Ten Commandments. He goes to Deuteronomy 6:4 and Leviticus 19:18, of all places. When was the last time we searched through Leviticus for anything? I think that one of the reasons Jesus’ answer stopped them from asking any more questions is because His answer covered the Ten Commandments and everything else. The Ten Commandments are structured toward how we are to love God and how we are to love neighbor. That is why Matthew adds, in his gospel, he adds that Jesus said, “all the law and the prophets hang on these two commands.” This is the most important commandment because everything that God requires is summed up here. Love, and the totality of love, is the central issue for God.
Love is a foundation, if not the foundation, of the Christian life. Jesus gives two commandments in His response but both commands revolve around the verb “love.” Jesus gives us the imperatives, love God and love neighbor. We are to first love God. Jesus speaks most about love for God here. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That is, love God with every fiber of our being. Give our self wholly to God. When Jesus, in John’s gospel, says there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend, it is as if He were commenting on this command. Laying down our lives is complete and total love. It need not be dying for someone, although it could be, but it is this giving over of our selves, making time for, paying attention to, and becoming vulnerable to another. We love God by laying down our life for God, that is, giving all our devotion, our personality, our intellect, and our energy.
Secondly, we are to love our neighbor. This same love for God spills over into loving neighbor. Jesus says we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We make time for others, show interest, even putting their interests ahead of our own. We look out for their health and well being, offering whatever resources we may have for the good of others just as we would for ourselves.
I want to offer one particular aspect of love that I think we often overlook. That is love is a part of our mental capacity, to love God with all our mind is a part of the command and it is also how Jesus loves us. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus has the wisdom and the biblical knowledge to address every question posed to Him. The apostle Paul addresses Jesus’ brilliance when he writes in Colossians 2:1-3 For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Notice in this text the phrase “knit together in love”. The love that is being knit together is to reach “the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. To love is to know Jesus Christ in whom is wisdom and knowledge, that connects us to loving God with all our mind.
The story told in Mark 12 ends with silence. No one dared to ask Him any more questions. The truth will set you free, but here the truth will shut them up! Jesus took His brilliance to the religious leaders of the day and left them speechless. It reminds me of 1 Peter 2:15 “For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.” Jesus “put to silence the ignorance of foolish people” by proclaiming the brilliance of truth and the brilliance of wisdom and knowledge. In this way He showed love’s true character, not in accepting their misunderstandings, but in setting forth the truth without excuse, without apology.
This is why we study Jesus and His Word and His life and wisdom. He leads us in all things of life and especially the things that matter most. This is why we are called on to know Jesus as our Lord. He knows all the answers, all truth, all the things we need to know. We begin to see that our most important command is to love God with all we are and to love our neighbor. We also gain great ability to discern truth from falsehood, to immediately see the difference between the way of God and the way of the world. We see the way of genuine love and the way of counterfeit love.
By the power of the Holy Spirit we can respond to the skeptics and inquirers and those even out to trap us. Paul says that we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). We have access to the same wisdom and knowledge as Jesus. That’s an amazing thought. That is an amazing love. We must rely on God’s Spirit to lead us and give us the wisdom, patience, knowledge, gentleness, and grace to respond to the world in ways that will either lead them to Christ or bring them to silence. May God lead us in the way of Jesus Christ, in the way of His steadfast love. Amen.
