When Augustine was sixteen years old, he and several friends came upon a pear tree. The tree did not belong to them, but its branches hung heavy with fruit. Late at night, the young men shook the tree and stole as many pears as they could carry.

They were not hungry. The pears were not especially beautiful or delicious. In fact, Augustine later admitted that they threw most of them to the pigs. They did not want the pears. They wanted the pleasure of taking them.

Years later, Augustine—now a bishop—could not stop thinking about that night. Why would someone steal something they did not even want? Why would anyone love the act of wrongdoing more than the thing being stolen?

In his scholarly commentary on Augustine’s Confessions, James O’Donnell observes that the pear tree deliberately echoes the forbidden tree in Genesis. Yet O’Donnell also points to Augustine’s companionship with the other boys. Alone, Augustine might not have stolen the pears. Together, their friendship became twisted into a fellowship of rebellion.

The problem was not that Augustine had no love. He loved excitement. He loved companionship. He loved freedom. But his loves were out of order. He loved good things in the wrong way because he did not love the highest good above them all.

That brings us to the one main point of this passage:

Our loves are rightly ordered only when Jesus Christ is known and obeyed as Lord.

The Pharisees approach Jesus with a question: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

This question is another test. They want to force Jesus to choose one commandment at the expense of the others. Whatever answer he gives might become grounds for an accusation.

But Jesus does not choose an obscure commandment. He goes to the heart of Israel’s covenant life:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

Then he adds:

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus declares that the whole law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. Every commandment concerning worship, justice, truthfulness, mercy, marriage, possessions, and human life hangs upon rightly ordered love.

God does not merely demand a place somewhere among our many interests. We are to love God with the whole self—with heart, soul, and mind. God is not an accessory added to an otherwise complete life. God is the Creator, covenant Lord, and gracious source of every good gift. To love God is to recognize that our lives belong entirely to him.

Love of neighbor follows from that first love. We cannot sincerely love the God who created our neighbor while despising the neighbor God created. Love for God that produces no mercy, patience, justice, or generosity is hollow. At the same time, love for neighbor cannot be sustained merely by sentiment. It must be rooted in the God whose steadfast love does not fail.

Nicholas Schaser (Professor of Religious Studies) notes that Jesus’ answer stands firmly within Israel’s Scriptures and Jewish tradition. Jesus joins Deuteronomy and Leviticus’s command into one central theology. He is not abolishing the law. He is revealing its living center. 

Yet if we hear only the command to love, we may leave this passage burdened rather than renewed.

Who among us has loved God with all the heart, soul, and mind?

Our hearts are divided. Our minds wander. Our souls cling to lesser things. Like Augustine beneath the pear tree, we may love approval, security, pleasure, influence, or companionship more than the God who gives these things their proper meaning. That’s tough to fathom! 

Even our love for other people can be selective. We love those who agree with us, appreciate us, or make us feel needed. We find it somewhat harder to love the demanding neighbor, the disappointing relative, the difficult church member, or the stranger whose needs interrupt our carefully arranged lives.

This combined command exposes us. It exposed those asking the question to Jesus. It shows that sin is not merely the breaking of an external rule. Sin reaches into the bearing of the human heart. We were created to love God above all and to receive our neighbor as someone entrusted to our care. Instead, we turn inward. We attempt to make the “self” sovereign.

If Jesus’ teaching ended in verse 40, we would know what righteousness requires, but we would still be left asking where such righteousness can be found.

Then Jesus asks his own question: “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?”

The Pharisees answer, “The son of David.”^[1]

Their answer is correct, but incomplete.

Jesus quotes Psalm 110: “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.’” Then Jesus asks, “If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?”

Jesus is not denying that the Messiah is David’s descendant. Matthew’s Gospel has already introduced Jesus as the “son of David.” Jesus is pressing them to see that the Messiah is more than a human successor to Israel’s throne. The Messiah is David’s son, yet David calls him Lord.

The one who commands our love—is the Lord 
who has come to rescue people—whose loves are disordered.

This is why these two conversations belong together. Jesus does not merely give us a summary of religious duty and then change the subject. He moves from the greatest commandment to the identity of the great King. Love cannot be separated from lordship. We will never understand the command to love until we recognize the Lord who speaks it.

Jesus Christ is not simply a teacher offering helpful principles for a better life. He is David’s Lord. He possesses rightful authority over every heart, every soul, every mind, and every human relationship.

Oh, but consider how he exercises that authority!

Jesus does not stand at a safe distance and command broken people to repair themselves. He has already entered the human condition. He bears the judgment deserved by our rebellion. He fulfills the obedience we have withheld and carries our sin to the cross. That beautiful cross… 

“There was One who was willing to die in my stead
That a soul so unworthy might live
And the path to the cross He was willing to tread
All the sins of my life to forgive. (Hymns of Faith 236)

At Calvary, the Lord of David wears a crown of thorns. The King is mocked as a criminal. The beloved Son gives himself for enemies who have not loved God with the whole heart or their neighbors as themselves.

The gospel is not that we loved God enough to reach him. The gospel is that God, through Jesus loves us enough. Grace does not excuse our disordered loves; grace forgives and transforms them. 

Christian obedience, therefore, is not an attempt to purchase God’s favor. Christ has already secured our reconciliation through his life, death, and resurrection. Our love is the grateful fruit of grace. The fruit of the Gospel is this; Because we belong to Christ, we may begin to love God without bargaining and love our neighbors without using them.

This changes the questions we ask.

Instead of asking, “How little can I give and still appear generous?” we ask, “How has Christ entrusted his gifts to me?”

Instead of asking, “Which people am I required to tolerate?” we ask, “Whom has Christ placed before me to receive mercy?”

Instead of asking, “How can I protect my importance?” we ask, “How may my life bear witness to the reign of Jesus?”

The command remains demanding, but we no longer face it alone. The Lord who commands love is also the Savior who creates love within his people.

Augustine eventually came to understand that the human heart cannot cure its own restlessness. It must be gathered up into the love of God. The young man who once stood laughing beneath a stolen pear tree was not finally changed by receiving better pears. He was changed when divine grace redirected his life toward the One in whom every good gift finds its proper place.

Our lives also resemble the story about Augustine and that tree at times. We reach for things we do not truly need. We cling to pleasures that cannot satisfy. We seek freedom apart from the God who made us, only to discover that life without our Lord is another form of bondage.

But Jesus still stands before us—not merely as David’s distant descendant, not merely as an admired moral teacher, but as David’s Lord and ours.

He calls the heart back to its Creator. He gathers the wandering soul. He renews the mind. He sends us toward our neighbors with mercy, generosity, and service rather than a warped since of self-importance.

Our loves are rightly ordered only when Jesus Christ is known and obeyed as Lord.

So take a moment to reflect upon the ministry of Jesus: the hands that touched lepers, the voice that welcomed children, the compassion that fed the hungry, and the mercy that prayed for enemies from the cross. In every moment, Jesus loved the Father completely and loved his neighbors faithfully. As we follow him, may our own scattered loves be gathered into his, until the life of David’s Lord becomes visible in the love of his people. AMEN.

Works Cited

Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Albert C. Outler. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. https://ccel.org/a/augustine/confessions/confessions.html.

O’Donnell, James J. Augustine: Confessions. Vol. 2, Commentary on Books 1–7. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/conf/comm2.html.

Schaser, Nicholas J. “Commentary on Matthew 22:34–46.” Working Preacher, October 29, 2023. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-30/commentary-on-matthew-2234-46-6.

Zondervan. NRSVue, Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2022. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2022&version=NRSVUE

Breck, Carrie E. 1899. “Nailed to the Cross” Composer, Tullar, Grant C. Hymns of Faith 236. Tabernacle Publishing Company, Carol Stream, Ill. 1980. https://hymnary.org/hymn/HHOF1980/236

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^[1] They answered “the son of David” because Jewish Scripture promised that the Messiah would come from David’s royal line (2 Samuel 7:12–16; Isaiah 11:1). “Son of David” was therefore a messianic title, not merely a statement about Jesus’ immediate parentage. Jesus thusly cites Psalm 110 to show that the Messiah is both David’s descendant and David’s Lord: greater than David and possessing divine authority.

In the biblical world, tribal and royal descent was ordinarily traced through the father’s line, so Davidic legitimacy was principally a paternal/legal question:

• Matthew 1 traces Jesus’ legal Davidic ancestry through Joseph and Solomon.
• Luke 3 also presents a genealogy through Joseph but follows a different Davidic branch, through Nathan. Some Christians interpret this as Mary’s ancestry, although Luke does not explicitly say so.