We need to live the truth we speak. We need to love God and our neighbors.
He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
When a legal expert sought to test Jesus, Jesus gave him a chance to show off what he knew. Commending his knowledge, Jesus challenged him to go beyond right answers. “Do this and you will live,” Jesus said. We are right to seek the truth today. But if we’re going to follow Jesus faithfully, then we need to do more than give the right answers. We need to live the truth we speak. We need to love God and our neighbors.
We pick up the story in Luke 10:25. As Jesus was speaking to his disciples, an expert in the Jewish law approached Jesus. Though his physical posture indicated respect (in the time of Jesus, teachers sat, students stood), and though the legal expert addressed Jesus as “Teacher,” Luke informs us that he sought to test Jesus. He was anxious to see if Jesus’s wisdom was consistent with the law.
The legal expert asked, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25). Like a skilled rabbi, Jesus answered with questions for the expert, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” (10:26). Given the man he was asking, it almost seems as if Jesus was giving him a chance to show off his legal knowledge. The expert answered: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (10:27). This impressed Jesus, who said, “You have given the right answer” (10:28).
Now, if I had been in the legal expert’s sandals, that would have made my day. I would have been so pleased about giving the right answer that I would have forgotten for a moment my plan to test Jesus. I’ll be honest with you. I have loved giving right answers ever since I was a young boy. And, truth be told, I still like giving the right answers. I confess that a good bit of my identity is based on “right answer giving.”
Right answers matter in my book. Discovering and telling the truth matters. Good theology matters. I really believe this. (Yes, I believe I’m giving the right answer here!) The problem is that, from the perspective of Jesus, the right answers aren’t enough. Jesus did not say to the expert in the law, “You have given the right answer. Good for you! Way to go! High five!” Rather, Jesus said, “You have given the right answer; do this and you will live” (Luke 10:28).
Jesus calls us to more than giving the right answers. As important as it is to discern and state the truth, it’s not enough. We need to go beyond right answers to right living. We need to do what our right answers commend. Christian faith isn’t only a matter of believing. It’s also a matter of living.
As we’ll see on Monday, the expert in the law wasn’t happy with Jesus’s response. He tried to worm his way out of the implications of what Jesus told him to do by, of course, asking another question. But, before we get to the expert’s question, I want to ask some questions of my own. Are you going beyond the right answers? No matter how good your theology might be, are you seeking to live it out each day? Are you doing what you profess? Are you so focused on what it means to love your neighbor as yourself that you don’t actually love your neighbor as yourself?
Are you ever tempted to care so much about being right that you neglect acting rightly?
Pray: Getting things right matters. Right theology matters. Right ethics matters. But if I am believing and saying those right things while failing to live in a loving way, then I am not following you rightly, Lord. Help me, I pray, to care about what’s true, to speak the truth as I am able. But help me to live the truth, to love you with all that I am, and to love my neighbor as myself. Amen.
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