What God has Joined Together
Matthew 22:34-46
October 19, 2025 anno Domini – Redeemer
In Matthew chapter 19 the Pharisees tested Jesus by asking him, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” Jesus answers with a hard “no” when He says, “What God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Jesus’ Words don’t just apply to marriage, the greatest of His created gifts, but to all that God gives us. “What God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Jesus said “baptize and teach” so don’t expect your children to remain in the faith if the Word of God isn’t in your home and life. If Church is the only place they hear God’s Word you’ve separated what God has joined together – baptism and teaching. God’s Word says, “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.” You cannot treat forgiveness as permission to sin. Faith in Jesus and fighting against your sin are joined together.
The Pharisees have the same problem you have — they were separating what God had joined together. The Pharisees had ears, but they didn’t hear what Jesus said in chapter 19, because they come back in chapter 22 with another question . One Pharisee, an expert in the law, asked Jesus a simple question. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
Jesus answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” That is the answer the lawyer expected. “Love God” sounds like an easy commandment to keep. You could say, “I love God when I’m in the woods, on the lake, at the cabin, enjoying my children.” “Love” has many different definitions I love hunting and I love my wife, but those two loves better be as different as the east is from the west. And what do you mean by God? Is He just the big guy upstairs? Sort of like a Divine plumber – you just call on him when your life is full of – well when you’ve got a stinking mess on your hands.
Jesus’ answer does not allow for a fickle love and a feeble god. His Words are concrete and with them He hits the Pharisees with the rock-hard truth. They wanted the one great commandment but Jesus gives them two because they had separated what God had joined together, “And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
“Love” according to God is not an abstract notion. His love has flesh and blood attached to it. In love He sent His Son, born of a woman. Jesus of Nazareth is God in the flesh and He is the concrete definition of God’s love for you. You are a sinner and Christ died for sinners. You’re in need of forgiveness and Jesus bought it for you at the cost of His body and blood. You needed a Savior from death so He died death for you. You needed Someone to stand up to the Devil and Jesus went toe to toe, never sinning, never following the Devil’s lies, never giving in to the temptations of self service.
This is love – that God sent His only Son into human flesh to save your flesh from sin, death, and hell. Every crucifix you see is an icon of God’s love – His Son in the flesh and blood dying for your flesh and blood. Jesus will revisit this rock-hard truth in the second half of the text, but for now He continues to hit the Pharisees with what they also had separated from God’s love – the flesh and blood of their neighbor.
Since God loved the world, loved you in that specific way, you cannot separate His love for you from your love for your neighbor. God did not love you because you were lovely. He didn’t love you because you gave Him so much pleasure He had to be with you. He loved you because He loved you – His nature is love. So when you receive that love, when you believe that God loved Bruce or Bob or Beatrice in this way, then God’s love has its way with you and you love your neighbor.
Loving your neighbor means desiring for them what God desires for them. So, a father loves his daughter when he says she should dress modestly and tells her that sex outside of marriage is sinful and she should marry a man who shares her faith and wants to go to church. Your daughter will not like you for loving her in that flesh and blood way. The world will hate you for loving like that because you have defined love according to God’s Word. The world’s love does not have flesh and blood in mind – it only has feelings, that is why the world loves abortion, transgenderism, and homosexuality – all of those destroy flesh and blood for feelings.
Sometimes love doesn’t look like love, because love isn’t nice. Love is tough and love is true because love is defined by God.
The text continues with Jesus revisiting the flesh and blood love with which God loved the Pharisees. Here’s how Matthew sets it up. Jesus had just silenced the Sadducees. The Sadducees were liberal Lutherans – they didn’t believe in miracles, the resurrection of the dead, or the truth of God’s Word. They asked Jesus a question about the very resurrection they didn’t believe in – and Jesus in love, told those Sadducees they were wrong, that they had no clue what God’s Word said, and no idea of His power. The Sadducees are going to be shocked when God raises them from the dead and then sends them to hell – since they believed in neither. Isn’t Jesus nice?
Now it was the Pharisee’s turn. The liberals had lost, so the conservatives hoped to win. The Pharisees held to God’s Word strongly, at least the parts they liked, the parts they could keep. They were sure the Messiah would see their conservatism and love them for it, but Jesus wasn’t showing them their kind of love. Hence their testing of Him.
As I said Jesus wants to get back to the flesh and blood concreteness of love, so He asks them, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” The Pharisees know God’s Word, so smartly, they answer from Scripture, He is “the Son of David.” Then Jesus joins together what the Pharisees had torn asunder – God’s love and His promised Savior. Jesus asks, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls Him Lord?” The Christ, according to Scripture is both true man – David’s son and true God – David’s Lord. The Pharisees looked down on Jesus as a mere man who should be impressed with their conservative values. Jesus loved them, by telling them the last thing they wanted to hear. “I am the Christ. I am true God and true man, because you need God to save you from your sins. I am God’s love.” Most of the Pharisees could not stand the love Jesus was showing. Only a few, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, believed Jesus, received His love and loved Him in return.
God’s love does not look like love. The greatest love you can show is to forgive someone his sin, but forgiveness means you have to call sin sin – and that, the world considers unloving. How dare you call something I’m doing sin!
Jesus on the cross did not look like love. The cross looked like hatred, violence, and injustice. It is only by God’s Word working faith in your heart that you know the ugliness of your sins, that you see the beauty of the cross, and by it, believe that God forgives you. Separate any of that and you tear asunder God’s love for you.
What God has joined together let not man separate. If you separate God’s love from the flesh and blood of Jesus your love of God will be a no greater than your love of cold beer on a hot summer day. You’ll only drink of Him when you’re thirsty and your thirst for life will never be quenched. If you separate God’s love from your neighbor’s flesh and blood, your love will grow weak and you might lose your faith. What God has joined together let not man separate. He has joined His love to flesh and blood, to Jesus of Nazareth on the cross, and to your neighbor in his need. In the name of Jesus. Amen.