A lawyer approached Jesus and asked Him, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” He then added, “The second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
Though these commandments remind us that our relationship with God must be rooted in love and that our relationship with our neighbours must reflect that same love, I am particularly interested in the reason behind the question and the disposition of the man who asked it.
The Gospel tells us that the lawyer asked Jesus this question after hearing that He had silenced the Sadducees. The Sadducees were a wealthy and influential religious-political group who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. They approached Jesus with a question meant to challenge Him and undermine His teaching.
They presented Him with the story of seven brothers. The first married a woman but died without a child. The second married the widow, but he too died without a child. The same happened to all seven brothers, and eventually the woman herself died. They then asked Jesus, “In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will she be of the seven? For they all had her as their wife” (Matthew 22:28).
Jesus answered them by pointing out that they were mistaken because they neither understood the Scriptures nor the power of God. He explained that in the resurrection, people neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. Through this answer, Jesus exposed the weakness of their argument and silenced the Sadducees.
When the lawyer heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, he stepped forward with another question: “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Here, we see that a person can approach Jesus with a question on their lips while harbouring a different intention in their heart. The lawyer came not simply to learn, but to test Him. He approached Christ with a heart that was not entirely open to the truth.
This brings us to an important reflection: What is the disposition of our hearts as we approach God?
One of the greatest privileges we have as Christians is the invitation to approach God. The God who created the heavens and the earth, the One who holds all things in His hands, invites us into His presence. He invites us to pray, seek Him, and find mercy and grace in Him.
But Scripture reminds us to approach Him with sincerity. Hebrews 10:22 says, “Let us draw near with a sincere heart and full assurance of faith.”
To approach God with a sincere heart is to come before Him honestly and humbly. It means recognising our need for Him and that, without His grace, we cannot accomplish everything by our own strength. It also means acknowledging our sins, weaknesses, doubts, and failures, while trusting that His mercy is greater than our shortcomings.
Sincerity does not mean we must first become perfect before approaching God. If perfection were a condition for entering His presence, none of us would be able to come before Him. Rather, sincerity means we do not pretend to be perfect. We come as we are, acknowledging the truth about ourselves and allowing God to transform us.
There is a difference between approaching God with sincerity and trying to manipulate Him into doing what we want. We must be careful not to turn prayer into a bargaining attempt with God, as though we could force His hand by reminding Him of our suffering or by demanding that He fulfil our expectations.
God is not someone we need to entrap, blackmail, or manipulate. He is our Father, who knows our needs even before we ask Him. We can trust Him even when His answers are not what we expected, His timing seems slow, and we do not understand what He is doing.
This does not mean we should stop bringing our petitions before Him. Jesus Himself teaches us to ask, seek, and knock. Rather, it means our requests should be accompanied by humility and surrender. We should be able to pray, as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Not my will, but yours be done.”
As we reflect on the lawyer in today’s Gospel, let us examine our hearts. When we come before God in prayer, are we genuinely seeking His will, or merely seeking confirmation of our desires? Do we approach Him with faith and openness, or with conditions, selfish expectations, and a desire to control the outcome?
Perhaps we have been praying for something for a long time. Perhaps we are facing difficulties in our families, our work, our health, or our personal lives. Perhaps we are wondering why God has not answered our prayers as we hoped. These are real struggles, and God invites us to bring them before Him.
But today, let us also ask for the grace to surrender. Let us ask God to purify our intentions, soften our hearts, and help us trust Him more deeply. Let our prayers not be attempts to challenge His goodness, but expressions of our dependence on His love.
And when we come before Him, may we remember the commandments Jesus gave us: to love God with our whole being and to love our neighbours as ourselves. For a sincere relationship with God must also bear fruit in how we treat others.
Amen.