[xzins]

They were saying that the Law and Prophets lead to and find expression and fulfillment in love. But here in Matthew 22:40 Jesus is saying the reverse: love leads to and finds expression in the Law and the Prophets. The Law and the Prophets are hanging on -- depending on -- something before them, namely, God’s passion that this world, this history of humankind, be a world of love to God and radical, other-oriented love to each other.

...And Jesus turns to us and says, "The whole scroll, the whole Law and the Prophets, the whole history of redemption and all my Father’s plans and acts hang on these two great sovereign purposes of God -- that he be loved by his people, and that his people love each other.

I'm always fascinated by the Samaritan being the neighbor of the beaten Jew.

[drstevej]

Pastor Piper picked a passage of pointed principle.
If Pastor Piper picked a passage of pointed principle,
Will people perceive the pointed principles Pastor Piper preached?

[JesseShurun]

Who is my neigbor xzins? Do I have to love the workers of iniquity?

[malakhi]

But when the Pharisees heard that He had put the Sadducees to silence, they gathered themselves together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" And He said to him, "?You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ?You shall love your neighbor as yourself.? On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."

This sounds so ... so ... Jewish. Imagine that! :o)

...you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:5)

...you shall love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18)

The Jewish sage Hillel, who lived the generation before Jesus (he may still have been alive during Jesus's early years) is recorded as saying:

That which is hateful to you, do not do to others. That is the whole of the Torah. Now, go and study it.

Hillel's school was concerned more with the spirit of the Law, in contrast to the Shammaite school, which was more stringent and "by the letter of the Law". "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" sounds remarkably like something a Hillelite rabbi would teach.