Matthew 21-23 Fulfilled in AD 70, Part 9: (Matthew 22:34-46) – The Enduring Love of the New Covenant In the Shadow of the Lord of Psalm 110 Coming in the Judgment of AD 70

In the charged atmosphere of Jerusalem during Holy Week, Jesus faced relentless challenges from religious leaders desperate to discredit him. Within these confrontations, recorded in Matthew 22, lies a transformative teaching that silenced his opponents, established the ethic of the new covenant, and asserted his divine authority as the Messiah and God, who would judge those breaking God’s commandments. The Greatest Commandment (Matt. 22:34-40), where Jesus declares that love for God and neighbor fulfills “all the Law and the Prophets,” contrasts sharply with the Pharisees’ and Sadducees’ legalistic debates, particularly their fixation on earthly laws like levirate marriage persisting in the resurrection. Amplified by Jesus’ divine self-identification as the judge of Psalm 110 in Matthew 22:41-46 and 26:63-65, the Pharisees’ lovelessness exposed in Matthew 23, and Paul’s emphasis on love, this teaching reveals love as the eternal foundation of God’s kingdom, enduring beyond the temple’s destruction in AD 70.

Matthew 22 unfolds as a series of intellectual duels. The Sadducees, denying the resurrection, pose a hypothetical about levirate marriage (Matt. 22:23-33), asking whose wife a woman married to seven brothers would be in the afterlife. Their question assumes that the law requiring a man to marry his brother’s childless widow would persist—a view some Pharisees, who affirmed the resurrection, shared. Jesus dismantles this, stating that in the resurrection, people “neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matt. 22:30, ESV), pointing to a transformed existence beyond old covenant laws. Observing Jesus’ triumph, the Pharisees test him with a question about the greatest commandment (Matt. 22:34-36). Jesus’ response—love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself—reorients the Law around a universal principle, eclipsing legalistic debates and heralding the new covenant’s spiritual reality.

This teaching sets the stage for Jesus’ bold assertion of divine authority in Matthew 22:41-46. Turning the tables, Jesus asks the Pharisees, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” When they reply, “The son of David,” he cites Psalm 110:1:

“The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.’” He challenges them: if David calls the Messiah “Lord,” how is he merely his son?

The Pharisees, stumped, fail to grasp that Jesus, the Messiah, is God. This divine identity is powerfully reaffirmed in Matthew 26:63-65, where Jesus, before the high priest and the same first-century religious leaders, conflates Psalm 110:1 with Daniel 7:13, declaring,

“You will see the Son of Man [Dan. 7:13] seated at the right hand of Power [Ps. 110 – ascension in AD 30] and coming on the clouds of heaven [Dan. 7:13 second coming in AD 70].”

Their charge of blasphemy confirms their rejection of his divinity, sealing their fate. As the Lord of Psalm 110, Jesus, the divine judge, will in AD 70 “put his enemies under his feet,” destroying Jerusalem for their failure to love God—embodied in him—and their neighbors, as commanded in Matthew 22:34-40, a judgment these leaders would witness in their generation.

The Pharisees’ lovelessness is exposed in Matthew 23, where Jesus denounces their harsh legalism. He accuses them of burdening people with heavy rules while neglecting “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matt. 23:23), a direct contrast to the love he commands. Their hypocrisy and cruelty, rejecting Jesus as God and Messiah, lead to judgment, as he declares Jerusalem’s desolation (Matt. 23:38), fulfilled in AD 70 when the Romans razed the temple, ending the old covenant’s sacrificial system.

This destruction is central. In Matthew 24:35, Jesus declares, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Many scholars see “heaven and earth” as symbolizing the temple, which fell within a generation (Matt. 24:34). The Greatest Commandment, part of Jesus’ enduring words, provided a timeless ethic for a post-temple world. Unlike levirate marriage or temple rituals, love required no physical structure, aligning with the new covenant’s spiritual focus. Matthew’s Gospel, written for Jewish Christians, contrasts the Pharisees’ legalism—evident in their debates about laws persisting in the new age, their harshness, and their rejection of Jesus’ divinity—with the love Jesus commands as God and Messiah.

Paul’s teachings reinforce this shift. In 1 Corinthians 13:8-13, he writes that love never ends, unlike temporary gifts like prophecy and tongues, which cease when “the perfect comes.” This “perfect” is Christ’s coming, the new creation, and the new covenant’s maturity, fulfilled in AD 70. Paul concludes, “Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13). This echoes Jesus’ prioritization of love, suggesting that love, not earthly laws or signs, defines the new covenant age. The Pharisees’ fixation on legal specifics, like levirate marriage, mirrors the Corinthians’ obsession with gifts that “puffed up,” both corrected by love’s primacy, which the Pharisees’ rejection of Jesus as God betrays.

Matthew 22’s narrative weaves these themes. Jesus outwits traps about taxes and resurrection (Matt. 22:15-33), teaches love (Matt. 22:34-40), and asserts his divine authority (Matt. 22:41-46). In Matthew 23, he condemns the Pharisees’ loveless legalism, predicting Jerusalem’s fall (Matt. 23:38), fulfilled in AD 70, as foretold in the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24). Amid these warnings, the Greatest Commandment shines, offering a way of life that endures when the old order collapses.

Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 22:34-40, contrasted with the Pharisees’ legalism and rejection of him as God and Messiah, prepared believers for the new covenant. As the temple’s “heaven and earth” passed away in AD 70, a judgment the religious leaders witnessed, love remained, fulfilling the Law and guiding the church. Paul’s affirmation of love’s permanence reinforced this, equipping Christians to embody God’s kingdom. Today, the Greatest Commandment calls us to love, a timeless legacy of Jesus’ words, upheld by the Lord of Psalm 110 who also judges in perfect righteousness.