Questioning Our Confession

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Questioning Our Confession

Herb Montgomery | October 23, 2026

If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:

Our reading this week is from the Gospel of Matthew:

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the messiah? Whose son is he?”

“The son of David,” they replied.

He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,

“ ‘The Lord said to my Lord:

“Sit at my right hand

until I put your enemies

under your feet.” ’

If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions. (Matthew 22:34-46)

Our reading this week begins with two prominent and powerful Jewish groups in the Jesus story: the Sadducees and the Pharisees. During the time reflected in Matthew’s Gospel, the Sadducees and Pharisees they differed significantly in their beliefs, social position, and relationship to Roman rule.

The Sadducees were closely connected to the Jerusalem Temple and the priestly and wealthy elite. They held considerable political and economic influence and generally favored maintaining stability within the existing order. They accepted the authority of the written Torah but rejected some beliefs that had developed within broader Jewish tradition, including the resurrection of the dead (Matthew 22:23). They were the more theological conservative party, and their leadership was therefore closely tied to the Temple system and its structures of power.

The Pharisees, by contrast, were a religious movement with a broad presence among the Jewish population. They emphasized careful observance of the Torah and traditions of interpreting it. Unlike the Sadducees, they affirmed beliefs in resurrection, angels, and spirits, and they were the more theologically liberal party. Contrary to how they are often portrayed today, the Pharisees were not a group of hypocrites or villains. Many of them were deeply committed to religious faithfulness and preserving Jewish identity under Roman occupation.

Matthew portrays both groups as sometimes opposing Jesus, and they did so for different reasons. Jesus challenges the interpretations of both groups and, more importantly, confronts how religious authority can become entangled with exclusion, status, and power. Jesus’ criticism of these leaders in the Gospel stories is rooted in whether political, economic, social and religious leadership produces justice, mercy, compassion, and liberation for ordinary people.

In last week’s reading, Jesus silences attempted entrapment by the Sadducees. This week our attention points toward the Pharisees. As a test, they ask Jesus which commandment is the greatest. His answer would have been familiar to the Pharisees of the School of Rabbi Hillel, and that answer still has profound justice implications today.

In his answer, Jesus refuses to separate love of God from love of people: the two greatest commandments are inseparable. For Jesus, devotion to the Divine cannot be measured simply by religious belief, worship, or obedience to religious regulations. Genuine love for God becomes visible in how we treat our neighbors, particularly those who are vulnerable, excluded, or pushed to the margins.

This has enormous implications for Christians endeavoring to follow the Jesus of this story. If we claim to love God while tolerating systems that exploit, exclude, impoverish, or dehumanize our neighbors, Jesus challenges the authenticity of that claim. We should not use love of God as an excuse for failing to love people. Religious devotion that produces indifference toward human suffering has missed the heart of the Law and the Prophets.

The phrase “Love your neighbor as yourself” also moves beyond private feelings. In Jesus’ teaching, love is not merely an emotion or an attitude. Love asks what another person needs in order to live, flourish, and experience dignity. To love our neighbors means becoming concerned about the conditions in which those neighbors live. Are people hungry? Are they safe? Do they have adequate housing, healthcare, education, and meaningful opportunities? Are some of them being excluded because of their race, gender, sexuality, economic status, immigration status, disability, or social location? Love does not simply notice when these unjust realities exist. Love seeks to change them.

This is why justice is often understood as love made public. Compassion can become justice when we move beyond feeling sorry for people and begin addressing the structures, institutions, and systems that produce their suffering. Charity may help someone survive an unjust situation, but justice asks why that situation exists in the first place and what must change so that people are no longer forced to depend upon charity simply to survive.

Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees in the story also challenges religious communities to examine their priorities. It is possible to become deeply invested in religious arguments while neglecting the people standing directly in front of us. We can wax eloquent in our apologetics for certain doctrines while ignoring people’s suffering. We can proclaim holiness while participating in exclusion, and we can speak passionately about loving God while remaining indifferent to the neighbor whose life is being diminished by unjust systems.

But Jesus places love at the center of everything. The Law and the Prophets, he says, hang on these two commandments. In other words, every religious practice, doctrine, tradition, and interpretation must ultimately be measured by love of God as expressed through love of neighbor.

The question for us, then, is not simply, “Do we love God?” Jesus invites us to ask a more searching question: “What does our love of God produce in the way we treat our neighbors?” When love produces dignity, solidarity, compassion, equality, liberation, and justice, it reflects the heart of Jesus’ teaching. When it produces exclusion, domination, fear, or indifference, injustice and harm, it contradicts the very commandments upon which Jesus says everything else depends.

Next in our reading, Jesus asks the Pharisees a question that challenges their understanding of the messiah: “Whose son is he?” They answer, “The son of David.” Jesus then quotes Psalm 110, where David refers to the messiah as “lord,” asking how the messiah can be both David’s descendant and his lord. The religious leaders cannot answer him, and Matthew concludes that no one dares to question him further.

Although this passage is often interpreted as a theological discussion about Jesus’ identity, it also carries important social, political, and economic implications. In the first century, the expectation of a messiah descended from David was closely connected to hopes for restored national sovereignty, righteous leadership, and deliverance from oppressive powers. Under Roman occupation, the question of who the messiah would be was inseparable from questions about authority, power, liberation, and the kind of society God desired.

Jesus challenges his listeners to reconsider not only who the messiah could be, but also what messianic leadership should look like.

The title “Son of David” carried royal significance in Jesus’ time. People remembered David as Israel’s great king, and so the promise of a messiah from his lineage could evoke expectations of a restored kingdom. Yet royal power, in both ancient and contemporary societies, became associated with domination, privilege, and preservation of established hierarchies. Jesus’ question about David’s descendants unsettles simplistic assumptions that God’s anointed leader must merely reproduce familiar patterns of political authority.

Throughout Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus presents a vision of community and human society rooted in compassion, justice, inclusion and care. In Matthew 20:25–28, he contrasts rulers who dominate others and service: those who wish to become great in Jesus’ eyes must become servants. Jesus does not measure leadership by the ability to command, accumulate wealth, or maintain control. He measures it by a willingness to serve, to give, and to place the well-being of others before personal privilege.

Read through this lens, the question of the messiah becomes a question about the purpose of power. Does authority exist to protect the interests of the powerful, or should it be used to create conditions in which everyone can experience dignity, security, and abundant life? Does leadership preserve unjust arrangements, or does it challenge the structures that leave people impoverished, excluded, and vulnerable?

Jesus’ challenge to the Pharisees also belongs to a larger pattern in Matthew 21–23, where he repeatedly confronts religious leaders over their understanding and exercise of authority. His questions expose the limitations of religious knowledge when it becomes disconnected from justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Knowing Scripture is not the same as embodying its liberating vision. Authority loses its moral credibility when it protects institutional privilege while neglecting the suffering of those institutions are meant to serve.

These implications extend to our own communities. We must ask whether our religious, political, and economic institutions reflect the values we claim to honor. We must examine whether our understanding of God legitimizes existing hierarchies or inspires us to challenge inequality, resist exploitation, and share the resources necessary for everyone to thrive.

Jesus’ final question leaves the leaders of his own society without an answer. It also challenges us today. For Jesus followers, our beliefs about what our society should look like must be tested against the life and teachings of Jesus himself. If we claim to follow Jesus and his teachings while tolerating systems that deny people their dignity, we must reconsider what our confession means.

To follow Jesus is to take seriously the way he taught us to live. It means following a Jesus who calls us away from domination toward service, away from exclusion toward inclusion, justice, and belonging, and away from protecting privilege toward practicing righteousness and equity.

Ultimately, our reading this week invites us to ask a question that reaches beyond religious debate: What kind of world would emerge if we organized our communities around the values of the Jesus we profess to follow? What if we stopped using faith to justify the way things are and began embodying the justice, compassion, love and shared humanity that comprised the gospel Jesus proclaimed?

Discussion Group Questions

1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s podcast episode with your discussion group.

2. How does our reading this week inform your own justice work, today? Share and discuss with your group.

3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone? 

Thanks for checking in with us, today.

I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate. 

My latest book Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and also on Audible in audio book format.

As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s Threads. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. 

If you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.

Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.

I love each of you dearly,

I’ll see you next week.

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New Episode of The Social Jesus Podcast

A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice. 

This week:

Season 3 Episode 44: Questioning Our Confession

Matthew 22:34-46

In our reading this week, Jesus contrasts rulers who dominate others and service. The gospels do not measure leadership by the ability to command, accumulate wealth, or maintain control. They measure it by a willingness to serve, to give, and to place the well-being of others before personal privilege. Does authority exist to protect the interests of the powerful, or should it be used to create conditions in which everyone can experience dignity, security, and abundant life? Does leadership preserve unjust arrangements, or does it challenge the structures that leave people impoverished, excluded, and vulnerable? Authority loses its moral credibility when it protects institutional privilege while neglecting the suffering of those institutions are meant to serve. We must ask whether our religious, political, and economic institutions reflect the values we claim to honor. We must examine whether our understanding of God legitimizes existing hierarchies or inspires us to challenge inequality, resist exploitation, and share the resources necessary for everyone to thrive. For Jesus followers, our beliefs about what our society should look like must be tested against the life and teachings of Jesus himself. If we claim to follow Jesus and his teachings while tolerating systems of injustice and harm that deny people their dignity, we must reconsider what our confession means.

Available on major podcast carriers and at:

https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/questioning-our-confession

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Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.

 

by Herb Montgomery

Available now on Amazon!

In Finding Jesus, author Herb Montgomery delves into the profound and often overlooked political dimensions of the gospels. Through meticulous analysis of biblical texts, historical context, and social discourse, this thought-provoking book unveils the gospels’ socio-political, economic teachings as rooted in a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of the marginalized. The book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, presenting a compelling argument for a more socially engaged and transformative Christianity.

Finding Jesus is not just a scholarly exploration; it is a call to action. It challenges readers to reevaluate their understanding of Christianity’s role in public life and to consider how the radical teachings of the gospels can inspire a renewed commitment to justice, equality, and compassion. This book is a must-read for those seeking a deeper understanding of the social implications of Christian faith and a blueprint for building a more just and inclusive society.

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