Matthew 22:37-40 Jesus said
to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This
is the first and
great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.’ On
these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
Ending up this short study
though Romans on the doctrine of justification, we find that, ultimately,
Almighty God requires from his people that they love Him above all else and
love their neighbors as they love themselves. In fact, love is so vital that of
the chief Christian virtues – faith, hope, and love – only love will never pass
away.
1 Corinthians 13:12-13 “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then
face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am
known. And now
abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
So, in order to please the
Lord and thank Him for our salvation, we need to love Him and love others.
Sounds simple, right? And in one sense, it can be very simple. It is easy for
us to complicate things, to come up with rules and checklist that turn the
Christian life into a process of checking off our do’s and don’ts. Yet, we must
say more than that our duty is love. For, to say that what we need to do is
love does not tell us what love is. The problem is that the definition of love
is not self-evident.
Romans 13:8-10 Owe no one
anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the
law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not
steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall
not covet,” and if there is any other commandment,
are all summed up in
this saying, namely, “You shall love
your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
In our fallen condition, we
cannot figure out what love is with our help. Thankfully, the Lord has given us
this help in the form of His moral law. The commandment to “love your neighbor
as yourself” sums up all of the specific regulations found in God’s law. True
love has a precise content – God tells us what it is in His law. God intended
nothing else by all his commandments than to teach us the duty of love. When we
speak of the use of the law as a guide to the Christian life, we are not
replacing love with the law. Instead, to seek guidance for what pleases God in
the law is to seek what it means to love Him and our neighbor. Love and the law go hand in hand. Authentic
faith bears fruit in a deep love for God’s revelation.
Blessed in Christ.
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