Why Love and the Law of God?

Why are we creating a blog about Love and the Law of God?

Simply because love and the law are inseparable. If you consider this for a few minutes, we think you'll agree. 

Before we get started, and to avoid confusion, we need to separate the doctrine of how we should love God and others from our ability to do so. These are two separate issues. The first is what are to do to love God and others (and what that means). The second is how we only love God and others. (The answer is that we only obey when by grace alone he empowers us.) 

We also need to say that loving God and others, or obeying his law, comes only after a person is saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, by hearing the Scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone. We are saved, made righteous in position, justified, forgiven all by faith in Christ alone, apart from works of the law.  Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  We don't believe in works salvation as this is taught nowhere in Scripture. More on this later.

Justification is one thing. Obeying God as a justified believer is another. Both are by grace, but they are two different things. 

OK, so why do we believe love and the law of God are inseparable?





First, consider that God IS LOVE!  1 John 4:8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

He doesn't just love, he doesn't just show love; he isn't just loving in his nature - he IS LOVE! He is love itself. 

Second, since he is love, any command of his must be loving. It must be the loving thing to do. A simple question will make this clear. If God is love, is there any way he could command his people to do something (morally), which is not loving?

Imagine the Lord commanding us to do something that is not loving.

Of course, he wouldn't do this. In fact, he commands us to "Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. " (Romans 13:8) In other words - always and only do the loving thing to others. 

If you love someone, you're fulfilling the law, meaning you are fulfilling what the law requires to do. 

Putting it another way, Jesus said that the whole law is summarized by the two love commandments - love God and love your neighbor as yourself. This is found in Matt 22 as follows:

Matt 22:34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" 37 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. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

What he meant by this is simple. The whole law of God - every commandment, every statute, every righteous rule towards God and every one towards our neighbor is summarized by the two love commandments. Note that these two don't replace, but simply summarize the whole law. 

In the passage in Romans 13 noted above, Jesus said the same thing.

Romans 13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

In other words, if you keep the commandments towards your neighbor, you are loving your neighbor. Pretty simple and true!

Need more convincing (there's plenty of it in Scripture)? How do we know if we are loving God and our neighbor? The Apostle John told us in 1 John 5 as follows,

1 John 5:2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 

How do we love God? By keeping his commandments. How do we love our neighbor? By keeping his commandments towards our neighbor.

Need more?  Jesus put it this way. John 14:15 If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 

We love God when we keep his commandments.

More proof? How did Jesus show that he loved his father? He obeyed his Father. He declared this in the same chapter. John 14:31 but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. 

Now, of course, we are equating the Lord's commandments with his law. We'll show later why we do this, but to not do this simply plunges the believer into confusion. His law is the collection of all that he requires of us as believers, everything from not having idols to being a cheerful giver. 

God is love. He commands us to love. What he commands is loving - always. This is what we hope to prove to you, so that you will, like David, like Paul, and like the Lord Jesus Christ, see the law of God for what it is for believers - a roadmap on how to love God and our neighbor.