“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

 Ephesians 5.15-17; Colossians 4.6

 In order to love God from within we must take His Law into our inner being (Ps. 119.9-11). We must lay His words up within our hearts. Here the heart, which, as we have seen, has the primacy in the soul, is used by hendiadys to stand for the soul in its entirety.

We must study the Law of God, meditating in it day and night (Ps. 1). Thus our minds will be informed by God’s will; our hearts will incline to love what He has revealed (Ps. 119.97); our priorities will line up with what we are coming to know and love; and we will follow the Law as a path to guide us in all our ways (Ps. 119.105).

There is no substitute for daily reading, reflection, and study in the Word of God, beginning in His Law, if we would become the kind of people who love Him supremely and enjoy all the blessings of eternal life with Him.

This series of In the Gates we present a detailed explanation of the Law of God, beginning with the Ten Commandments, and working through the statutes and rules that accompany each commandment. For a practical guide to the role of God’s Law in the practice of ethics, get The Ground for Christian Ethics by going to www.MyParuchia.com and click on our Book Store.