“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 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. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22.36-39

The Apostle James, the half-brother of our Lord Jesus Christ, described the Law of God as the “law of liberty” (Jms. 2.12). He said, echoing our Lord Jesus, that those who believe in Jesus should live like people who understood that a day of judgment is coming when all people will be judged by this Law. Indeed, even now a kind of “judgment” lingers over those who believe, such that, whenever we stray from this good path of righteousness, blazed by our Savior, our loving Father will chasten and discipline us until we return to it (Heb. 12.3-11).

And this is as it should be. For, as Jesus taught, the Law of God liberates us from small-mindedness, self-centeredness, and sin, so that we might love God and our neighbors as the Lord intends.

The Law of God restrains our natural, sinful tendency toward inordinate self-love – love for what we want without regard for the holiness of God or the cares and concerns of our neighbors. At the same time, the Law prescribes the ways for entering into God’s love so that we love Him and our neighbors as we should.

Who can object to this? And would we dare say to Jesus, “I’m all for love, but I can love without having to learn or submit to God’s Law”? That, it seems to me, would be foolish.

The Spirit of God within us is striving daily to teach us that the only way to be liberated from the deadly power of self-love is through obedience to the Law of God and all His Word. Not the Word of God excepting the Law, but the Law and all His Word. This is what Jesus taught.

T. M. Moore

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