Love the Sum of Both the Law and the Gospel
The central Person in the Bible is Christ; the central principle is love, the love revealed in him. When the eloquent Christian philosopher, Adolphe Monod, of Paris, was on his deathbed, he gathered round him some of the members of his church, that they might commemorate the dying love of Christ in the breaking of bread. On the last of these occasions, when too weak from suffering to do more than speak a few broken words, Adolphe Monod uttered a memorable sentence, embodying the sum and substance of his faith and teaching. Raising himself up, with solemn emphasis he said, "God has loved us, this is the whole gospel; let us love God, this is all its moral." Love is the sum of both the law and the gospel. It is the old command as well as the new revelation. God made man in his image, and being love himself, said, "Thou shalt love." On this divine command, in its twofold bearing, the command to love God and man, hung "all the law and the prophets." Herein is the whole of duty. Love worketh no ill, but only good; hence, "love is the fulfilling of the law." But the command to love could not produce love. An example was needed, and more than that, a motive. That motive is found joined with example and precept in the words of Jesus Christ, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." . . . "A new commandment," new not in its nature, but in its spring, its object, its measure. This is the love that seeketh not its own, that bears all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things; never faileth. Amid the perishable, it proves enduring. Prophecies shall fail, knowledge shall vanish, yea, heaven and earth shall pass away, but faith, hope, and love shall remain forever; and of these three immortal graces the greatest is love, for God himself is love. The source of love is not the hills of heaven, but the heart of God. Wherever God is, love is. Love fills immensity, and inhabits eternity, and its name is holy. Love rules the universe. Love redeems the lost. In its greatness it stoops that it may raise the low. In its graces it suffers to save. Jesus Christ is but incarnate love; love which has come down from inaccessible heights, clothed with the lowly vesture of humanity. Love was his motive, love his message, love his precept, love his passion, love his reward. The magic of his might is love. The heaven to which he leads is love. Love is the law of angels. Love is the light of the New Jerusalem. Love is the old law of heaven, older than the everlasting hills, newly written in the hearts of God's redeemed. Love is the theme of the Bible; the soul of its unity; the root that bears its branches, the fruit upon its boughs. Love is the bond of the moral universe; the mighty law of gravitation which unites the beings of which it is composed; the sum of its system; the alpha of its genesis; the Omega of its goal.—"Creation Centered in Christ," H. Grattan Guinness, D. D., London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1896, pages 95-97.