“The law of love being the foundation of the government of God, the happiness of all intelligent beings depends upon their perfect accord with its great principles of righteousness.”
ERNEST LLOYD
LAW is a rule of order, or conduct, by authority. Love is an ardent affection of the heart, stirred by that which pleases us. Hence the two ideas that these words represent seem to have nothing in common. They occupy different spheres. We obey the laws of the state to avoid their penalty. How strange it would seem to hear a man exclaim, “I love the civil and criminal code of Indiana. I delight in the statutes of the state. I am glad and rejoice when they say, ‘Come up to the county treasurer’s office and pay the taxes.’” And equally strange it would be for a man to say, “I love my wife and children, because it is according to law.”
But the Bible brings together these two incongruous words. It teaches us to love the law, and assures us that the law is love. Did it ever occur to you that the one hundred nineteenth psalm is a love song? The delighted author of it sings, “Oh, how love I Thy law.” “I love Thy commandments above gold.” “Great peace have they which love Thy law.” And in the first psalm, we are told of the good man that “his delight is in the law of the Lord.” In the nineteenth psalm it is said that God’s law is “sweeter also than honey.”
WAS DAVID EXTRAVAGANT?
To those who read the Decalogue as written on tables of stone and regard it merely as a series of injunctions and prohibitions, the enthusiasm of David seems extravagant and absurd. But when we open the New Testament and study what Christ and His apostles say about the greatness of the law, we sympathize with the psalmist. Our Saviour plainly declares concerning the law: “I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” Matthew 5:17. He came not to end its work, but to fulfill its purpose,—to live out before His fellows its principles in His own flesh. Paul wrote to the Romans, “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” James says that this is “the royal law according to the Scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
If, then, under the moral government of God love and law are synonymous, it is not only right but unavoidable that all who are loyal to God will both obey and love the law of God. We are made to love that which is lovely.
HIGHEST IDEAL
Yet it is not easy for us to think of love and law as identical, because we are accustomed to imperfect human laws imposed by authority. “Despotic governments arose early in the history of the race. The statutes of conquerors and tyrants were not intended to promote the happiness of their subjects, but to extend and strengthen their own power. Hence obedience was reluctant and compulsory. It is only in these later centuries and under the influence of Christian civilizations that the people have acquired the right to make their own laws.” And hence it is that we begin to have some affection for the constitutions and the codes that protect our freedom.
Wise laws, efficiently administered, are the bulwarks of society. They protect us and our homes. They guard our persons and our property. They are not musical, like poems. We can not sing them as we sing love ditties. They are often unattractive in form, defining crime and declaring the penalty it deserves. But the good citizen rejoices in them as the Hollander rejoices in the dikes that protect his country from the sea.
“Laws worthy of the love of the citizen and love for the laws because they are worthy; this is the highest ideal of civil freedom.”
And love for God’s great law of love, obeying from the heart and delighting in obedience, this is “the glorious liberty of the children of God.” Romans 8:21.
“If law in its highest form is love, then our human definitions are defective. It is more than a rule of conduct. It is the condition of happiness. It is a statement of the spirit in which we ought to live and must live if we would enjoy all that we are capable of enjoying. The law of God is not an enactment merely—it is a revelation. It announces not only the will of God the Father, but for what He made us and the way in which we can secure the end of our creation—to glorify and enjoy Him forever.”
God is love. God created us in His own image—to love as He loves. By loving we become like Him. We are His children and His heirs, for “every one that loveth is born of God.” Then we love these three, which are one: Law, love, God. By taking the law into our hearts we take in the Spirit and character of God Himself, and become identified with the source of all truth, purity, and blessedness.
GODLINESS, LAW, LOVE
“Godliness is obedience to law. It is love. It is to the soul that cultivates it what attraction is to the planets in the solar system. It holds the soul in its orbit. It keeps it in the sunlight of the Divine Presence. It clothes it with the graces of the Spirit, and causes it to bring forth fruit unto holiness, whose end is everlasting life.”
The Bible proves its divine origin by the originality of its revelations. What mere man would have been wise enough to unite law and love, and to foretell a time when loyalty to the Giver of both shall gird the earth like a halo of light, and when the fruits of lawlessness—sickness, sorrow, pain, disappointment, trouble, despair, death—shall be no more? Such a revelation could come only from God. Only such a revelation can meet the conscious desires and longings of our hearts. In contrast with it, how faulty and vain are all human theories for the salvation of human society! They are but castles in the air, mirages in the desert.
All our hopes rest on this rock: That God is love, and that the law He has enacted for mortal beings is a transcript of His own nature; that we, through faith in the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins, are to be holy and happy by becoming like Him who made us in His own image.
