Love is the Fulfilling of the Law.
By D. H. Sanborn
This is a part of a text often quoted. What does it teach? How does love fulfill the law? To fulfill a law, according to Webster, is to perform what is required; to answer a law by obedience. Then love fulfills the law by leading to the performance of those acts which the law requires; and any love which does not lead to obedience to every precept of God’s holy law is not the love of which the apostle is speaking, and shows its possessor to be “carnal, sold under sin.” For the apostle declares that to be carnally minded is death; because the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God; and from its not being subject to God’s law, he proves that it is enmity against God. Rom. 8 : 7. But to the text. The whole verse reads, Love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Rom. 13 : 10. Then love fulfills the law because it works no ill to his neighbor. The law was given to guard the rights of God and the rights of men; and true love will lead us not to invade our neighbor’s rights. But how does profaning God’s holy name work ill to his neighbor? Because it is breaking the third precept of the law of God, and as far as the example goes it leads to sin; and the wages of sin is death. But the fourth precept of that same unchangeable law brings to view another object which God claims as his, declares to be holy, and commands us to observe accordingly. Why and how does profaning God’s holy day injure our fellow-men? In the same way that profaning his holy name does. It is treating as profane what he has solemnly declared to be holy, and required us to keep. It is taking for our use for secular purposes that which God claims as his own, and set apart to a holy use. It is setting at nought the authority of the great Lawgiver. It is encouraging rebellion against his government. It is rebellion, robbery and profanity, all in one. Tell me, ye that refuse to keep holy the day that God commanded, are ye not profaning the holy things of God? Perhaps you say the Lord has changed the day of his rest; that another day is now his holy day, and the day he blessed and hallowed is no longer holy time. We know full well a change has been made; but where, and by whom? We know that many claim to be worshipers of the God that made the heavens and the earth, who yet refuse to regard the sanctified rest-day. But what evidence is there in the word of God that he has changed his holy day, any more than that he has changed his name; and that therefore the names by which he has made himself known to us in his word are no longer to be reverenced, but may be treated as common. Perhaps you say, If I keep one day in the week holy, I think it is all that is required. And so you keep a day which the Lord has nowhere required you to regard as sacred, and treat his sacred day as common time. If this is obedience to the fourth commandment, then the Romanist, who profanes the name of God every day, may yet fulfill the third precept of God’s law by reverencing the name of the pope; for neither you nor he are doing the work which God commands, but you are doing what he has forbidden. And the Lord has told us just as plainly in the one case as the other what is holy. I appeal to honest first-day keepers if there is any unfairness in this reasoning. Search the Scriptures daily and faithfully to see if these things are so. And may you be led to look into that perfect law of liberty, and continue therein, being not forgetful hearers, but doers of the work, that you may be blessed in your deed.