p. 9 | THE FOUNDATION IS LOVE

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 12, 1916

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 43, No. 36.

THE FOUNDATION IS LOVE

CHRIST bore the Father's law upon His heart as He came to this world. With poetic expressiveness, the psalmist said of Him: "Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire; Mine ears hast Thou opened; burnt offering and sin offering hast Thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O My God; yea, Thy law is within My heart." Ps. 40: 6-8.

In presenting to the world this divine law that was borne in the Master's heart, the Son of God said, "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." Matt. 7: 12. All will recognize that the first part of the foregoing utterance is the Golden Rule,—"All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them;" but do we recognize that the Master tells us that this Golden Rule "is the law and the prophets"? In other words, His divine powers are called into action to express, in a single terse sentence, the great essence and summary of the teaching of both the law and the prophets.

Many have regarded this as a New Testament maxim, and have thought that expressions like the Golden Rule were not found in the Old Testament Scriptures; but whether men may be able to find such wonderful teachings in the law and the prophets of the Old Testament, the divine Teacher Himself had no difficulty in finding that the very heart of the law is, to do to others the things we would wish them to do to us.

THE LAW'S LIVING EXPRESSION

THE Jewish nation had this superior teaching through their prophets, and the law that was delivered to them; but they never met the high ideals of the Master in their practical life. It was Jesus alone who could give that truth in its fullness, not only as a teacher, but as one who lived all that He taught.

That was what clothed His words with such power. He not merely presented theories concerning the law of Jehovah, but He was the living expression, in actual deeds, in both heart and outward life, of the law that God had given to be such a choice blessing to mankind.

The all-pervading principle of the law of God is love. This is shown not only through the Golden Rule, which calls us to do to others what we would have them do to us, but the Master tells it more fully in His conversation with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. A lawyer of their number said to Him, "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Matt. 22: 36-40.

All the law and the prophets, then, hang upon the great principle of love. We are to render supreme love to God, and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. The law that expresses these broad and deep principles is the one that Jesus Christ bore to humanity upon His heart; and all of the law that He gave to us in this strong way is expressed in these commandments of love.

NO PROVISION FOR HATRED

THERE is no provision for hatred in the plan of salvation or in the character of the Master. Satan has misrepresented Him in all the ages. He even succeeded in getting the Lord's own professed representatives to crucify Him. In like manner, many doctors of divinity all through the ages, and even in the present time, greatly misrepresent the divine Christ. But there in His word stand these supreme principles of love to God and love to humanity.

In God's law, then, is found the true expression of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.

We find, also, that these wonderful principles of love were taught by the prophets of old, the same as was the Golden Rule. "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord." Lev. 19: 18.

This teaching, then, which Christ presented when He was here upon earth in person, was only a continuation and a further expression of what He had given through the prophets and teachers of the old dispensation. He is "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever." That lovely character remains always the same, and we can ever depend upon Him who bore to humanity the law of Jehovah in His warm heart of love.