THE LAW OF CHRIST: A THEOLOGICAL PROPOSAL A.

BLAKE WHITE CHAPTER 7 THE LAW OF CHRIST IS THE LAW OF LOVE

In his Galatians commentary, Martin Luther writes, The law of Christ is the law of love.1 Love is absolutely central to the law of Christ. It seems that our circles do not emphasize the centrality of love as the Bible emphasizes the centrality of love. Love is not simply a fuzzy feeling of affection towards another, but self-sacrificially giving of self for the good of others and the glory of God.2 Love is a verb. God is love (1 John 4:8). He is the self-giving God who calls his people to be self-giving lovers.3 This is why so many of us are discontent with life. We are living for self rather than for God and for others which is not what we were created for. Christ died for us so that we would no longer live for ourselves (2 Cor 5:15). As Pastor Paul Tripp writes, To live for yourself is to rob yourself of your own humanity.4 Read afresh Pauls words in 1 Corinthians 13:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (my italics)

1 2

Martin Luther, Galatians (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998), 290. Fee, Gods Empowering Presence, 446-47; Hill, The How and Why of Love, 78, 80, 84, 97. 3 Keller, Reason for God, 215-16. 4 Paul David Tripp, A Quest for More (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2007), 100.

In Matthew 22:34-40 Jesus is asked which is the great commandment in the Law. He replies, 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. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. Jesus, in Matthew 22:39, quotes Leviticus 19:18b (you shall love your neighbor as yourself), where the neighbor was the fellow Israelite but we know that in the new covenant, our neighbor is anyone in need of help (Luke 10:25-37). We are called to do good to all, but especially to those who are of the household of faith (Gal 6:10). Vertical love and horizontal love are inextricably bound together. Away with the talk of a personal relationship with Jesus that is disconnected to other believers. Divine love issues in interpersonal love.5 Everything is done allln.6 One cannot claim to love Christ without love for the body of Christ. There is an intense unity between Christ and his people. So when Saul was persecuting Christians, Jesus says, Saul, Saul, why are you persectuting me? (Acts 9:4, cf. Matt 25:40).7 John says that if a person claims to love God, yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar (1 John 4:20). And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother (1 John 4:21). As mentioned, the phrase law of Christ only occurs once in the Bible: Galatians 6:2. Preceding this verse, Paul wrote, For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Gal 5:13-14). Amazingly, Paul says that true freedom comes by becoming slaves (douleuete) of one another through love!8 The gospel frees us to lovingly serve our brothers and sisters. Then Paul says that the whole law is fulfilled in one word, citing Leviticus 19:18: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The one who loves his neighbor has fulfilled what the law demands, and has thus fulfilled the law of Christ (Gal 6:2). Pauls teaching in Romans 13:8-10 is very similar:
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet, and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

5 6

Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew. The New American Commentary, (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1992), 335. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God, 66. 7 Longenecker, Paul: Apostle of Liberty, 204. 8 Gordon Fee writes, Freedom from the enslavement of Torah paradoxically means to take on a new form of slavery that of loving servant hood to one another, Gods Empowering Presence, 426.

Love is not at odds with commandments.9 The commandments not to commit adultery, murder, steal, and covet are simply other ways of saying love your neighbor. James 2:8 says, If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, You shall love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well. Love is central to the law of Christ.10 Christians are called to seek the good of our neighbor, not our self (1 Cor 10:24). Above all, we are to put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony (Col 3:14). Paul tells Timothy, The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith (1 Tim 1:5). We are to love one another with brotherly affection (Rom 12:10). Paul prays that the Lord would make us increase and abound in love for one another and for all (1 Thess 3:12). Everything we do is to be done in love (1 Cor 16:24). Peter writes, Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart (1 Pet 1:22). All we do is for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31), but the immediate context of this verse is all about the other: giving no offense to Jews or Greeks or the church, trying to please everyone in everything we do, not seeking my own advantage but that of many (1 Cor 10:32-33). John also emphasizes the centrality of love. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light (1 John 2:10). The one who does not love his brother is not a child of God, but of the devil (1 John 3:10). For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another (1 John 3:11, cf. 2 John 5-6). We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death (1 John 3:14). By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers (1 John 3:16). And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us (1 John 3:23). First Thessalonians 4:7-9 is a very informative passage for the centrality of love in the new covenant law of Christ: For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. Three key Old Testament new covenant passages are Jeremiah 31, Isaiah 54, and Ezekiel 36, and Paul alludes to all three in this important passage. The Lord had prophesied through the prophet Ezekiel that he would sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you,
9

10

Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, 84. Moo, The Law of Christ as the Fulfillment of the Law of Moses, 368.

and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules (Ezek 36:25-27, cf. 11:19). In the new age the Lord would pour out his Spirit empowering the new Israel to walk in obedience. In chapter thirty-seven, Ezekiel recalled the valley of the dry bones upon whom YHWH would pour out his Spirit and bring life to the dead (37:6, 14). Paul is clearly alluding to this passage in 1 Thessalonians 4:8:11
1 Thess 4:8: kai didonta to pneuma autou to hagion eis hymas Ezek 36:27 LXX: kai to pneuma mou ds en hymin Ezek 37:14 LXX: kai ds to pneuma mou eis hymas 1 Thess 4:8: who gives his Holy Spirit to you Ezek 36:27: And I will put my Spirit within you Ezek 37:14: And I will put my Spirit within you

We have seen above that the New Testament writers viewed the new covenant as having been inaugurated by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Spirit was poured out at Pentecost (Acts 2). We have Gods Spirit and a new heart.12 Jesus appeals to Ezekiel 36 in his conversation with Nicodemus: unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:5-6).13 Jesus rebuked him for not being familiar with this truth, though he was a teacher of Israel. The new covenant is here, bringing with it the new birth where we are given the Spirit and a new heart. Being born from above enables and empowers believers to love one another. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God (1 John 4:7 my italics). In the next verse, Paul says, Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another (1 Thess 4:9). Because the Thessalonians have been given the new covenant promise of the Spirit, they have no need for instruction (though Paul is writing them in this verse) because they have been taught by God (theodidaktoi) to love one another. Paul makes up this word theodidaktoi but he is surely alluding to at least two passages: Isaiah 54 and Jeremiah 31, where we find promises that in the new covenant age God

11

T.J Deidun, New Covenant Morality in Paul (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1981), 18-22, 55-57; Jeffrey A.D Weima, 1-2 Thessalonians, in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. G.K. Beale and D.A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 878-880. 12 Commenting on 1 Thess 4:8, Gordon Fee writes, This usage reflects a Pauline understanding of the gift of the Spirit as the fulfillment of OT promises that Gods own Spirit will come to indwell his people, Gods Empowering Presence, 52. 13 Carson, John, 194-95.

himself will teach his people.14 In Jeremiahs great new covenant passage we read, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord (Jer 31:33-34; cf. 2 Cor 3:3). In the new covenant, we are taught by God. All will know the Lord. Putting together several texts (Jer 31, Ezek 11, 36, Joel 2) we see that all will know the Lord because all will have the Spirit. John writes, But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you (1 John 2:27). John was clearly aware of the promises of Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36.15 Paul also clearly alludes to (or quotes) Isaiah 54:13: All your children shall be taught by the Lord (didaktous theou).16 Isaiah is referring to the children of the new covenant (cf. Gal 4:27, John 6:45). Of course this chapter is in the midst of the gospel of the Old Testament, chapters 40-55, and it follows chapter fifty-three, the magnificent portrait of the suffering servant who will bring it all about. Isaiah 54 paints a picture of the new covenant, in light of the other covenants. Verses one to three contain allusions to the Abrahamic Covenant (Sarahs barrenness, room for Gentiles, offspring possessing the nations), verses 4-8 allude to the Mosaic Covenant (deserted wife, exile, Babylon), 9-17 alludes to the Noahic covenant. Verse ten speaks of the covenant of peace. This is equivalent to the new covenant and will be the fulfillment of all previous covenants.17 Paul sees this time as having arrived. The law is written not on tablets of stone but on our heart (2 Cor 3:3). We are taught by God. Paul goes a step further in defining what we are taught: to love one another (1 Thess 4:9)! This is the essence of the law (as we have seen from Matt 22:37-38, Gal 5:14, Rom 13:8-10). Love is at the heart of the law of Christ.

14 15

Deidun, New Covenant Morality in Paul, 20. Weima, 1-2 Thessalonians, 879. Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Barry G. Webb, The Message of Isaiah (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1996), 215. I am indebted to Webb for this whole paragraph.