Of Law, and then of Love

If our Christian life is still about what we can and cannot do, about what a true disciple does and does not do, then we are still living under "law". Our focus is not on love and obedience, it is on law and observance. It is about the flesh, and walking by the flesh. It is about judging others by what we see and perceive from our own experience.

Even if our Christian life from the point of view of the cross is about what we must suffer, what we must leave behind, about a set list of things we must give up, it is still missing something.  Discipleship is not a set course, or program. We are not members of a monastery. We are followers of Christ!

That leads to me to the point - love. Love is about obedience. It is about setting our eyes and mind of Christ. Our own sufferings, what we have given up to follow Christ, our nets, they have ceased. They have disappeared from our thoughts.

"Law" is when we look back at Sodom, when we groan about the "Egypt" we have left behind with its leeks and garlics, when we moan about manna and water. "Love" is when our eyes are set upon the Promised Land.

Without "love" we cannot understand God's Law, because at the heart of God's commandments was Love.

Jesus and the Pharisees. Two groups that practiced and believed almost the same thing. The imperceptible difference was that the focus of one was upon the Law of Love, namely the setting of our hearts upon God, and the other, the Law  itself. Note that the Pharisees loved God. Love was not absent from their belief and their practice. And note even more that Jesus was not antinomian. He did not command His disciples to murder and steal and to break as many laws as they could in some kind of libertarian defiance.

No.

"Do you still use the internet?"

"Do you still read secular books?"

These are probably not questions that stem from "love", but from "law".

What I mean by "law" is the kind of Christian life lived by observance of rules as opposed to allegiance to Christ.

It is ultimately about love, trust, and obedience. These are not contrary to the Law. If we truly understand the Bible then we know that love is the Torah. If we know Torah then we would understand Love. It our focus is fleshly, then we would react and say, "But that's not the only thing. Aren't we supposed to eat, to drink, to dress, to talk, in a certain way?"

The demands of Love, the demands of the Incarnate Jesus in person, the demands of a living God, will point a finger straight into the heart of the matter. Our fleshly evasions are to no avail.

Love is a heart, it is a perception. It we truly had that within us, quite naturally, the "things of the world will strangely dim."