The Law of Love: the Great Corrective of the Greatest Commandment

One of the more popular forms of antinomianism in the modern church is to take love (which has already conveniently been made subjective) as the centerpiece. Now, of course, there are several New Testament texts that speak of love fulfilling or summarizing the law in one way or another (e.g. Mat. 7:12; Rom. 13:8-10; Gal. 5:23; 6:2; Jas. 2:8). Many have taken this to mean that love is, in some way, replacing the need for concrete, specific commandments. We may often hear something like this: “If the commandments of Jesus are so easy and simple, reducible to the Greatest Commandment, why do we need a whole Bible to do those two simple commandments?”

Love as a Universal—Not an Alternative

Love does indeed sum up the law. However, “summed up” or even “fulfill” means that love is something like the thread running through the whole law. It means the same as that love “binds them together” (Col. 3:10), or that it is “the greatest of these” (1 Cor. 13:13), or that it is the form of the Two Tables. Not coincidentally, if we look at the form of the Greatest Commandment, what do we find? First, love God. Second, love your neighbor. Now this should remind us of the order of the Ten Commandments. First, love God (Commandments 1-4). Second, love your neighbor (Commandments 5-10). In other words, all those New Testament verses that are brought forth do not mean that love is the replacement of concrete particular commandments but rather the form of them all. In fact, all the other commandments are just the many ways that we do love God or neighbor.

But why are loving God and others the two greatest commandments? We can show this by examining some of those verses already mentioned and others like them. If love is made the chief of fruits (Gal. 5:22), and the greatest of these (1 Cor. 13:13), and that which binds all other virtues together (Col. 3:10), then it stands to reason that we are dealing with something that is of the essence of God Himself, reflected in human beings. God is love (1 Jn. 4:8), and this is something that is at the heart of the triune nature of God. We should not be surprised that image bearers would be called upon to do good to others, so that especially we who are in Christ would be more like our Father in heaven (Mat. 5:43-48).

Love as the Heart of It—Not Just an Abstraction

One might then ask, “So what does it mean, practically speaking?” or “How do we know, according to Scripture, what this looks like?” Romans 13:8-10 is one of those passages that speaks about love summarizing the whole law. However, contrary to the teaching of the “love-antinomians,” God’s law actually shows us in specific terms how to love our neighbor. So for instance, in that place it says,

“For 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’” (v. 9).

The reason that obedience to these commandments is love, and requires love, is because the essential object in each of these commandments is our neighbor: the image of God. To obey the sixth is to protect and uphold his life. To obey the seventh, his marriage. To obey the eighth, his property. To obey the ninth, his good name. And so on with any other specifics. In all of this we are doing to others what we would have to be done unto us (Matt. 7:12).

We can further draw this out for anyone who still doubts that this is real love in the concrete specifics. We can offer a few concrete applications of the Golden Rule from that Second Table of the Law.

Commandment 5. Give the honor and obedience to your father / mother that you would want as you lead your children to maturity. 

Commandment 6. Protect the life of the weakest among us that you would require when you are at your most vulnerable. 

Commandment 7. Guard the sexual purity of that young man / lady before marriage as though you did not know whether he / she will be your spouse, and in such a way that you would want another man / woman to do the same for yours. 

Commandment 8. Labor as diligently for someone else’s investment, in which you have agreed to be employed for an income, as you would if the whole investment was your own. 

Commandment 9. Bring to light any truth where your neighbor has been lied about, thus bringing about damages; which, if you were in the same place, you would want the truth to be brought to light.

Commandment 10. Be as happy for the blessings allotted to your neighbor by God, as you would want others to share in the joy of those you have received.

We can clearly see that there is nothing forced or overly abstract about any of this. If we say that we love people, then it is hard to understand what complaint anyone could have against these commandments. These correspond to the ways that God designed authority, human life, sexuality, property, speech, and contentment. Doing these according to that design is what is good for real people.

“Love” as an Excuse—Versus the Hard Work of the Genuine Article

If one were to do a search for images online for “law of love” or “love your neighbor as yourself” or other parallel concepts, a very telling discovery awaits. There are an awful lot of depictions that reflect the love of self. There are many sentimental images of Evangelical worship—a very private, self-affirming, and emotive thing. One wants to shout back to the search engine: “No! I said ‘your neighbor,’” or “another,” or “Can you get me at least one other person in the concept?” One has to try “Good Samaritan” to find pictures of actual interpersonal activity. But this tells the whole story of those who would have “love” not do much of anything obligatory, doesn’t it?

Love is worshiped, so long as it is a mere feeling, and so long as it never gets out of the cage of that mirror in front of the beloved. Just as the man who, “desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” (Lk. 10:29)—just as that man was not motivated by actual love, so it is in our day. It turns out that loving other people in real life is hard. It takes real commands about real specifics that fit real circumstances. And if we don’t care about those details, well, then we don’t really care about people.

It would seem as if the real struggle over such commandments being loving is a suspicion that these do not in fact correspond to the real world. Disordered souls that disbelieve in God’s design seek to disobey in these specific moral arenas because, at some level, they appear repressive and unjust, and the God who made them is resented for it.

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