Love Is The Fulfillment Of The Law, Part III

I’m taking a short break in my personal journaling through Romans to cover a topic that may either be just what God is guiding me through at this time in my life, or it may be that this is a prevalent confusion and therefore it deserves some study. 

Today's is a little long, but I hope you hang in there. This is the conclusion and it was a blessing to me when God taught it to me.

Part III

So to this point by exploring only a few verses, most of which are derived from just two or three letters of the New Testament (and by that I mean the other 63 or 64 books of the Bible also support my previous conclusions, but there’s no need to lay out every passage here), we’ve established two main conclusions:

1.     Love is the key attribute which ought to characterize a Christian’s life. The root from which that reality grows and on which it is established is the fact that love is part of God’s character.

2.     The Law is “good and holy and just,” it was designed with specific purposes in mind (which it has fulfilled) and it will benefit us if we do it, because the law is an extension of God character. The things in the Law are “good and holy and just” not because they are laws established by God (as is the case with the local, state, and federal governments) but because they encapsulate in our temporal existence things which God would do (thus, when God became a person He did fulfill the requirements of the Law – see Romans 8:3, 4)

So here we are back to the original issue. How do these two essentials converge? We know the statement “love is the fulfillment of the law” is true, but what I’ve found many a Christian confused about is why that statement of Paul’s is even true?!

This is how this works: Love and the Law both are extensions of God’s character. True love and true holy acts are only judged “true” if they meet the pass the litmus test of truth – God and His character. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the Law because anything that God would do (the Law, though I am not saying the Law is comprehensively what God would do) is ultimately also loving. To put it another way, if I do the things in the Law I will also be loving others. The converse is also true: if I love others, as God would love them, I will naturally do the things prescribed by God in the Law.

A conclusion, somewhat: So many times I have heard believers loosely quote the song “love is all we need.” While we cannot deny those words in themselves, a Christian must reject any concept of love that does not define itself and confine itself to the fulfillment of the law! Love does not require approval. Love does not demand tolerance. Love does not necessitate conflict-avoidance. After all, within the Law God prescribed do’s and do not’s. Love is serving everyone we meet, but only if it is in his or her best interest and if it brings glory to God. Love means accepting and respecting those around us, but does not mean we capitulate or compromise with the moral protections in the Law.

Today’s study has been somewhat barren of Scripture as I worked through an understanding of Scripture that is both a responsible and a cohesive interpretation of God’s word. At this point now, though, we are able to rightly understand our key verse: “… love is the fulfillment of the law” because now we can correctly appreciate and apply the first half of the verse!

Romans 13:10 in its entirety reads, “Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Why does love fulfill the law? Answer: actions, if they can be categorically listed as “loving” are harmless toward others and that is precisely what God is driving toward in giving us the Law. In it, He is telling us how we ought to live in order to not harm our friends, family and others around us.

At this point someone may object that I am reading my opinions or religious upbringing into these verse. That’s an important concern. I am confident that I am not doing that, however, because of the context – the verses that come before and after Romans 13:10 – confirm it:

“Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ ‘You shall not covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Notice what God says through Paul in verse eight – “he who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Paul’s justification for saying we should “owe” love to others is because love will fulfill the Law. Now we can make the same substitution that Paul makes and shorten this passage some for clarity.

“Owe no one anything except to […] fulfilled the law [toward them]. And remember that it is easy to apply the law if you judge all of your actions by the commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Christians must get beyond the compulsion or tendency to minimalize the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus and the first generation of Christians likely only had those Scriptures and they were sufficient at that time to spread the gospel by testifying of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection. They were the foundation for everything written in the New Testament.

What does that mean for us? We know that the New Testament writers warned all believers (repeatedly) not to attempt to attain or maintain salvation through efforts to live according to the Law. On the other hand, they also commended believers to do the precepts on which the Law was founded; in other words, Christians were commanded to apply the underlying purpose for which God gave the laws (that concept requires a whole another study, so don't feel you have to trash all of your synthetic-blend clothing or never shave your face or burn off your tattoos. That's not what I'm saying!).

Christian, be encouraged. Though the Old Testament has specific purposes and should not be taken out of the context of the new covenant through Jesus, it is not outdated. The Law is not the result of the efforts of some Hebrew men to control a society. The Law was received from God and is not a black spot on the history of neither Jews nor Christians. We err when we dismiss the Law. We err when we pursue acceptability before God by the Law. We err when we fail to define love the way God defines love. We err when we let the world tell us what love should look like.

Let us not err, but let us glorify God in this matter!