The Law of Love

The Law of Love

Topic: Love

Throughout this entire letter to the Galatians, Paul has emphasized the importance of God's grace, freely given, appropriated by faith alone. He warns against those who would hold up the Old Testament Law as a standard one must behaviorally achieve to be accepted by God. The law is important as a schoolmaster, showing us the best way to live. The law is important in corralling us and our sinful nature to be able to live with each other in some degree of harmony. Paul wants to make it very clear that you and I cannot save ourselves by obedience to the law. In fact, it is impossible to fully obey the law.

That is why Advent is so important to us. For in these weeks we focus with intensity on the coming of Emmanuel, God with Us, in the human form of a baby who grows up to not just set a good example, but to literally die, bearing our sins on the Cross. Through His atoning work, the resurrected Christ offers you and me God's grace, His unmerited favor, providing us eternal life, God-quality life for this life and for the life to come. Don't let anyone give a list of all the hoops you have to jump through to merit God's favor. Our good works, our righteous works, are the spinoff of the life that has received the gift of salvation. We then, with the Holy Spirit in our lives, grow the fruit of the Spirit, which captures the very essence of the Law.

Paul has stated it in Galatians 5:14: "The entire law is summed up in a single command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

Once we have captured the essence of this teaching, we are able to distinguish between the downward spiral of a life lived motivated by the sinful nature and a life lived motivated by the Holy Spirit, bearing the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. Today's text basically preaches itself as we see what the law of love looks like in the life of a believer. This is an exciting, liberating challenge, a kind of checklist to see how you and I are doing, not in earning God's favor but living vital, productive lives as followers of Jesus.

First, the law of love restores a fallen brother/sister gently.

Paul writes, "Brothers , if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently" (Galatians 6:1).

The Greek word here for sin is paraptoma. It does not mean a deliberate sin, a life determined to live opposed to God's teachings. It is that word that refers to the kind of slipping and sliding one does on an icy road, or a rain-slicked dangerous mountain path.

Legalistic Christianity is extremely severe on brothers and sisters who slip and fall. Paul is alerting us to the acid test as to how serious we are about grace. In my legalism, I am inclined to point the finger and gossip about the brother or sister who has slipped into sin. Wherein I am preoccupied with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and grateful for what God has done for me, I am prepared to restore gently the fallen brother or sister — because I am very much aware of how God has restored me by His grace.