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The law of love

In heaven, doing what God wants will be second nature. Till then, reflection on God’s law is an indispensable part of discerning what it means in practice to love God and to love our neighbour.

By: David McIlroy, Cambridge Papers
Posted:
Friday, 25 July 2008, 21:39 (MYT)
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[20]Rom. 10:4 is better translated ‘Christ is the goal of the law’ rather than ‘Christ is the end of the law.’

[21]Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, Hendrickson, 1994, pp.29, 510. See also Neh. 9:13.

[22]In understanding the task of reflecting what the Bible teaches us about God’s law, there are important hermeneutical, cultural and theological issues, but exploring those is beyond the scope of this paper.

[23]1 Cor. 9:9; 1 Tim. 5:18.

[24]‘Your bodies are members of Christ himself’ (1 Cor. 6:15); ‘your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit’ (1 Cor. 6:19); ‘you were bought at a price’ (1 Cor. 6:20).

[25]‘The two will become one flesh.’

[26]John Calvin, Instruction in Faith (1537), tr. by P. Fuhrmann, Westminster John Knox Press, 1992, pp.30–32.

[27]See Neh. 10:31 and 13:15–22.

[28]Mark 2:27.

[29]Lev. 27:30–32; Deut. 14:22; Mal. 3:8–10.

[30]See the dialectic at work in 1 John.

[31] Jürgen Moltmann, The Power of the Powerless, tr. by M. Kohl, London: SCM, 1983, p.42. Regrettably this insight is not followed through consistently by Moltmann in his other work: see ch. 2 of McIlroy, A Trinitarian Theology of Law, Paternoster, forthcoming.

[32]Hence the emphasis on being taught God’s laws: see Exod. 33:13; Deut. 4:10; 1 Sam. 12:23; and, above all, Ps. 119.

[33]John 20:17; 16:10, 17, 28; 14:1–3.

[34]Rom. 8:11; 1 Cor. 15:42–53.

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