Love Defined by the Commandments

The claim in this chapter may be the most beautiful one in this part of the book:

“What the Spirit engraves on the heart is the love in which the Son of God died in my place. That is the law of love, not the Ten Commandments. Love is God’s true law.”

It is hard to argue with a claim like that, and for the most part we should not argue with it. It puts the cross at the center. It says that what changes a person from the inside is not a list but the love of God. Much of it is simply true, and the Bible says so in so many words.

We will therefore begin with what is true, and then turn to the one small word in the claim that does all the damage. That word is “not.”

What Is True

The love of God really is placed in the heart by the Spirit:

Romans 5:5 and elpis ἐλπίς el-pece'(hope) does not put to shame, because the agape ἀγάπη ag-ah'-pay(love) of God has been poured out in our kardia καρδία kar-dee'-ah(heart, soul-domain)s through the hagio(holy) pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit) who was given to us.

The word is agape (ἀγάπη), love, and Paul says that it has been poured out in our hearts through the Spirit “who was given to us.”

His love also comes first, and ours is the answer:

1 John 4:19 We love Him because He first loved us.

We do not love God in order to make Him love us. He moves first, and our love is the response.

The claim gets both of these right. It goes wrong at the next step: “the law of love, not the Ten Commandments.” That sentence sets love and the commandments against each other, and the Bible never does that. It does something else instead: it defines love by the commandments.

How the Bible Defines Love

The surest way to learn what a word means is to look where the writer defines it. John tells his readers in plain words what love is:

1 John 5:2-3 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God — that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.

“For this is the love of God — that we keep His commandments.” That is not a passing remark but a definition: the love of God is “that we keep His commandments.” And in case anyone should hear that as a burden, John adds at once that “His commandments are not burdensome.”

He says it again in his second letter:

2 John 1:6 And this is love: that we walk according to His commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you walk in it.

Two letters carry the same message. John does not say that love replaces the commandments; he says that love is walking in them.

Yeshua Himself had said the same:

John 14:15 If you agapao ἀγαπάω ag-ap-ah'-o(love) Me, keep My commandments.

Love and keeping the commandments are not two different roads. One is the road, and the other is the walking.

Where the Two Great Commandments Came From

Someone will surely answer that Yeshua summed it all up in love. When He was asked which commandment was the greatest, He did not list the Ten. He said to love God and to love your neighbor.

He did say that, and this is the scene:

Matthew 22:37-40 And Yeshua said to him: "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your kardia(heart, soul-domain) and with all your psyche ψυχή psoo-khay'(soul) and with all your nous νοῦς nooce(intellect, spiritual domain).' This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments depend the whole nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) and the Prophets."

Yet Yeshua did not make up those two commandments on the spot. He quoted both of them from the Torah:

Deuteronomy 6:5 And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul (nephesh נֶפֶשׁ neh'-fesh) and with all your might.

Leviticus 19:18 You shall not avenge, and you shall not bear a grudge against the sons of your people, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD.

The first comes from Deuteronomy. The second, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” comes from Leviticus, in the middle of a chapter full of commandments about harvests, wages, and honest scales. The law of love is not a new law that arrived to replace the Torah. The law of love is written in the Torah’s own words.

Hanging on Two Pegs

Yeshua then says what these two commandments have to do with all the others: “On these two commandments depend the whole nomos(law) and the Prophets.”

The Greek word for “depend” is kremannymi κρεμάννυμι krem-an'-noo-mee, to hang. It is the word for hanging something on a peg or a nail.

Picture an old farmhouse with a row of pegs by the back door, where the coats, hats, ropes, and tools of the household hang. The pegs carry everything. Suppose someone pointed at the pegs and said, “These are what really matter, so we can throw out everything hanging on them.” Nothing would be left but two bare pegs on a wall. Suppose instead that someone tore the pegs out because the coats are what people actually wear. Then everything would fall to the floor.

Yeshua does neither. The whole Torah and the Prophets hang on love of God and love of neighbor. The love holds the commandments up, and the commandments are what the love is holding. Take away either one, and what remains is no longer what He described.

The law of love and the Ten Commandments, then, are not two laws. They are one law, the commandments hanging on love.

How the Ten Begin

One more thing brings us back to the first line of the Ten Commandments, which we read in Chapter 38: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of servants” (Exodus 20:2).

The Ten Commandments do not begin with a demand. They begin with a God who loved a people enough to bring them out of slavery. Love comes first, at Sinai just as at the cross, and the commandments follow as the way a loved people lives.

When the claim says that the Spirit writes “the law of love, not the Ten Commandments,” it splits in two what God gave as one. The Spirit pours out the love of God in our hearts, and the love of God, John says, is this: that we keep His commandments.

The claim does have a stronger form, however, and it comes with a verse of its own. Paul speaks of “the nomos(law) of the pneuma(spirit) of zoe ζωή dzo-ay'(life)” that “has set me free from the nomos(law) of sin and of death” (Romans 8:2), and the claim takes that verse to mean that the Spirit is now our only law and the old law of death is gone.