Galatians 5:14

14. Law… love From the law of Moses we are emancipated into the law of love. While that love inspires us to run in the way of the law, there is a perfect unity of love, law, and liberty. We act not from compulsion of law; we are in that sense not under law; because our heart freely and spontaneously runs with the law. Yet if, when our love grows cold, or when temptation appeals to our lower nature, we sin and grow discordant, the law revives and we die. It is when our hearts and will vary from the law, because not springing from love, that we feel first the slavery, and then the condemnation, of law.

Fulfilled Not summed up, but obeyed and carried out. When Paul says that all the law is fulfilled in love to our neighbour, we think, contrary to most commentators, that he means all the duties of man to man. This is not “arbitrary” limitation, for it is in the sphere of mutual human duties ( one another, Galatians 5:13; Galatians 5:15) that Paul is speaking. So, also, in Romans 13:8-11. Paul there enumerates several commandments, and then adds, that if there is any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Of course in that passage, as in this, we must understand Paul as speaking within the scope of the second table of the Decalogue. It is no doubt true, that the holy love which in a man fulfils one table, will also fulfil the other. But that is what Paul is here neither saying nor assuming.

Love thy neighbour as thyself From this clause we may assume, 1. That it is right to love thyself. Self-love, not exaggerated into selfishness, is right. Such a renunciation of self as does not desire one’s own safety, happiness, wellbeing, present and eternal, forms no part of religion. 2. We owe duties to ourselves which others do not owe to us. We cannot demand that others should perform for us those duties which we owe to ourselves. Such a demand would, on our part, be selfish and tyrannical. 3. We owe relative duties to wife, husband, parents, children, which we cannot demand others to perform for us and in our stead. We must love our neighbour so well as not to demand that he perform for us those duties that belong to us. We must leave him time and liberty to perform those duties for himself and his which belong to him. 4. Reciprocally, what we do not rightfully, and by this constitution of things demand, of our neighbour, our neighbour cannot demand from us. We do not claim to love him better than ourselves; and if we so love him as to release him from performing these strictly personal duties for us, we may relieve ourselves from performing his for him. If we claim to reduce the scale of duties to be performed by ourselves for others, we must reduce the scale of duties we demand from others. We adopt thereby the rule that is right and fair for all.

This love is a moral principle. It has different degrees of the emotional in different temperaments. And when expressed in intellectual and practical terms it becomes the Golden Rule.

This principle of love needs the blessed Spirit of God to quicken it into a true life. Nevertheless the law of the second table is often, apparently, more completely fulfilled by natural men than the law of the first. There are men who, in practical life, are just, fair, and benevolent to their fellow-man, but who are little reverent, grateful, or devout to God, their true benefactor. Judged by man, they are all that is right; judged by God, what are they?