LOVE, LAW OR LICENCE?

The heart of Christian ethics
(Romans 13:8-14)

In this sermon, preached at Greyfriars Classical Service on 4 November 2007, Rob Yule begins by observing that biblical thought knows nothing of our tragic modern separation of personal morality from social justice. In his letter to the Romans Paul moves easily from social teaching about our Christian political responsibility, to homely advice about our personal moral conduct. Paul emphasises the priority of love — a love informed by the keeping of God’s commandments and an awareness of our accountability to God, avoiding the familiar extremes of legalism and licence.

There’s a tragic divorce today between personal morality and social ethics. It divides people into left and right, liberal and conservative. Conservatives tend to uphold personal morality but ignore social justice. Liberals advocate social justice and political involvement but are often permissive about personal and sexual ethics.

Biblical thought knows no such dichotomy. Here in Romans Paul’s teaching about political responsibility is all of a piece with his teaching about personal relationships. What he says about the state is sandwiched between two sections dealing with personal conduct; his political ethics is bracketed by two injunctions about Christian love — love for our enemies (12:20) and love for our neighbour (13:8-10).

The gold standard

Love is the gold standard, our supreme obligation. Paul writes, ‘Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.’ (13:8).

The supremacy of love represents a challenge to some evangelical Christians, who think that truth — what we believe — rather than love — how we behave — is the most important thing.

I come from an family of what one of my brothers calls ‘wall-to-wall ministers.’ Three generations of ministers have made a major contribution to the evangelical movement in the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand. But there is a family story that I would like to share with you to illustrate the priority of love.

My Uncle Bill was a tall, dignified man, a real gentleman, who ministered in churches in the south of New Zealand. He was brought up in a strong evangelical Presbyterian heritage. But, in his last years in a rest home in Invercargill, it was not his evangelical friends who visited him — it was the Catholic nuns. This experience had quite an impact on him. ‘If I had my ministry over again,’ he confided to his son-in-law, ‘I’d preach much more about love.’

Paul had a similar experience. He was a highly-trained rabbi, a brilliant theologian. He’d been a religious fanatic who had persecuted the early Christian movement and even murdered some of the earliest followers of Jesus, thinking he was doing God a service. But after his encounter with Jesus Paul measured himself against the gold standard:

‘If I… fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I am nothing.’ (1 Corinthians 13:2-3).

The golden rule

Paul says that love is a supreme — one could say, a transcendent — obligation. It is the fulfilment of God’s law. ‘Whoever loves his fellow human being has fulfilled Torah’, God’s law (13:8, Complete Jewish Bible).

Paul sums up the entire purpose of God’s law in what we call the golden rule — the requirement to love one another as much as we love ourselves:

‘The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandments there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Love does no harm to its neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.’ (13:9-10).

Summing up all the law in a single principle is a very Jewish thing to do. Doing so seems to have been the mark of a great rabbi. Rabbi Hillel did this, a generation before Jesus, when he summed up the law in the negative form of the golden rule: ‘What is hateful to you, don’t do to your fellowman: this is the whole Torah, all the rest is explanation.’(Shabbat, 31a, quoted in Geoffrey Wigoder, ed., The Encyclopaedia of Judaism, p. 341).

Jesus did this too, in response to a question from a Torah expert, ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replied:

‘ “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’ (Matthew 22:34-40, cf. Mark 12:28-31).

Here in Romans is not the only occasion Paul summed up God’s law in a single principle. In his letter to the Galatians he also reduced all God’s requirements to the golden rule: ‘The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” ’ (Galatians 5:14).

Our chief duty to God is to love one another. The heart of love is social responsibility — concern for our neighbour. If we truly love others, we won’t violate their marriage, take their life, steal their property, or want what belongs to them (13:9-10).

The golden mean

In his ethical counsel here Paul give us a golden mean between two extremes:

One extreme is legalism, too many rules — losing the moral wood in a thicket of regulations. We might think this was a particular tendency of the rabbis of Jesus’ day — but are our parliamentarians and bureaucrats any better? Life, business and commerce gets stifled by endless rules and regulations.

The other extreme is licence, no rules — as in that peculiarly modern form of moral counsel called ‘situation ethics’ — just doing what love dictates in any situation.

Legalism loses a sense of humanity and proportion in ethical decisions. A classic instance is New Zealand’s 2007 anti-smacking legislation — trying to stop what is grossly wrong — the physical abuse of infants and children — by outlawing the restrained and appropriate use of physical discipline which is the normal means of training children in ethical discernment.

Situation ethics, on the other hand, ignores how unreliable our subjective feelings and passions are for providing moral guidance in the heat of compromising situations. Just do what seems loving is hardly the best guidance when tempted to be sexually unfaithful, to have another box of chocolates, or to gamble away your week’s wages. Feeling love is no guarantee of right action. Love needs an objective moral standard. God’s commandments are necessary to ensure that our actions are right in any given situation.

Paul’s counsel is a golden mean between legalism and licence. In the words of David Stern, Paul avoids ‘both the wooden application of law and the unreliability of subjective love-feelings.’ He ‘combines the sensitivity of Spirit-inspired love…with respect for ethical instruction.’ (Jewish New Testament Commentary, p. 430).

Paul doesn’t say that ‘love is the end of the law’, but that ‘love is the fulfilment of the law.’ (13:10). Or as David Stern translates it, ‘Love is the fullness of Torah’ (Complete Jewish Bible). Love doesn’t supersede or replace the law. Rather love is what informs and motivates our keeping of the law. The law must be applied lovingly and appropriately in each situation.

The gold pavement

Paul concludes his ethical teaching with a strong incentive to moral living: remembering that the day of the Lord is near. It was stumbling upon this passage at a time of personal crisis that brought the dissolute student Augustine to his senses and to a life-transforming faith in Jesus Christ:

‘You know what sort of times we live in, and so you should live properly. It is time to wake up. You know that the day when we will be saved is nearer now than when we first put our faith in the Lord. Night is almost over and day will soon appear. We must stop behaving as people do in the dark and be ready to live in the light. So behave properly, as people do in the day. Don’t go to wild parties or get drunk or be vulgar or indecent. Don’t quarrel or be jealous. Let the Lord Jesus be as near to you as the clothes you wear. Then you won’t try to satisfy you selfish desires.’ (13:11-14, CEV)

What Paul is saying is that we Christians are children of the age to come, who already live in the coming day of the Lord. So we are not to be involved in the shameful, furtive, undercover ‘deeds of darkness’, but to live ‘in the light’ of the coming day. We Christians are citizens of heaven. We are not to seek our fulfilment in the sordid back streets of this world, but on the gold pavement of heaven, where God is our light and the Lamb our lamp (Revelation 22:21, 23). Paul’s words echo the words of Jesus, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’ (John 8:12).

Alexander Solzhenitsyn tells of a little old lady who was arrested by the secret police for being part of an underground network who’d smuggled an Orthodox bishop out of Soviet Russia. They bullied her, shook their fists at her, and threatened her with her life. But she stood her ground. ‘You can’t kill me. I’m your only contact with the underground network. In any case,’ she said, ‘I’d be happy to meet God this very minute!’ You can bet they weren’t!

Contrary to a common misunderstanding, the Christian hope of life to come doesn’t deprive this earthly life of its importance, but invests it with ethical significance. The awareness of our accountability to God and of our future destiny is a powerful incentive to control our passions and live a purposeful and productive life. The Dutch theologian Hendrikus Berkhof rightly says, ‘this perspective lends an eternal importance to our earthly life. For judgement and consummation tell us how seriously God takes this life and how great a responsibility he has given us in this life.’ (Christian Faith, p. 492).

Rob Yule, 4 November 2007
© 2007, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church