God's law is love. In fact, as John, the Revelator, noted, God is love. The earthly throne of Jehovah, the throne from which he judged the children of Israel was the 'mercy seat'. It was perched on the ark of the covenant which enclosed Israel's law (the Ten Commandments written on tablets of stone). This symbolized God's judgment: law is less than love toward God and man.
Often, men stumble in judgment as Micah observed (Micah 6:6-15): "O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Micah was outraged that judges in Israel executed the law without love toward God and man--using "wicked balances" and "deceitful weights"--respecting persons and not fearing God. Then, as now, laws were executed without the priority and perspective that only love of God and man brings. He denounced elevated exactions under human law: "thousands of rams..... rivers of oil, my firstborn for my transgression". Micah worried: to expect men to do more than what is just, merciful, and humble toward God might be too much--they might muddle love and law.
Love of God and man is what Jesus embodied. For omitting vain observances, for committing acts of love arguably prohibited by law, for chastening others out of love, Jesus was arrested, condemned, and crucified.
So began a historic tug-of-war between love and law. Consider another example: legalism deceived Paul. And it later defied his preaching. That tension persists: loveless legalism recurs today.
Laws and judgment are honest and simple when they are based on love of God and man. They don't need volumes of legalese nor expert interpretations and arguments--the least and the layman understands them; they are applied unequivocally to everyone: no one is above or beneath the law. Legal priorities and perspectives are ordered by love of God and man. Love confirms the moral authority of the judge, legislator, and executor. Even the censured are elevated by such laws. In short, where charity is the law, there is security and stability.
In contrast, unless it is founded on love of God and man, human law oppresses. It makes some men the conquest of others. Those that lack love resort to legalism to exalt themselves and to abase others. Multiplying and magnifying commandments in minutiae, like Pharisees, they make themselves a law which others can't know or keep--preferring certain outward performances to uncertain inward faith and love--preferring substance and social standing to the insecurity of seeking God's will. With a corner on law and lawyers, they condone (ie. for profit) or condemn and divide others at will. As the law itself, they acknowledge no interpretations of law but their own. Their law-ful-less-ness seeks security for self even as it keeps others insecure. This then is their doctrine and law: to be alone established in the earth; to be alone exalted everywhere. Ultimately, the dark edicts of men eclipse the light of God's love. Men's hearts fail; love wanes and waxes cold. Man, following such law-ful-less-ness, deserts God's love in favor of secular security and becomes apostate.
Then, the wicked rule; but God is not mocked: out of love, he defers judgment--granting men the consolation they choose. Some crave secular security however fleeting, however licentious, and however hazardous to one's soul; others put their faith in God's love, peace, and security, however tenuous it may seem to some. Ultimately, men will reap the fruit that they have sown. Thorns will bear thorns. And vineyards will bear grapes. Without love and without God, human laws and commandments are just snares both to the trappers and to those trapped by them. They condemn the persons they judge uncharitably (and therefore unjustly) and condemn the judge, legislator, and executor for their lack of love. The people lose their respect for law when it respects persons. Without the priority and perspective only love can lend, authority is made contemptible--and must rely on cults of personality, travesties, and surveillance to maintain order. Eventually, legalism--law, without love of God and man--invites fearful insecurity for all. Unchecked, law-ful-less-ness will consume all secular security. And all but the poor and meek, those who put their trust in God, will be left without consolation.
Without love of God and man, fear and compulsion prevails. Fearful and insecure because they deny God and love and distrust others, the law-ful-less consult the Oracles of technology (unconstitutionally and uncharitably) to peer in upon others, to ascertain the color of their thoughts, to discover disagreeable propensities that might be prosecuted or retroactively outlawed for arrests and convictions, to stamp out and counter discouraging and dissenting words before they are spoken, and etc. Ironically, this acute judgment judges them. It leaves them without consolation even in the kingdom they make to themselves. Love and truth rots in them. What they are becoming, treacherous and barbarous misanthropists, is what they see in surround and what they produce by contact. Their own madness descends upon them: treacherous, they cannot trust (ie. in truth), barbarous, they know no sympathy (ie. for self); without trust and sympathy, because they are human, they can have no emotional security. So they seek physical security in cynical community, in perishable accumulations, in sleepless, ubiquitous surveillance, and in arms. But security defies them: human, they are incapable of insuring their own unassailable security--and daily security seems slighter to them. For their continuing vulnerability, for His concept of and conditions on security, they resent God and begrudge the faithful. This unholy social cycle spins. And security is daily more elusive because of the treachery, barbarism, and inequality introduced by the law-ful-less into their own kingdom. Ultimately, the means will be the end: the cycle will end with those who set it in motion--when they let the love of God and man back into their laws and lives or when treachery and barbarism cease to respect persons.
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