Theme: “Love Is the Fulfillment of the Law”

Leading Question: Is the word “law” friendly or frightful?

Almost no one uses the word “law” in a friendly way. When someone says, “It’s the law!” It usually a hard-liner.

Let’s look at examples of the different ways we use law:

1. Mr. Thompson, you have broken the law.
2. You have fulfilled the requirements for your BA degree.
3. You broke your arm because you fell, breaking the law of gravity.

Question: Assign a “friendliness” number to each of those uses. Use this scale:

Negative				Neutral				Positive
-5	-4	-3	-2	-1	0	+1	+2	+3	+4	+5

Briefly describe why you gave the number you did.

Another way of looking at law is to reflect on the way we have used “law” to encourage people to “obey” seat belt requirements.

1. Buckle up. We love you.
2. Buckle up – or we’ll see you soon (sign at a hospital).
3. Buckle up; it’s our law.
4. Buckle up. It’s the law
5. Click it or ticket!

As you work your way down the list, the signs become more “persuasive,” then more expensive!

Now let’s plug in some biblical passages.

Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”


Romans 7:7 What then are we to say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”


Exodus 23:12 “Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest so that your ox and your donkey may have relief and your homeborn slave and the resident alien may be refreshed.


Jeremiah 31:31-34: The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.


Mark 2:27-28: Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath, 28 so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”


James 1:22-24: But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. 23 For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; 24 for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. 25 But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.


Romans 13:8: Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

Question: Where would you place these biblical passages on a good news/bad news scale?

Note. When God gave laws, he intended for them to be blessings.

Paul’s comments on the law in Romans 13 form a worthy conclusion to our quarter’s study on God’s love and justice. As the apostle of Grace, Paul is sometimes seen as the enemy of law. But rightly understood, he becomes a great defender of law as good news

Romans 13:8-10: Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Ellen White’s “Good News” Perspective on Law
A View from Her Mature Writings
Adaptation and Restoration of the God’s Ideal Law of Love

BEFORE SIN IN HEAVEN, THE ANGELS WERE VIRTUALLY UNAWARE OF LAW. “But in heaven, service is not rendered in the spirit of legality. When Satan rebelled against the law of Jehovah, the thought that there was a law came to the angels almost as an awakening to something unthought of. In their ministry the angels are not as servants, but as sons. There is perfect unity between them and their Creator. Obedience is to them no drudgery. Love for God makes their service a joy” (TMB 109).

BEFORE SIN ON EARTH, THE LAW WAS WRITTEN ON HUMAN HEARTS. “Adam and Eve, at their creation, had a knowledge of the law of God; they were acquainted with its claims upon them; its precepts were written upon their hearts. When man fell by transgression, the law was not changed, but a remedial system was established to bring him back to obedience” (PP 363).

AS HUMANKIND FELL AWAY FROM GOD, THE LAW WAS ADAPTED TO NEED: “If man had kept the law of God, as given to Adam after his fall, preserved by Noah, and observed by Abraham, there would have been no necessity for the ordinance of circumcision. And if the descendants of Abraham had kept the covenant, of which circumcision was a sign, they would never have been seduced into idolatry, nor would it have been necessary for them to suffer a life of bondage in Egypt; they would have kept God’s law in mind, and there would have been no necessity for it to be proclaimed from Sinai, or engraved upon the tables of stone. And had the people practiced the principles of the Ten Commandments, there would have been no need of the additional directions given to Moses” (PP 364).

THE DECALOGUE APPLIED THE PRINCIPLES OF LOVE: “The precepts of the Decalogue are adapted to all mankind and they were given for the instruction and government of all. Ten precepts, brief, comprehensive, and authoritative, cover the duty of man to God and to his fellowman; and all based upon the great fundamental principle of love. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind and thy neighbor as thyself” (Luke 10:27). In the ten commandments, these principles are carried out in detail and made applicable to the condition and circumstances of man” (PP 305).

ADDITIONAL LAWS ILLUMINED THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DECALOGUE: “The minds of the people, blinded and debased by slavery and heathenism, were not prepared to appreciate fully the far-reaching principles of God’s ten precepts. That the obligations of the Decalogue might be more fuly understood and enforced, additional precepts were given, illustrating and applying the principles of the Ten Commandments” (PP 310).

ALL THE LAWS WERE FOR THE GOOD OF THE PEOPLE: “The object of all these regulations was stated: they proceeded from no exercise of arbitrary sovereignty; all were given for the good of Israel” (PP 311).

THE LAW IS AGAIN INTERNALIZED: “The same law that was engraved upon the tables of stone, is written by the Holy Spirit upon the tables of the heart” (PP 372).