Galatians 5:14 Commentary and Bible Study

The law is not complicated when rightly understood, but can be simplified into one word – love. All the detailed requirements of the law are simply and profoundly summed up by Christ in two easy to understand commandments: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets’ (Matthew 22:37-40). Two things cause this simple summary of the law to need to be expanded: sin and ignorance. The law also acts as a restraint on the unwilling, and so it must go into ever increasing detail for those who are trying to avoid obedience. Sheep wander, and if they are to be kept in one place, a fence must be placed around them. The law acts as a restraint on human wickedness that holds back those who would burst out in every direction. But the believer also makes use of the law in a positive way. The Ten Commandments define love and expound it to him because of his ignorance, for they express the major areas of moral responsibility which love must fulfil. The law teaches the believer how to love God by setting before him duties of worship and service to God, as well as how to love our fellow man. It is because man is made in the image of God that the moral law reflects our duties to man as well as to God. There are no commandments relating to the animal kingdom or towards the natural world other than when these things are viewed as property which belongs to another human being, but the last six commandments all relate to human relations and interactions. These are made the subject of the divine law because the image of God in man gives him a dignity that sets him above all other creatures on earth. When we love our fellow man, we are loving God by proxy. God spells out our duties in different areas so that none who are inclined to disobey can excuse themselves, and so that the willing but ignorant believer can advance in holiness. But love has knowledge and wisdom within itself. When it comes across a new situation, then it is its own instructor and teaches itself how it ought to act. That does not mean that the law is redundant, but it means that the same law is written on the heart and this inner knowledge can be accessed particularly clearly when love takes control of the heart. Therefore let the Judaizers, who are so keen on the law and pretend such anxiety to keep it, grasp that only love can truly keep the law, for love keeps both the letter of the law and the spirit. But love is only possible for those who have died to the law and who have received the grace of God, since none can love God except those who know that he first loved them. We cannot love God while we are still battling against his condemnation of our sin, and while our consciences confirm his anger towards us. Therefore true love is only found in those who have been forgiven (2 Peter 1:9).