Ephesians 3:14-19 English Standard Version

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family^[a] in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Nowhere in any version of the bible can the exact phrase “law of love” be found. This is not a plea to create new doctrine but to see the active component of love that dwells in our hearts.

We have a sense of what law is because of the demands placed in scripture and the resulting punishment for disobedience, death. Since we learned from our Lord that we were dead in our sins before we were reborn, and the life we now live in Christ has a new nature. Since Christ is our Lord and He dwells in our hearts, then we must unravel the mystery Paul speaks to in the opening verses of this chapter.

If we are to be filled with this love that is perfect then we should come to know its nature, how it acts, and the power that it contains to change lives. The law of love should be seen as the nature of love, how love acts and how it changes our lives by His presence in us.

We have been given 1 Corinthians 13 to understand how love acts. When we fail to live up to that standard of love we have violated the law of love. Unlike legal laws, the punishment for violating the law of love is not death, it is conviction. Our conscience is pricked just as Paul’s was when he was knocked off his high horse on the road to Damascus. 

Proverbs 30:12 Authorized (King James) Version (AKJ) There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness.

There was a generation prior to this proverb that embodied the truth in this saying. There have been many generations since to do likewise.

Resist the temptation to use this verse as a means of attacking those living today that embody the truth in it. Doing so makes this a political argument because the laws of men have been changed to allow that which God would deem unholy to be legal.

Since we are Kingdom dwellers, meaning the Lord of our lives dwells within us, then we must accept that our frail human bodies live in a world that is ruled by the prince of the power of the air. Satan has not yet been chained up and the keys to death removed from him.

Once we take spiritual matters into our own hands and react out of emotional disgust for what we see being done in the world, we have given into the temptation of Satan. Placing spiritual matters in his court pulls us out of Kingdom living and into the court of popular opinion. We will win no one to Christ by arguing in that court.

John 12:30-32 English Standard Version

³⁰ Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. ³¹ Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. ³² And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

We have been drawn to Christ and there is no place for Satan here in our hearts. God protects us here but when we enter into the realm of politics, we are playing Satan’s game. We have succumbed to his temptation.

Obey the law of love that dwells in our hearts, keep Satan at bay.