Law of Love

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. 

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