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The Amish Voice 2
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and loves his neighbor. The believer is to walk and live under the
greatest of laws—the law of love. Love is the guiding law of the
believer’s life and walk.
OUTLINE:
1. Liberty—love—is the great call of the believer (v.13).
2. Love is serving others (v.14).
3. Love is not offending, but caring for one’s neighbor (v.14).
4. Love is not biting and devouring one another (v.15).
1. LIBERTY—LOVE—IS THE GREAT CALL OF THE
BELIEVER (v.13).
It has been well established that the believer does not live by the law
nor by some work or act of goodness. The believer knows that he can
never become perfect, no matter how much good he does. He knows
that he cannot keep enough laws nor can he work to make himself
like God. He knows that he is short, far short, of God. If he is ever to
be acceptable to God, it has to be because God loves him enough. . .
to provide an Ideal Righteousness for him.
to provide Someone to bear his punishment for having
violated the law.
The believer knows that God has loved him and everyone else that
much. He knows that God has loved the world so much that he sent
His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to do both things for him and for
all the people of the earth. He knows. . . .
that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life and secured the Ideal
Righteousness for him.
that Jesus Christ died for him—died bearing the judgment of
the law for him.
The point is this: when a person believes this about Christ—that
Christ is His Savior—God takes that man’s belief and counts it as
righteousness. The man becomes acceptable to God. This is what the
believer knows: he is not acceptable to God because he works and
becomes better by keeping some law or rule or ritual. He is
acceptable to God because Christ has set him free from having to
struggle to be good enough to be saved and always wondering if he
has done enough good. Man no longer has to work to keep laws to be
saved. Living by law was always a hopeless task that left man lost
and helpless. Man is saved by the grace of God in giving His Son for
the world: by believing that Jesus Christ is his Savior—that Jesus
Christ died for him. However, having said this, note two things.
1. There is the danger of license. A question needs to be asked: if
Christ sets us free from the law, does this mean that a person can
believe in Christ and then live as he wants, doing his own thing? Can
he use his liberty as an occasion to satisfy the flesh, knowing that
God will forgive him? Can a person continue to seek the things of the
world and give way to the desires and lusts of his flesh? Can he
believe in Christ and still live in worldliness? No! A thousand times
no, Scripture declares!
A person who thinks and declares such an idea fails to understand
belief—true belief. In the Bible belief does not mean intellectual
belief, to just believe something in the mind. Belief means a
committed belief, to believe something with one’s life. To believe
Christ is to commit one’s life to Christ. Just think about it for a
moment, and it becomes perfectly clear: if a person is not willing to
commit his life to Christ, he does not believe in Christ. He could not
believe, not really; for if he really believed, he would beyond all
question give all he is and has to the Son of God. (See Ro.6:16;
He.5:9.)
2. There is the restraint of love. A person who thinks that belief in
Christ frees him and gives him license to sin does not understand
what love is. This is the subject of the present passage. The true
believer is freed from having to secure God’s approval by law, but
love is the one restraint that is placed upon him. The believer needs
no restraint but love. There are at least two reasons for this.
God has loved him, so the person who truly sees the love of
God is drawn to love God and to love all God’s creatures.
“For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we
thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead:
and that he died for all, that they which live should not
henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which
died for them, and rose again” (2 Co.5:14-15).
Love embraces all the commandments of God. Jesus Himself
said so, and the fact is clearly seen in the points of his
passage.
“Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, 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” (Mt.22:36-40).