How to Think about the Law in Christ

[Sung Psalm: 110]

What does it mean to love God and neighbor? Last time we saw that the moral law, as Paul saw it in Romans 1-2, is focused around two things:

• everyone knows who God is (and that they are supposed to worship him),

• everyone knows what God requires (and that death is the result for disobedience).

In other words, the moral law includes both our relationship with God and our relationship with others.

Nowadays there’s a strong tendency to argue that our relationships with others can be dealt with entirely apart from the question of our relationship with God. That’s called secularism. Secularism says that in the public sphere we should set aside the question of “what it means to love God” – and deal only with the question of “what it means to love neighbor.”

But as soon as you do that, you are saying that you will not love God with all your heart! If you are going to love the LORD with all your heart, then he needs to be at the center of all you do....