Law and the Spirit (Wednesday, Week 10, Year 1, 2021)

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Laws are made, promulgated and enforced for the maintenance of order, promotion of justice and enthronement of peace and sanity. I may be right to say that laws are created for the sake of love. it is sufficient to say that the spirit of the law is love. In other words, every law must be at the service of love. That is why it is recommended that those who make and enforce laws must create room for exceptions. There must be some flexibility in the interpretation and application of the law. For a law to serve its purpose then, it must be interpreted, understood and applied with particular reference to its spirit not the letters with which it is formulated (i.e. the written code itself).

 

In 2 Cor. 3:4-11, Paul, among other things, highlighted that “the written code (the law) kills but the Spirit gives life”. At the surface, this statement may give an impression of Paul as someone who was too negative about the law. It could be that Paul was responding to the dangerous legalism (excessive preoccupation with the letters of the law) of his time. Maybe, there were those who were too picky and fussy about the law, paying little or no attention to the spirit of the law. Paul’s statement might have served as a reminder to his audience that when the law is stripped of its spirit, it becomes deadly.

 

Part of Christ's mission on earth was to help His people understand that the law must be at the service of love and must be understood and interpreted within the context of love. That is why He made it clear to the disciples in the Sermon on the Mount that “He came not to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfil them” (cf. Matt. 5:17-19). His life, teachings and deeds were more or less an embodiment of love and fulfillment of the law. 

 

In our time as before, there are those who claim to know the law more than the lawgiver. There are those who talk and act as if they edited the Ten Commandments for God before it was handed over to Moses. In our pedantry, we seem to have stripped the law of its essence (its spirit) and have chosen to care more about the demands of the law, paying little or no attention to the demands of love. Any law that is not at the service of love is no law. And it is nothing less than deadly and poisonous.


Prayer:

May our thoughts, actions and inactions be motivated by love, not just by the demands of the law, Amen!


Have a blessed day!


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