Chapter 10: The Law of Love

There are many who despise God’s law on the grounds that the law is devoid of love. Such people draw a contrast between law and love. Yet Jesus gave us the two greatest commandments IN THE LAW which tell us to love God and our neighbor. Matt. 22:36-39 says,

³⁶ “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷ And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. ⁸⁹ This is the great and foremost commandment. ³⁹ The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

These two commandments are taken from Deut. 6:5 and Lev. 19:18. The greatest commandment is a summary of the first four of the Ten Commandments in Deut. 5:7-15. The second is a summary of the last six of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5:16-21.

Furthermore, Paul says in Romans 13:10,

¹⁰ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.

If the law of God appears to be devoid of love, the problem is not in the law but in the way men interpret and apply the law. When a parent disciplines a child (in a godly manner), the child may believe that his parent no longer loves him and that the law (house rules) are unfair and unjust. Such a view only reflects the child’s immaturity and lack of understanding.

Entering God’s Rest

Many people point to God’s command to kill the Canaanites as proof that the God of the Old Covenant was not the same as the God of the New Covenant. They say that the Old Testament God was just at best, but that He was devoid of love. I have even heard it said that Satan gave Moses the law. (May God forgive him for his blasphemy!)

Such views are based on a misunderstanding of God’s unchanging character and of the difference between the two covenants. The same God gave both covenants, but they were based on different principles. The Old Covenant was man’s vow to God, which obligated men to fulfill their vows of obedience. The New Covenant was God’s vow to men, which obligated God to fulfill His vow to perfect and save mankind.

The Israelites at Mount Sinai accepted the Old Covenant in Exodus 19:8, but when the Ten Commandments were given in Exodus 20, the people were too fearful to hear His voice. We read in Exodus 20:18 that “they trembled and stood at a distance.” Exodus 20:19 says,

¹⁹ Then they said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, or we will die.”

Later, the psalmist lamented, “Today if you would hear His voice” (Psalm 95:7). This is quoted in Heb. 4:7-9,

⁷ He again fixes a certain day, “Today,” saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” ⁸ For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that. ⁹ So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

When Joshua led Israel into the Promised Land, it was not a time of rest but of warfare. Hence, this rest was postponed for “another day after that.” In other words, the promise of God was not really fulfilled when Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River. That was only a prophetic type of a greater day yet to come, when the Israelites would enter their promise through the New Covenant and the real Joshua—Yeshua, Jesus Christ.

Two Swords

The command to kill the Canaanites was carried out under the provision of the Old Covenant. This command was certainly justified by the horrible religious practices of the Canaanites, whereby they sacrificed children, ate their flesh and drank their blood that was full of adrenochrome. Yet there is more to the story that most people overlook.

At Mount Sinai, the people heard the voice of God (Deut. 4:12; 5:24) speaking to them audibly. By hearing the word of God, if they had been able to embrace it, they would have been given “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17). This is the sword God offered them. But by refusing to hear His voice, they were left only with a physical sword with which to conquer Canaan.

Such is the tragedy of walking by fear rather than by faith. If they had been able to embrace the New Covenant, hearing His voice, and being led by the Spirit, they would have been able to say with the Apostle Paul in Eph. 6:12,

¹² For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

We cannot defeat the enemy and establish the Kingdom of God by means of carnal weapons. Killing flesh-and-blood enemies has a certain effect, but it is not the ultimate answer. There will always be more enemies to kill. The bloodletting will never end. The only solution is to engage in spiritual warfare, because this alone can change hearts and turn sinners into believers and enemies into friends.

Physical swords are Old Covenant weapons. The Old Covenant cannot save anyone on any level. If the Israelites under Moses had been able to embrace the New Covenant at Sinai, they would have fulfilled the feast of Pentecost. All the people heard His voice that day, and this was celebrated thereafter as the feast of weeks—later known by the Greek term, Pentecost. But that day they wanted to hear Moses, not God (directly). Hence, the New Covenant sword was given many centuries later when Pentecost was actually fulfilled in Acts 2.

That is why Joshua’s army used physical swords, while Paul used a spiritual sword. Joshua’s sword brought physical death; Paul’s sword brought death to the “old man,” resulting in the resurrection of the “new man” (Rom. 6:4, 5). This is the meaning of baptism. This New Covenant manner of death brings justification to sinners, for Paul says in Rom. 6:7 (literal translation),

⁷ for he who has died is justified from sin.

The Great Commission

Just before His ascension, Jesus said to His disciples in Mark 16:15, 16, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved…” This is called The Great Commission. It is the New Covenant instruction, comparable to the Old Covenant command to destroy the Canaanites (who represented the world as a whole at that time).

Both instructions were to bring death to all—but in very different ways. By the Old Covenant sword, men’s flesh was killed, because their warfare was against flesh and blood; by the New Covenant sword, men “died” and were raised again through baptism.

If any Canaanites repented and turned to follow God, they would have been as Israelites. In fact, this is precisely what happened with the Gibeonites, with whom Joshua made a covenant (Joshua 9:15). They served in the tabernacle, thereby serving God. We do not know the condition of their hearts as individual people, but they certainly serve as prophetic types of justified sinners and reconciled enemies.

We see from this that God’s command to kill the Canaanites did not truly reflect His heart of love. It was an accommodation during a time when the Israelites were spiritually immature and yet incapable of being led by the Spirit through the provisions of Pentecost. It is a timeless truth that God is love and that He is creating us in His image. Even though it takes a long time to finish His plan, God is unchanging in nature.

We see, then, that the law is rooted in love for God and our neighbors. Paul says in 1 Tim. 1:8,

⁸ But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully.

To use it lawfully, one must know how to use it through the New Covenant using the sword of the Spirit. The Old Covenant is now “obsolete” (Heb. 8:13), so we can no longer use physical swords to conquer the nations and establish God’s Kingdom. Neither is it right to point to the Old Covenant commands to kill Canaanites as evidence that the Old Testament God is devoid of love.

We live under a better covenant, as the author of Hebrews tells us, and we ought to act accordingly.