The Great Commandments – The Kingdom Curriculum IV (6)

The Great Commandments

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. This is the great and first commandment.” Matthew 22:37, 38

The end of the commandments, Paul reminds us, is love (1 Tim. 1:5). When we are keeping the commandments, John says, we are walking in love (1 Jn. 5:1-3). The commandments of God – the Law of God – are meant to promote the practice of love. The Law is not intended to condemn us, nor did God give it to be a kind of yoke and burden around our necks. God wants us to love, as He is love, and in order to show us what that means, He has given us His Law.

The first tablet of the Law – commandments 1-4 – outlines the general guidelines for loving God. We must recognize His sovereignty and rejoice in the grace of His salvation, so that we do not go seeking other gods besides Him. We must not try to limit or control or profane His Name by making idols and images of created things in order to focus our worship on them. We must take His Name, which He happily gives us, and use it as He would, doing good and proclaiming the reality of the Kingdom of God, calling all men everywhere to repent and believe the Gospel. We must not take His Name to no purpose, but to that purpose which advances His Kingdom. And we must rest on His day so as to recall and be renewed in His power and love.

In support and elaboration of these four commandments God gives an abundance of laws concerning how we may work out, in our daily lives, loving obedience in practical terms. Thus we learn to keep our vows, to prepare well for the Lord’s Day and not to neglect the assembly of His people, to guard against temptations that might draw us to the worship of other (false) gods, and so forth. The Law of God aids the believer in Jesus Christ in his desire to grow in love for God, for in His Law God has outlined the ways and means of showing Him love and of growing in love for Him as well. Apart from the Law of God we will struggle mightily to know how to love God, and may well end up “loving” Him by mere sentimentality or as a vain expression of our own best thoughts.

But since God has taught us how we must love Him, and since loving Him is the great and first of all the commandments and requirements of the children of God, we are well advised to turn to the first four of God’s commandments, together with the supporting statues, rules, and precepts, in order to learn how we may fulfill this our most basic and fundamental charge.

Order your copy of The Law of God today. Go to www.MyParuchia.com, Publications, Waxed Tablet, to place your order and take up the Kingdom curriculum of our Lord.

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.