Years ago when I was first starting out in the ministry in the late 50’s I was pastoring a Community Church in Santee, California. This was long before I had come to the Biblical Faith as given to us in the creeds of the Reformation. I remember I had on my letterhead, “No Creed but Christ” and “No Law but Love”. Little did I realize as Michael Horton of the Whitehorse Inn pointed out in a recent article where he wrote that, “All we need is love” and “All we need is law” make exactly the same point.
In Matthew 22, when Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 little did I think about the fact that loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves is indeed the requirement of the law of God. But I considered it so lightly that I must not have given thought to the fact that I failed in doing this as all men fail. My glib statement “no law but love” showed my ignorance but this was the teaching with which I had grown up. And then the statement “No creed but Christ” was every bit as foolish for in all reality without the doctrine of Christ, (Christology) I had no means of loving God and my neighbor perfectly for unless the perfect obedience of Christ is imputed to me, I had no hope of heaven for I could not and indeed did not keep that law of love for it is a requirement of our entrance into heaven. “Be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect” Matt 5:48
How thankful I am that God has enlarged my understanding and now I rejoice in the teaching of God’s word that does not remove the responsibility of love, but has made a way of escape for since the law of love demands perfect obedience and I can only claim such obedience only in the imputed righteousness of Christ. Now I rejoice for the law has been fulfilled in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.