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By Mrs. Robert Hammond

“For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”  Galatians 5:14

A lawyer was trying to test Jesus. He asked Him what the greatest commandment in the law was. His reply was Love. Love for God and Love for man. Then He said, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” And as Paul says, love fulfills the law.

I want to focus on this in relation to the Ten Commandments. Not too many people know them anymore and I think it would be good to refresh ourselves in the

Our society today would like us to think that tolerance of sin is love. They applaud people as they come out of the closet proclaiming their sin.  We fall all over each other trying to make people feel accepted in our churches. Jesus ate and drank with sinners, we say. And pretty soon, we are sinning right along with them.

When Jesus healed people, he would often tell them, “go and sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” God is love. Jesus is God. Therefore, Jesus is love. Jesus fulfilled the law. Love fulfills the law. He didn’t tell us to ignore the law; He said he had something greater. He raised the bar. He said, not only do you not murder–you do not hate. Not only do you not commit adultery–you do not lust. And through the power of the cross, we are given the ability to live this life, if we will surrender to Him

I want to do something very simple. The Ten Commandments with a little editing:

“I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”

LOVE “will have no other gods before me.”

LOVE “will not make any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

LOVE “will not bow down itself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.”

LOVE “will not take the name of the Lord in vain.”

LOVE “will remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

LOVE “honours thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

LOVE “will not kill.”

LOVE “will not commit adultery.”

LOVE “will not steal.”

LOVE “will not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”

LOVE “will not covet his neighbour’s house,” LOVE “will not covet his neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.”

As I was preparing this, I noticed in the fourth and fifth verses of Exodus 20 that the Lord equated disobedience to hate and obedience to love.

I read on Catholic.org about a gunman that was stopped before tragedy struck recently at the Family Research Council in Washington. He had a gun and fifty rounds on him. An unarmed security guard stopped him. The gunman had volunteered for a LGBT group for six months. He was planning to shoot them up because of their stand for traditional marriage—you know, the kind God instituted.  The Family research Council, because of their belief in traditional marriage is listed as a hate group by Southern Poverty Law Center, whose own website decrees that they are “fighting hate, teaching tolerance and seeking justice.”

This is just another example of how society and even many who call Jesus LORD are confused about what love really is. Obeying God is love because God is love. Disobeying God is hate because God is love.

We could go on to talk about other instances where even well-meaning Christians have embraced Islamists, Hindis, Buddhists etc. in the name of tolerance or “love” but in fact have stepped over the line into idolatry.

We could get really personal and talk about our computers and television sets and the second commandment.

 “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. “     1 John 4:7-8