A Law of Love - Leviticus 19:1-18

Cody Hale

The Big Story • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago

Leviticus 19:1–18

Law

Fulfillment of Prophecy

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Introduction

You can force obedience, but you can’t force love. Anybody whose ever given medicine to a dog can attest to that. My dog really has an amazing gift for avoiding taking medicine when need be. I’ve covered pills in peanut butter, and she even manages to get all of the peanut butter off before spitting out the pill. The only option she really leaves me is to stuff the pill in her mouth and then hold it shut like I’m wrestling an alligator until she swallows it. They end up obeying you, but it’s not because of love. It’s about the same when trying to get your children to do their chores or homework. It literally gets to the point where the only option you have left is to make their lives miserable. You don’t even like this option. You want them to do their math homework because you love them, not because you hate them, but the best you can do, most of the time, is to force them. So, they end up learning something, but it’s not because they love it. It’s because they have to.

You can force obedience, but you can’t force love. And, the difference between begrudging, mechanical, obligated obedience and loving, passionate, zealous obedience is a massive one in the Bible. The gap between obligation and love is the difference between blasphemy and worship. It’s why Jesus reminds us that the Father desires mercy and not sacrifice. Two people can do the exact same thing, and for one it can be worship while for the other it’s blasphemy. You see, one of these is pure law-keeping, and one of these is corrupt. Obedience from the heart is an offering to God, and obedience from begrudging obligation is an offense to God. And, this is the difference that Jesus came to overcome, not just in theological theory, but in the practical reality of the lives of his people. He came not just to overcome your disobedience but to transform your obedience so that it was passionate and enthusiastic.

God’s Word

Last week, we saw how there are three divisions of the law: ceremonial, civil, and moral. In terms of the ceremonial and civil law, we said that those which have been fully satisfied in Jesus and no longer have any bearing on us as believers in Jesus. But, the moral law is different. The moral law didn’t come about it in ethnic Israel; it is the overflow of God’s very own character and is found even in the very created order. So, it carries forward. But, it’s not enough to say that it simply carries forward for us to obey as though we’re really even capable of that. In that way, the moral law still condemns us. It’s the difference between the moral law in the Old Testament and the New. So, we might say that the ten commandments are the stipulations of the Old Covenant. “Do these things to be sure that you uphold the covenant and retain the favor of God.” But, wonderfully, we can say that the Law of Christ, though it appears in many ways to be the same as the moral law of the Old Covenant, is different because it’s not so much the stipulations of the covenant as it is the expression of the covenant. “I do these things because God’s character is inside me, and I want to display my enthusiastic love for him.” It’s a big difference. This is what I want us to look at today. So, we’ll see the nature of the Law of Christ (headline)

The law of Christ is a law of “love”.

v. 2 “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” v. 18b “…but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” First, I want you to see that the law of Christ is a law of “love”. You can see from our Leviticus passage this morning that this was always the aspiration of the Law. Notice how our passage is bookended. It begins with what is the summary statement of the whole book of Leviticus: “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” God’s people were supposed to look like Him. After all, He was THEIR God. He had demonstrated and proven his love for them. So, his love for them was assumed to lead to their love for Him, which would be expressed in their holiness, their display of his character. But, that’s not all it says. Look at verse 18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” Because they are love God and reflect his character, what is the expectation? They are to love their neighbor, too. Why? Because “I am the LORD.” The love of God can never be separated from the love of your neighbor because it’s God’s character to love people.

Work Versus Love

Now, of course, these two categories that we find here should sound familiar to us. These are the two great summaries of the Law given to us by Jesus as the greatest of the commandments. They are in essence the Law of Christ — an obedience in love — a law of love. I think Paul really helps us to understand what the Law of Christ looks like and leads to in Galatians 5-6. Last week, the first part of this where Paul says that if you accept circumcision that you are “severed from Christ…you have fallen away from grace.” But, then right after that, He helps us to see what right law-keeping, worshipful rather than blasphemous obedience would look like. He says in verse 6: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” He restates virtually the same premise in different words, words that actually originate right here in Leviticus 19 when he says in verse 14: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So, what is the Law of Christ? The Law of Christ is “faith working through love.” It’s loving Jesus so enthusiastically that it changes your disposition toward others to the disposition of Christ. It’s having your jealousy eradicated by your confidence that Jesus is sufficient to provide everything necessary for your joy. It’s having your temptation to satisfy yourself through sexual immorality crushed by how overwhelmingly satisfying you’ve found Jesus. It’s having your need to lie so that you look better than you are dismantled by the perfect righteousness that Jesus has given to you. It’s “faith working through love.” Now, we’re usually either work people or love people. But, the law of Christ isn’t one or the other. It isn’t one ruling the other. It’s both working in concert. It’s love, but it’s active, applied love. It’s not just work, but it’s passionate, cheerful commitment.

A Pathway to Joy

This is why the law of Christ is a far superior law in every way over the moral law of Moses. It’s not just about what you do. It’s about who you love. It’s not just a call to obey. It’s an opportunity to respond to God’s love with the expression of your own love. It’s a pathway to joy, not an obstacle the way that the Old Testament Law was. It’s common today for young people to brag about their unwillingness to commit in love to a singular person. It’s common for young married couples to decide against children. In fact, one of the most common reasons that people say they are waiting to follow Jesus until after high-school or college or until they’re established professionally is for one and the same reason: these commitments and responsibilities appear to be obstacles to personal happiness, obstacles to the things that they want to do. Love brings greater constraints into our lives. To love children or a singular person, and especially Jesus and his church, in the way that they demand to be loved is to forfeit certain individual freedoms that we don’t want to forfeit. But, here’s what you’re missing. Here’s what our modern logic fails to disclose: Love brings greater constraints, but, at the same time, it brings greater joy. Love and its constraints aren’t obstacles to our joy; they are pathways. This is what we mean when we talk about the Law of Christ being a Law of Love. Have you tasted the wonderful love of God? There’s only one response: love. Do you desire deep, durable joy in your life? There’s only one pathway: love. Love your God and express it to others.

The law of Christ is a law of “holiness.”

v. 2 “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” Next, I want you to see that the the law of Christ is a law of “holiness”. And, when I say holiness, I’m not talking about merely saying the right things and doing the right thing. I’m talking about being the right person, possessing the right character, operating from the right motives. As I mentioned earlier, the whole book of Leviticus can be summed up as verse two: “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” In other words, live according to the law of God with the same character as God. Holiness is pure obedience. It’s to obey because you love to obey. It’s to honor God because you want to honor God. It’s to serve God because you’re enthusiastic to serve God. It’s not just giving; it’s cheerful giving. It’s to have an obedience that’s pure in motive, proper in attitude, and patient in reward. Now, this isn’t good news, is it? We’re being called to live out God’s incorruptible character while we have an utterly corrupted character. This is yet another way that the Law of Christ trumps the moral law of the Old Covenant.

The Law of Christ doesn’t just call you to holiness; it makes you holy. So, let’s go back to Galatians 5. Remember what he’s just said. He’s just said that if we’re going to obey Christ in a way that honors him and doesn’t blaspheme him that we must exhibit “faith working through love.” We must not just serve our neighbor as we would serve ourselves. We must LOVE them. But, how? How can we do this? How can we be holy — how can we be pure in our obedience — as God is holy? Galatians 5:16-23 (highlights 22-23 on screen): “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Do you see what the Spirit accomplishes in our lives? How would you describe God’s character? You’d probably use the very list of words given to us in verses 22-23. So, what does the Holy Spirit do? The Spirit applies the moral law to our hearts. This is the difference in the Old and the New. This is the Law of Christ. The Law of Christ is God’s character written upon the hearts of his children. The Holy Spirit imprints God’s holy character upon our hearts so now we actually can “be holy as (He) is holy.” This is Paul’s point in Galatians 5. It used to be that God’s people were set apart by circumcision, food laws, sacrifices, and ethnic purity. But, that’s not what marks us any more. Now, we’re not marked by these external things we do; we’re marked by who God has made us to be. It’s God’s character imprinted upon us that marks us as his children. So now, we have a true, inward, pure obedience that is “faith working through love.”

How to Set Free Obedience

So, what do you do if all of your obedience feels obligatory and guilt-ridden? What do you do if you sense a lack of enthusiasm and passion in your Christian life? The answer is not to focus on law-keeping. Surely, by now, you realize that I am not saying that obeying Jesus is inconsequential. But, law-keeping is not the aim of the Christian life — Jesus is. Joy in Jesus. Satisfaction in Jesus. Love for Jesus. These are the aims of the Christian life, and it’s the only thing that can bear the weight of it. Two things I would say: 1) Confess your sins. All of them. When was the last time you were broken-hearted by those things in your life that break God’s heart? “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to him.” Live in sin, and He doesn’t leave you. But, He does allow your affections for him to cool. 2) Seek fresh discovery of Christ. When’s the last time you were overcome by the goodness of Jesus? When’s the last time you were astonished by some new realization about Him. In other words, it’s what Paul says in Galatians 5:16: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” The Spirit reveals our sin and Jesus’ goodness to us. Press into Him, His conviction, His leading if you’re missing His fruit. At the moment you first discovered Jesus’ saving grace, there was nothing cold and obligatory about your obedience. It was passionate. And, it was anchored in the confession of your sins and the fresh discovery of his grace. Trust me, there’s more for you to confess, and there’s more for you to see.

The law of Christ is a law of “action”.

v. 18 “You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” Finally, I want you to see that the law of Christ is a law of “action”. That is, Leviticus 19 understands your devotion to God to have practical ramifications: that you would “love your neighbor as yourself”. That is, holiness was never meant to be passive, but active. It’s interesting how Paul applies the Law of Christ in Galatians, too. He says in 6:2: “Bear one another burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” So, Jesus tells that He is the fulfillment of the whole law. That is it all points forward to him and finds its completion in him. But, Jesus came to start a new Kingdom so that the whole earth is filled with his glory and goodness, so that the whole earth is filled with God’s character. He came that his “Kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven.” How does that happen? Through us! Jesus has fulfilled all the Law; so, now we, actively, presently ‘fulfill the Law of Christ.’ That is, we display the character of God in such a way that shows the coming of the Kingdom, the filling of the earth with his glory.

A Call to Action

The Law of Christ, in this way, is a call to action. It’s a call to restore others when they fall into sin and to bear their burdens and love each other sacrificially so that we can fulfill Christ’s law. J.I. Packer says that the greatest evidence that you or any person knows God is that a person who knows God has great energy for God. And, the clearest outlet for great energy for God is in your love for each other. People are either an obstacle to what you want to do, or they are an opportunity for you activate your love for God in a real way. You know, as I thought about this, I thought about many of you. Every time I call one of our widows, you’ve already met their need. Tim Allen and Sandra’s fence. John B. Chris C. Eva T. Robyn S. Stacy U. Jason/Donna C. These types of love are inspiring, but more than that, they are worship. They are the opposite of an attitude that tries to get away with doing as little as possible so that they can watch more TV. The energy spent is an indicator of Jesus’ worth for all of us to see. This morning, will you renew your commitment to love Jesus with all of your heart and all of you mind and all of your strength? Will you bring him an offering of your own energy because of the passion He has stirred in you?

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