Love as a Discipline

Moses, the friend of God, delivered his farewell message to the nation of Israel in what we call the Book of Deuteronomy. He laid out his hopes and fears for his people, and he reminded them of the core issue – their relationship with God. More than once he told them the following:

And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness. -- Deut. 6:25

But… that’s a big “if.”

That “if” defines the very problem that God explains through the writings of Paul in a letter to the Romans. The condition that follows the “if” could never be met.

Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his (God’s) sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. – Romans 3:20

The standard set by the Law demonstrated that only One is righteous and that is God. Righteousness is essential since it is always tied to life. “The righteous will live by faith.” If we were ever to have righteousness – have life – we would need to be granted God’s righteousness. We can’t produce our own. Of this the Law has convinced us.

And so, the Law proves the case for grace. If God does not give to us the righteousness we have not demonstrated and the eternal life that we have not earned, then we will never have them and we are dead in our sins.

But God made him who had no sin (Christ) to be sin for us, so that in him (Christ) we might become the righteousness of God. – 2 Cor. 5:21

God gives to us what we cannot earn. We call this grace. And to be God-like, Christ-like, is to live in relationships of grace – continually giving to others those things they lack and could never produce from their own stores – things neither earned nor deserved.

For a boy gang member, who has never had a father in his life, to aspire and attain to the goal of someday having a wife, family and a home of peace and love; someone who has the knowledge of what those things are and how they are attained must GIVE that knowledge and experience to the boy. He will never produce it from within his empty self. His behavior will certainly not earn it. Someone, in grace, must give him what he has not earned.

And in this way our fundamental relationship with God, the relationship of grace, filters through all of our practical relationships with people. We who HAVE decide to give to those who HAVE NOT, things of great value that they would never have nor deserve, were they not gifts. This is love. This way of living is a choice and a discipline.