Law: Creation's law and order

Sunday, November 13, 2016
    Feast of Charles Simeon, Pastor, Teacher, 1836
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “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. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
    —Matthew 22:37-39 (ESV)
Quotation:
    The one supreme, unchangeable rule of love, which is a law to all intelligent beings of all worlds, and will be a law to all eternity is this, viz., that God alone is to be loved for himself, and all other beings only in him and for him. Whatever intelligent creature lives not under this rule of love, is so far fallen from the order of his creation, and is, till he returns to his eternal law of love, an apostate from God, and incapable of the kingdom of heaven.
    Now if God alone is to be loved for himself, then no creature is to be loved for itself; and so all self-love in every creature is absolutely condemned.
    And if all created beings are only to be loved in and for God, then my neighbour is to be loved, as I love myself, and I am only to love myself, as I love my neighbour, or any other created being, that is, only in and for God.
    ... William Law (1686-1761), The Spirit of Prayer [1749], London: E. Justins for Ogles, Duncan, and Cochran, 1816, p. 74 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 22:37-39; Deut. 6:5; 10:12; 30:6; Lev. 19:18; Mark 12:29-33; Luke 10:27; 1 John 5:2-5
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, implant in my heart the love You have for my neighbor. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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