I think this is the crux of the issue for you in your understanding. What is love, to you? Emotions? Desires to possess?
Love to me is a desire to possess what is right and best. Love is obedience to the Will of God. Love CAN be a desire to possess, or you'd have a hard time defining marital/relationship love. Love is about wanting things to be right. It's not very easy to define, which is why when people say Jesus only said one has to love that they are basically blowing smoke.
I'll lay out my understanding of love here in this context. Divine love. Meaning, infinite, unconditional nature of compassion and giving. It is selfless. All that is, all the becomes arises from love. Love.
Compassion and giving are ACTS of love, and I don't think there's really such thing as "Unconditional", there's always conditionals. Not even God's love is unconditional. It flat out says he hates the wicked and doers of violence.
Not warm fuzzy puppy, "I'm so happy about this", sort of emotions. To know the sort of love I am speaking of, that Jesus was speaking of, it requires a full emptying of yourself into God in order for you to know that in yourself. And with this mystical realization, there is nothing left but divine love, which, fulfills the example given of Jesus, "Greater love has no man that he lay down his life for his friends". That love, fulfills all the law.
Okay, and emptying yourself into God involves doing what He wants you to do.
Yes he was, if you understand what that love is he was referring to. "Love is the fulfilling of the law". "Love works no ill". If you work no ill, you ARE fulfilling all the law and prophets. That's pretty straightforward.
Nope. Otherwise you'll have to ignore much of what Jesus says. The concept of love is defined by the commandments. You're putting the cart before the horse. You must do what the commandments say in order to love. The abstract idea of "love" does not replace what it means to show acts of love. If you truly "Empty yourself into God" you must do as God commands. Otherwise you're saying "You don't have to really obey God to do what God wants you to do". It's circulatory and self contradicting. And besides, 1 John 5:3 is explicitly clear, the Love of God is obedience to the commandments. Are you trying to say you don't have to actually listen to what Jesus teaches as long as you "love" in the way you think you are defining the term (And you haven't really defined it, you have merely said what you think stems from it)?
Yes. "Love works no ill".
So therefore, obedience to the commandments are what defines no ill. And that includes no ill towards God by doing what He commands, which includes Sabbath. Not doing what God commands = ill.
The difference is if you simply obey them, you can do so without love. And if you do so without love, you do not
fulfill them, even if you obey them. Wrap the mind around that.
But you cannot love without obeying them. You are supposed to do them with love, I obey the Sabbath with great joy but sometimes it's very drudging to not have hostility towards certain people especially among fellow Hebrews, but I am commanded to hold no ill will to them. So what you are saying is that you don't have to obey as long as you "love", but that's simply not how it works. You must obey the commandments as the bare minimum. Doing them with love is the greater goal. But you can't do them without love without doing them period and claiming that you "love", it's like running off a cliff Wile E. Coyote style and thinking you're still on the ground.
Indeed it is. And I say it is because of those who see 'fulfilling God's law', as something external to themselves. Again, if you don't have love in you, that kind of love that is the Source of these 'laws', then you are not, nor can fulfill the law. You are simply following a bunch of external rules and become like Jesus said, "Whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones".
I'm not sure I really understand what you're saying. Yes, there are Jews and Law obedient Christians who don't have "love" (whatever that actually means) in them as they obey and are just doing it as commanded, but they are in a far better position than those who don't do them while claiming to act out of love. Jesus is very legalistic. He teaches that those who teach to break the least of the laws in the Kingdom will be called the least.
Would it be loving of me to not want to help people avoid being known as among the "least" (As in, among the most lowliest and wretched and undeserving of respect in the Kingdom, the lowest on the totem pole?)
How loving is it to not be concerned with helping people obey what Jesus teaches?
I believe he is saying if you see that as the important part, you miss the entire point and fail the law, even while you obey it!
The important part is in the obedience to the commandments altogether, that is the foundation and structure. You can't do something with love if you're not doing it at all in the first place. Love is the extra spark, but the obedience to the commandments is motion in the first place. Again, is it loving to let people do things that Jesus says will cost them in the Kingdom?
Indeed, why? Because to love as God loves is the simplest, more effortless way of being there is. BUT, for us to sufficiently let go of all our clinging to that which we do, our desires to preserve ourselves, to full empty yourself into God which is to be certain, facing death in ourselves itself, is the hardest thing to do. But once you do, the yoke is effortless. You naturally fulfill the law, ONLY after you have died to all you cling to.
I don't think it's very simple at all. I believe it takes great discipline and self-control to love as God loves. In order to empty yourself into God you must be willing to do whatever God commands. You must WANT to do what God commands because you see the goodness and righteousness in it. Otherwise, you're not really emptying yourself into God, it's anti-love of God, it's love of self-will using an excuse of your own definition of love to get out of what God considers lovingness. I do believe the Yoke is easy even in full obedience to the Law, but easy does not mean "effortless" whatsoever. I don't think people "naturally" fulfill the Law in this sense, the Scripture makes no mention of this, I believe it's the opposite, that people will naturally sin and give in to temptation and take the easy way out, and it takes great self discipline to avoid this.
Have you done this? If you have experienced this, then this makes perfect sense. Until then, it cannot be seen and we all go busily after trying to find substitutes for this sort of realization, which in religious contexts is "obeying the law" in lieu of fulfilling it. The goal, the two greatest commandments, is to become that in every moment of your life. To literally be, God incarnate.
You cannot fulfill the Law without obeying it. What do you mean have I done this? I consider it a great honor and privelege to uphold God's law and I consider it great love to dispel misconceptions about it and ways of weaseling out of it and misunderstandings of what Jesus taught, and reminding things that are conveniently ignored what Jesus taught. I consider it love to remind people to not do things Jesus warned against. I would consider it UNLOVING to preach things that Jesus specifically warned against. I don't whatsoever believe it's a matter of being God incarnate, I think that's going off the deep end of anything the Scripture remotely teaches and has nothing to do with what Christ commanded. At best it is implied we will be as Christ and that we must walk as Christ walked, including all his behaviors and actions.
Yes, it starts with love. It is not love however to simply obey. That is a backwards excuse. "But Lord, didn't we do great works in your name?" Worthless, if you don't have love. These are acts of love expressing itself.
It's not love to DISOBEY. Obedience is the foundation, and "love" is the next stage of truly being in line with God's law and will. What's worthless is if you're a "doer of Lawlessness". We have yet to define what "love" actually means. Acts of Love is not a definition of "love". A willingness to do what God commands, is part of my idea of what Love is defined as. If you're unwilling to obey God and you want to find excuses to get out of obeying the Law, that's not loving at all. Hence, the doers of Lawlessness will be told to get lost. (The word "Lawlessness" meant those who break the Law) The Lukewarm will be spat out. Again, Jesus was clear that those who teach to break the least of the commandments will be called the least in the Kingdom. It would be unloving of me to not point this out, and it would be unloving of someone to try to find ways out of this clear teaching which will cause people to be cast out of the kingdom or be rendered among the least.
There is no interpretation involved in acting out of love.
That makes absolutely no sense. Of course interpretation is involved. Interpretations of love are involved with attempts to snip out 99% of what Jesus teaches. That's my point.
All this further proves my point, all this talk about "love" we commonly see among interpretations of Christ's teachings is vague fluff that is ultimately an attempt to get away from obedience to his teachings. Yes, we must obey with a willing heart and an appreciation for the goodness of what we are doing. We must not do JUST blind ritual, we must do the ritual WITH a loving appreciation of it.
But to use any of this attempt to define love as an excuse to not obey the Law, to avoid the foundation itself, is the very opposite of true love of God
