Holiness and Love
God gave us the law in the OT to reveal his character of holiness and how we can make it ours. The NT reveals the interdependency of God’s law and his love ( Romans 13:8-10 ). The emphasis of one attribute to the subordination of the other produces an unbiblical dichotomy and will lead to Biblically unbalanced standards.
All Christians have the responsibility to grow in personal holiness within the culture that they have been placed, and the responsibility to manifest Divine love to Christians within other cultures. In tension with this is the fact that believers naturally adapt to the mentality of the spiritual culture they are in, moralizing it and legitimizing it to the exclusion of other Biblically acceptable Christian cultures. Leadership, and people in general, tend to emphasize either the holiness or the love of God and then extrapolate personal standards accordingly. It is difficult for humans to manifest this Divine nature, involving the apparent contradiction but actual beautiful interdependence of holiness and love, when dealing with its application to practical issues. Therefore other Christians tend to react negatively to the external manifestations within a different culture which conflict with their culturally conceived standards of love and holiness. The Christian ideal is a mutual emphasis of the Divine attributes ( I John 4:8; Revelation 4:8 ) which results in the governing of personal liberty by the self-imposed law of love.
1 comment:
Good analysis of law and love: they are indeed interdependent. As for culture and social groups, we should certainly be both loving and holy in our interaction with people no matter where they are from. It is primarily with those within our respective spheres that we have to do, however. If we neglect our responsibilities to them, we will accomplish little that is worthwhile. As for others, we "do good to all as we have opportunity" (Gal. 6).
As for the law of love, it is not so much self-imposed as self-enforced with the guidance and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. The law's actual source is God.
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