Where Love Reigns

WHERE LOVE REIGNS
BY H.A. IRONSIDE


“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God”1—If God is loved supremely, no one will violate anything that He has commanded. This covers particularly the first Table of the Law, which sets forth man’s duty to God.
“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”2—This originally came from Leviticus 19:18 and covers all of the second Table, for “love worketh no ill to his neighbor.”3

Where love reigns, all else will be as it should be, for no one who truly loves God and his or her neighbor will intentionally wrong either God or neighbor4 All the Law and the prophets hang upon these two Commandments cited by Jesus, for every sin that we commit is either a wrong done to God Himself or to our fellow men. The salvation provided for us is first an atonement to meet all our sins, and second a regeneration to enable us to love God and our neighbor so as to cease from sin.

We have become alienated from God through the Fall. When we are born again by the Word and the Holy Spirit, we receive eternal life. The very nature of this new life is love, and therefore love becomes the controlling principle of the life of the person walking with Christ. Walking not after the flesh but after the Holy Spirit, the righteousness of the Law comes to fulfillment5, and we find it as easy to love God and our neighbor as it was easy before to live in selfishness and ill will toward others. A new power dominates us. This is the positive evidence of the new birth in Christ.6



(1) Deuteronomy 6:5, KJV; Matthew 22:37, KJV. (2) Leviticus 19:18, KJV;
Matthew 22:39, KJV. (3) Romans 13:10, KJV. (4) Matthew 7:12. (5) Romans
8:4. (6) 1 John 3:14; 1 John 5:1—2.

Above from “Foundations for Life” a Billy Graham Library Collection, Copyright 2001 Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.