The God-Shaped HeartSample

The Law of Love

Jesus said that all law is summed up in love for God and others. This love is not sentiment. It is functional. It is the principle of giving and life is built to operate only on the protocol of love. One example is breathing—every breath you take you give away carbon dioxide to the plants and the plants give back oxygen to you—a never ending circle of giving upon which life is built.

When was the last time you got up in the morning and said to yourself, Oh no, another day in which I have to breathe? You probably don’t even think about it. Breathing is easy when we are well, but if sick we may need artificial respiration. We are spiritually sick of heart and on God’s artificial love-respirator. It is hard for us to love well. But when God has his way in us, it will be as easy to love others as it is to breathe!

God made us to be conduits of love because the law of love is a living law. It cannot be fully understood written on stone; it can only be truly seen when operating in a living being. 

God wants to restore his design law of love in us in order to fix what’s broken in us and free us from fear and selfishness, to put us back in harmony with him and restore his creation to perfection. 

Consider the vast difference between God’s design law and imposed rules by created beings: human governments can pass laws to make tobacco legal; they can never pass laws to make tobacco healthy! Created beings cannot change God’s laws because God’s laws are the very parameters on which life exists. But sadly, the idea of God’s law has been changed in the minds of Christians, and this change is so deeply embedded as orthodoxy that most people never even question it. 

God’s law of love—his design protocols—has been replaced with a fallen human-law construct, and God has been falsely presented as a punishing dictator. This idea, above all others, is at the root of our inability to connect to the power of God for real healing and transformation of the heart! 

This one idea has penetrated every phase of Christianity, regardless of denomination, altered our understanding of God and his methods, and diverted us from fulfilling our mission for him. God calls us to discover the truth that will set us free and open our minds and hearts to experience God’s true power of love, which can transform us back to his original design—back to the perfection of love as revealed in Jesus. 

Why does God’s design law of love free us from fear and selfishness?