I've blogged about guiding ethics before.  Today I am revisiting the subject.

Romans 13:9 has a place in my heart, right next to Romans 8 and John 3:16.  I grew up in a church tradition, a branch of Calvinism that taught that God is a stern, demanding and angry God.  The more miserable you were, the happier you were probably making God in this idealogy.  I could have become a clone of this thought process, but God had something different in mind for me.

Deep in my heart, God kept knocking and revealing God's self to me, not as an angry disciplinarian - or at least not ONLY as disciplinarian - but as loving.  This God was passionate about fairness and justice.  The God I was drawn to asked us to work to end poverty and hunger, to stand in defiance of tyranny, to lift up the downtrodden, to release those held as slaves, and to a restorative justice.

Now, I know what you might be thinking, and YES, God did give us the law and expects our obedience.  But when I look at that law, I don't just see rule and restrictions and condemnation, even though I know none of us could ever live up to its just demands.  Instead, I have learned to see love.  Because God loves us, God sends the law to show us our need for a savior.  Out of love God sent the Son, Jesus Christ to pay for our sins and reconcile us to God - something we call salvation, something we accept through faith as an act of grace.  Out of love, God also sent the law to protect us and to lead us in living a life that is pleasing to God.  And out of love, God forgives our imperfections of action and intent in keeping that law.  And God summarizes that law in one word; LOVE.  Note that the summary is not 'you had better ...' or 'you shall not ...', as if God were scolding us.

God loved us, God deserves and seeks our love, and God asks us to take on love as the way we orient ourselves to the world around us; love is a guiding principle in how we treat others in the world and even the environment.

The fact is; love is the law, the rest is just a prolonged explanation!  If you love someone, you don't have to be told not to murder them.  If you love your neighbor, nobody has to ask you not to steal from them.  (Remember Jesus' answer to who is our neighbor?  Everyone!)  If you love your spouse, you simply don't commit adultery no matter how tempted you may be.  And if there is a transgression against us and our love, because we love our spouse or neighbor, we forgive.

In Mark 12:29-31 Jesus summarized the law in two commandments.  In Romans 13:9 Paul of Tarsus summarized the law in one sentence.  In my blog, I summarize it in one word; love.