Love Trumps Rules?

Revive me with your loyal love, that I might keep the rules you have revealed. Psalm 119:88

[Disclaimer] There is no apostrophe in the title and this is not a statement about our President's decrees.

When I searched on love and rules in the Bible text, it was interesting that there was no verse saying that love trumps rules. In fact, there were several verses in the New English Translation and a couple in the ESV where love and rules went hand in hand. Deuteronomy, that old book of the law, spoke of loving the Lord and keeping His rules. The psalmist spoke of loving the Lord's rules and the prophets wrote of God's unfailing love as He rules. So, at least using those words, love does not trump any of the Lord's rules. Instead, love enables us to keep the rules and love is constantly in God's will as He rules.

In place of viewing the rules of the Word of God as some whip cracking down on us, it might be that we are to look to those two great rules the Lord Jesus gave to us that fulfilled all of the Law and the Prophets. And indeed, both of them involve love. Love is not a way out of or around the rules, but a way to live in them and keep them.

Praise God for His great unfailing love and His wonderful rules!

Bucky