[Merkhava]

The highest Law of the Universe is the Law of Love. It is the foundation upon which everything exists.

In the Torah, this was enunciated explicitly to Moses at Mt. Sanai during the 40 days he was alone with God. When he returned to the children of Israel, he taught us the Law of Love as God had taught him, which we as a national people have then shared with the rest of the world through our written oracles over the centuries.

We Jewish people understand that the first and greatest of all commandments is:

You will love the Lord your God from the deepest center of your soul, with all the power of your physical body’s strength, with all the intelligence of your mind, with all the emotional passion of your heart, with all the voluntary free will of your own personal sovereignty.

The second highest law is like it:

You will love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.

In fact, Yeshua HaMashiakh (Jesus Christ) demonstrated the standard of the second highest commandment before and after He said,

“You will love one another the way I have loved you.”

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These two elaborations of the Law of Love – love God and love your neighbor - are the foundations upon which everything was built. Moses and the Prophets and the Apostles of Israel spent their remaining lives teaching us how to make love the basis of our lives.

The Decalogue (Ten Commandments) is a further practical elaboration of how to love. The beginning four commandments describe how we are to love God. The remaining six describe how we are to love our neighbor. Maimonides later wrote down the elaborations of the Jewish Oral Tradition from the Torah 613 commandments. Listed in the Torah are 365 of them which are positive admonitions how to live a loving life, and 248 which are restraints against negative human behaviors that foster selfishness and hatreds.

Wherever love reigns in the hearts of people, there will be harmony and life and the rise of great civilization and peace among peoples, communities and nations. Love having supremacy in the heart of a man allows him to live as a king since he begins to possess within himself the illuminating essence of God – because God is Love.

Love is not a superficial emotional or erotic feeling that blows one way then another way like the tall grass bending in the changing winds. This is a common misunderstanding among many people. True love – the kind of Love that is holy and divine – it is a choice of our free will that leads us to an action of good. Most times it is hard to love because it is always draining and usually thankless when done for the benefit of immature and selfish people. But when we engage in selfless acts of love, we eventually feel good about ourselves because we are acting as God made us to be.

Love is giving of oneself for the benefit and good of another, giving in such a way that it costs or drains you of something out of yourself, and you expect nothing back in return for giving it. This is the kind of Love that is supernatural. It goes against our usual selfish human nature because to engage in acts of divine love is a super-human feat. This is the way God loves us. This is also the demand of the Law upon all of us. The standard is perfection and we are all accountable for it under the Law.

Those who break the highest Law of the Universe - who violate divine love - such violators have committed the highest crime there is. To do anything, to say anything, to even think any thought that is in anyway a violation of the divine standard of love is a crime against God. This is what SIN is. It is treason of the highest order against the Kingdom of Heaven. Sin is a personal declaration of war against God. It was this kind of rebellion that brought the Fall of Man and lost our personal and intimate right to converse and walk beside God Himself as Adam HaRishon did in the Garden. It was this violation of love that brought death into our life. The prophet Ezekiel wrote the declaration of the Lord, " All souls are Mine. The soul that sins will die."

We understand that anyone who breaks the law will be arrested, charged and if found guilty, then they will be sentenced according the sanctions demanded by the law. This is what we call justice.

God is Love. God is also the King of kings and Lord of lords, who reigns over all the Universe by His Law. He can not break His own Law because to do so would make Him become an unholy arbitrary tyrant. For God to violate His Law is for Him to violate what He is, since God is Love. God perfectly keeps His Law and must consistently hold Himself to account for everything that is demanded by the Law. He must be just. He must also hold everyone else in His creation to the same accountability to the Law of Love.

So… how can a loving and just God forgive sinful mankind without breaking His Law? How can He acquit for high crimes without becoming unjust for doing so? How can God condemn Satan, but let mankind go free, and then not be accused of an unholy double standard?

This is why the Savior came down among us into our world. He came to rescue us. He provided the one and only legal way for us to find acquittal without annulling the Divine Law of Heaven. That is why Yeshua said,

"I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

It is like the Judge himself, after justly passing a death sentence upon me for my high crimes, came down off the bench. He stands beside me and says the Law must be satisfied for the sake of Justice, but if I am willing, He will allow the death sentence to fall on Himself instead of upon me. But He cannot do it for me against my will. I have to personally and publicly ask Him to do it so that the Court of Justice sees that I have voluntarily and freely asked the Judge to bear upon Himself the demanded sanction of the Law and final consequence of my guilty crimes.

So you have to ask yourself: Are you guilty of selfishness or even of hatred?

Have you violated Love? Can you claim perfection of Love and stand innocently? Will you stand on your own merits when you are held to account in Heaven’s Court of Justice and every one of your deeds, your words and your thoughts are publicly revealed to the entire Universe?

How will you answer the Savior?

Regards,
Merkhava