The New Life

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XVI.
LOVE.
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A new commandment I give unto you. That ye love one
another ; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if
ye have love one to another." John xiii. 34, 35.
"Loveworketh no ill to his neighbor: love therefore is the
fulfillingof the law." Rom. xiii. 10.
" Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
If we love one another, God abideth in us, and His love
is perfected in us."— i John iv. 11, 12.
the word of Micah, in the previous section,
IN
righteousness was the first thing, to love mercy
the second, that God demands. Righteousness stood
more in the foreground in the Old Testament : it is
in the New Testament that it is first seen that love is
supreme. Utterances to this effect are not difficult
to find. It is in the advent of Jesus that the love of
God is first revealed ;
that the new, the eternal life,
that we become children of the Father,
is first given ;
and brethren of one another. On this ground the
Lord can then, for the first time, speak of the New
Commandment—the commandment of brotherly love.
Righteousness is required not less in the New Testament
than in the Old.^ Yet the burden of the New
1 Matt. V. 6, 17, 20, vi. 33.
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