One of the most difficult questions I’ve asked myself over the last few years is how I managed to spend so much of my time reading the Bible, especially Paul’s letters, and yet totally miss his point with respect to the law and what it means to follow Christ. As I reflect, I’m reminded of an old prophecy that Jesus recites in Matthew 13, which is deeply poignant to me.

You will indeed hear but never understand,

and you will indeed see but never perceive.

For this people’s heart has grown dull,

and with their ears they can barely hear,

and their eyes they have closed,

lest they should see with their eyes

and hear with their ears

and understand with their heart

and turn, and I would heal them.

Looking back, I can now see that this is where I stood for much of my life. I saw so much, but perceived so little; heard so much, but ultimately failed to understand. When I finally saw and turned, God did heal me, and continues to heal me – from my dogmatism, from my legalism, from my self-importance and my self-loathing. But the question still nags at me: how could I have spent so much time missing Paul’s foundational understanding of the law? And how can so many others still do the same?

It turns out the answer is pretty simple. Paul gave a lot of instructions in his letters, and eager Christians have taken those instructions to heart. But Paul’s instructions were never meant to be regarded as commandments. Instead, by providing guidance on practical matters, Paul aimed to teach us how to use wisdom to determine what love looks like in the real world.

Unfortunately, what Paul offered as guidance, many of us have taken as a whole new law, to our own detriment. Paul’s goal was to teach us how to love with maturity and wisdom, but in our forgivable desire for simple answers in a complex world, we’ve unfortunately managed to reintroduce the very legalism that he worked so hard to dismantle.

The Love Principle

Part of the reason that it’s so easy to get the wrong message from Paul’s teachings is that he really does offer a lot of instructions throughout the course of his letters. “Do all things without grumbling or disputing,” he tells us. “Be angry and do not sin,” he commands. “Rejoice in the Lord always,” and “wives, submit to your own husbands.” If you string together these and all other such statements in Paul’s letters, you can easily create a brand new collection of commandments, one which approximates the elusive “moral law” that so many theologians speak about. In fact, it seems that this is exactly what many modern Christians have done.

But if this is true, it means that many of us (my past self included) are not only misunderstanding Paul – we are reading into his letters the very thing that he stood most strongly against. As we just observed in Chapter 1, both Paul and Jesus fought against legalism more than they fought against perhaps anything else. Paul’s whole conception of the Christian faith rested in large part on its contrast to the laws of Judaism, and the only time in the Gospels when we’re explicitly told that Jesus is angry is when he’s speaking to those who disapprove of him breaking the law to heal on the Sabbath. If Paul really intended to write for us a new law, he would be contradicting everything he believed in. He makes a similar point himself in Galatians when he writes about the hypocrisy of Christians forcing Gentiles to follow Jewish laws: “If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker,” he quips (Gal 2:18, NIV).

So what do we make of Paul’s instructions? Well, there is an important distinction separating Paul’s instructions from a law, which is perhaps best explained by this passage in Galatians, which we touched on in the first chapter:

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. (Gal. 5:13-18)

What Paul stresses in the first paragraph is that our freedom from the law is essential, but it is also not the end of the story. It comes with the enormous responsibility to love rather than devour one another. But discerning what is loving is hard, especially when we can no longer appeal to the law as our final authority. In response to that concern, Paul encourages us to “walk by the Spirit.” This will be hard, he warns, but it comes with a great reward, which we should pay close attention to: “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”

This simple sentence is utterly profound and important, and is the culmination of Paul’s entire argument in Galatians. Some people see the world as a dichotomy: either you can live a life of lawlessness or you can follow the law. But Paul’s essential argument (both in Galatians and elsewhere) is that both of those paths lead to destruction. The law is death by slavery and condemnation, and lawlessness is death by mutual devouring. Instead, there is a third way, which was perfectly exemplified by Christ. It is a way of growing in maturity (referred to, in some places, as holiness or sanctification) which transcends the law and seeks to live by the deeper principle which undergirds the law: the love principle.

The love principle is what Jesus articulates in Matthew 22 as the two greatest commands: to love God, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. As we saw in Chapter 1, Jesus claims – and Paul echoes – that the entirety of the law depends upon these foundational calls to love. And when obedience to a particular law conflicted with the love principle, Jesus argued that true lawfulness was understanding and following the principle behind the law, rather than blindly following the law itself (Mark 3:4).

But what does following the love principle look like, exactly? Here Paul encourages us to be “led by the Spirit,” and while that’s helpful to a degree, one has to admit that it’s incredibly nonspecific – almost as nonspecific as the love principle itself. How do I know which desires come from the flesh and which ones come from the Spirit? How do I know how to treat my sister when she has harmed me, or how generous I should be with my resources? How do I know what to do when my spouse is an unbeliever, or how to deal with sexual immorality in the church? How do I even know what sexual immorality is, as opposed to healthy sexuality? As Jeremiah 17:9 warns us, “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Telling us to “love our neighbor as ourselves” is only helpful to the extent that we know what love looks like, and I freely admit that I’m confused about that all the time, even after seeking wisdom from the Spirit. And so it seems that, after Paul has so thoroughly renounced the law, he could really use a little bit of its specificity.

So Paul faces something of a dilemma. If he provides an itemized list of answers on how to follow the love principle in specific scenarios, he risks encouraging his readers to take the path of least resistance: to just follow his words as a brand new law, and abdicate the responsibility of learning to love each other and “walk by the Spirit” themselves. This would make things simple, but it would be ultimately no more mature or liberating than being enslaved by the original law.

On the other hand, if Paul doesn’t provide specifics, he forfeits his opportunity to share his practical wisdom. Not only does this risk leaving his readers clueless on how to live in a way that will bring them freedom and life; it also leaves space for others to come in, feign belief, and spread various false teachings, hindering the faith journeys of the people he cares most about.

So what does Paul do? A casual observer of modern Christianity might assume that he chose the first path. As I noted above, many Christians today do seem to read Paul’s writings as if they were an itemized collection of Rules for Christian Living. But in reality, the choice Paul made is not so simple. For example, some of his letters were written in reaction to false teachings that had already spread, meaning that he offered wisdom on some issues only after it became clear that he could no longer remain silent.

More importantly, whenever Paul does offer an instruction, he doesn’t offer it unqualified, as a commandment carved in stone by the finger of God. Instead, he is actually quite careful to always explain the reasoning behind an instruction – why he thinks a particular action does or does not follow from the love principle – so that the reader can, as a mature adult, learn to reason their way to the same conclusion.

And that’s the primary point I want to make in this chapter: the instructions scattered throughout Paul’s writings are not laws – they are lines of reasoning written to help followers of Christ better understand how to practically apply the love principle in their lives. Rather than offer knowledge (a set of rules, which could never encompass all of the complexities of life), Paul offers wisdom (the ability to apply the love principle to various aspects of our lives).

Are you familiar with the phrase “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”? Paul actually coins that phrase while giving an example of what it means to walk by the Spirit instead of the law. The passage (1 Cor. 8) is long, but I think it’ll be helpful to include it here:

Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.

Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.

Here, Paul uses the example of food offered to idols to make a very interesting argument about legalism. He argues that, on the one hand, we can eat whatever we want – if we are Christians, we can know that the food we eat has no bearing on our standing with God. But then he tells us that it’s not enough to simply know our rights. Remember, as Christians, we don’t decide what to do by determining what is or is not permissible by law; we decide what to do by determining what is or is not loving. And, Paul reasons, there are some cases when it would be unloving to eat food offered to idols. Specifically, he argues that eating such foods around other believers who don’t quite understand their freedom could be confusing and possibly detrimental to them. Then he declares that he would even go so far as to become a vegetarian if it would help his fellow believers avoid sin: “if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.”

So what’s the rule here? one might ask. Can I eat food offered to idols or not?

But do you see how Paul is trying desperately hard to teach us to escape from this kind of thinking? To move from knowledge to wisdom? From rules to love? As Christians, we are free to eat whatever we want, so it is now our responsibility to do so in love. Only those under the law make decisions solely based on whether or not they are breaking “the rules.” Throughout Paul’s writings, he has no interest in giving us rules to follow; he wants to teach us how to love.

A Simple Example: Seek Things Above

But sometimes the love principle gets lost as we mine the Bible for easy answers. Colossians 3:1 is a simple example of how this happens. The verse reads, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” This is often read quite simplistically, as a command, if a relatively benign one. But Paul is actually doing much more here than just telling us what to do. He is also telling us his reasoning. The whole passage looks like this:

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. (Colossians 2:20-3:1)

Paul’s explanation here is thorough – he reasons that, since we agree that the things of this world are passing away and that regulations are ultimately “of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh,” we should focus less on nit-picking regulations and focus more on the things that are eternal and relevant to our goals as followers of Christ. If it’s not clear to you how that helps us to follow the love principle, Paul explains a few verses down what “the things that are above” look like:

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (Colossians 3:12-14)

Unfortunately, we usually read Colossians 3:1 alone, which ultimately robs it of its wisdom and makes it much less useful as guidance. To be honest with you, before I chose it for the purpose of this example, I had no idea that it was about avoiding unnecessary rules and asceticism in favor of love. I thought it was just a broad platitude about focusing on heavenly pursuits rather than earthly ones. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in that belief. It was only after I intentionally looked for Paul’s reasoning that I learned that his goal was to provide much more practical wisdom.

This is not to say that it is wrong to focus, generally, on heavenly pursuits. The point is that, even in the small things, Paul was careful to give well-reasoned arguments to explain his instructions, rather than providing dogmatic commands. And when we choose to ignore this reasoning and read his instructions as commands anyway, we often miss the point of his instructions entirely.

So why do we persist in doing so? Because commands are simple, while reasoning maturely about how to love can be quite complex. It’s much easier to scrawl Colossians 3:1 on a sticky note and slap it on your bathroom mirror than to spend time thinking about how “asceticism and severity to the body” may appear wise, but can’t actually stop the indulgence of the flesh. Just give me a rule, and I’ll follow it, we say, thinking that this form of obedience is what Paul really wants from us. But we often don’t realize quite how counterproductive this attitude is.

I understand the impulse to make things simple for ourselves, and sometimes the most essential truths are also the simplest. But other times, our search for simplicity robs things of their richness, and even their truth. If we isolate Paul’s instructions from their reasoning and follow them as laws rather than seek to understand them, we deceive ourselves and fall right back into legalism.

But perhaps this is not yet obvious to you. It took years of deep reflection before I could start to see this clearly; I don’t expect you to be fully convinced by a few insistent paragraphs written by a semi-educated Bible enthusiast. But in the hopes that a few more insistent paragraphs will at least help, let’s turn to a more complex example to see what the consequences can be when we trade understanding and maturity for blind compliance.

The Best Use of the Time

Colossians 3:1 works well as an example of misunderstood guidance from Paul because it’s so straightforward: the instruction is well-known, and its reasoning is concise and comes directly before it. It’s also pretty uncontroversial, both in its original intent and its misunderstood form. But not all of Paul’s instructions are so simple and uncontroversial. Some of them (and their misinterpretations) cause far more theological headaches.

An example of this is Paul’s warning against drunkenness in Ephesians 5. At first glance, Ephesians 5:18 looks very easy to dissect: “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.” Paul’s reasoning here seems straightforward. Why should we not be drunk? “For that is debauchery.”

And yet, if we stop here, as many do, we are still in danger of reading it as a law rather than as guidance on how to love. Why? Because although “for that is debauchery” may seem like an adequate explanation to some, it’s actually little more than a tautology. Debauchery is nearly synonymous with wickedness, so Paul might as well have just said, “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is wrong.” This doesn’t provide us with any wisdom, and it’s not hard to see why so many of us read it as a law.

But such a reading completely misses the verse’s context. If we were inclined to look a little further for Paul’s wisdom, we would easily find it. As in the previous example, his reasoning comes directly before the instruction:

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit . . . (Eph 5:15-18)

From this context, it’s easy to see why Paul thinks that it’s best to be sober. It is hardly easy to “understand what the will of the Lord is” while inebriated, much less to look carefully how we walk. Now we can understand that this is not simply a law – it’s practical wisdom.

But what if we still aren’t convinced? What if we don’t see how “looking carefully how we walk” or “understanding what the will of the Lord is” has anything to do with the love principle?

Well, if Paul’s writings were a law, our qualms wouldn’t matter. Laws demand obedience, not understanding. But Paul had no desire to write a law; he wanted to teach us how to move past the law framework and into love. Elsewhere, he writes, “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:3). As Christians, we have to remember that we have a higher calling than rule-following. No matter how obedient we are, our actions mean nothing if they come from devotion to a law, rather than devotion to the love principle. That’s why Paul never asks his readers to blindly follow his guidance. Instead, he always aims to reason with them, hoping to convince them that his instructions are the best way to follow the love principle.

So, if we don’t see how Paul’s guidance is connected to the love principle, it isn’t enough for us to simply do what he says anyway; it is the responsibility of a mature Christian to look deeper and ask more questions, until we can confidently act out of love. And sure enough, Paul does provide answers to our questions if we actually look for them. All we have to do is read more of the context.

For example, if we aren’t convinced that “understand[ing] what the will of the Lord is” is important for following the love principle, we need only look a few verses back, to Ephesians 5:8-10, to see why Paul finds it important:

For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.

Here, Paul points out that if we want to bear “the fruit of light,” we must “try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.” (Note that Paul doesn’t exhort us to simply “follow the rules,” but to try to discern what is good.) In other words, if we want our love to show, we have to work to “understand what the will of the Lord is.”

And if we aren’t sure how “look[ing] carefully how we walk” is important for following the love principle, we can continue even further back, to Ephesians 4:15-16:

Speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Here, Paul explains that, as we each seek to love, we grow together and build each other up into the mature body of Christ. But this only occurs “as each part does its work”; in other words, if we want this loving collective of believers to become our reality, it is our responsibility to do our part. This means that our actions matter; it’s important for the growth of the entire body that we each “look carefully how we walk.”

In this way, Paul is eager to share his wisdom and answer our questions about how to love; that’s the whole reason he writes his letters. Our job is to seek to learn from that wisdom instead of just taking his instructions and following them as a set of Rules for Christian Living.

But why is this important? we might ask. After all, it’s much easier to just follow Paul’s instructions than to try to understand them. Why does it matter if I “give away all I have” and “deliver up my body to be burned” out of love or if I do it simply because the Bible says so? And why does it matter if I abstain from drunkenness out of love or out of obedience to Paul? Either way, I’m doing what God wants, right?

It matters because legalism always hurts both ourselves and others. As we explored in Chapter 1, the difference between living by the love principle and living by the law is the difference between freedom and slavery. Legalism is like living in a prison cell – sure, you might be technically safe within its bounds, but you can never know the freedom, community, and life that the real world provides, and you can never grow into the mature Christian that God calls us to be.

This is seen in the example of the Christian who feels so obliged to avoid drunkenness that she spends her night alone at home watching television instead of spending it at a bar with friends. Although she may believe herself to be doing good, and although she is seeking to obey Paul’s instruction, she is far from following Paul’s wisdom. Though Ephesians 5:18 is generally read for its command to stay sober, a perceptive reader will note that Paul’s point in the passage actually has very little to do with drunkenness. Paul wants us to walk wisely, making the best use of our time. Drunkenness is one way that we can walk “as unwise” and make poor use of our time, but it’s certainly not the only way. In fact, there are many, many ways to waste time while sober. And sure, it can be hard to understand the will of the Lord while drunk, but if I’m making no effort to do so when I’m sober, drunkenness is not the source of my problems. Do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit, Paul exhorts. Paul certainly wants us to avoid drunkenness, but if we avoid drunkenness simply for the sake of avoiding drunkenness, we have scored no moral points – remember, a follower of Christ lives to love, not to rack up moral accolades – we’ve just completely and utterly missed Paul’s point.

Legalism is like living in a prison cell – and prison cells isolate us from others, suffocating our ability to love. This is why Paul’s decision to bring Christianity to the Gentiles was so controversial among the more legalistic Jews in the early Church. This is also why the law-abiding Pharisees were so shocked to see Jesus eating and drinking with sinners. How is it possible for him to do so while obeying all of the laws? they must have rightly wondered. In the past, when I saw Paul’s instructions as laws, I often wondered the same. It didn’t occur to me or the Pharisees that Jesus was concerned about obeying a calling much higher than any law. And it certainly didn’t occur to me that my insistence on obedience to the law might actually be preventing me from learning to love others as a mature Christian.

Jesus’s first recorded miracle is an example of this mature love at work. When he turned water into wine at a wedding, he was well aware that he was providing the means for many of the wedding guests to get drunk. But he apparently saw value in the fellowship and celebration despite the blood-alcohol concentration of the guests. He wasn’t afraid of breaking “the rules”; to the contrary, he was perfectly happy to make his first recorded miracle the act of bringing copious amounts of alcohol to a party.

What do you think Paul would have thought about this miracle? I’m confident that Paul would have recognized that bringing wine to the wedding party was, in this case, a loving action – that Jesus was “making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” Remember, knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Following the love principle requires that we think carefully about how best to love, instead of just looking to our knowledge of the law to determine what is right or wrong. It is deeply worrisome if we are so blinded by the laws we have invented from Paul’s writings that we lose sight of this basic truth.

Unfortunately, in some cases, it’s hard to say that we are not so blinded. Because, on the strength of this one instruction from Paul (“Do not get drunk with wine”), once-believers have been ostracized, Christian relationships have been broken, and churches have been split. Rather than helping the body of Christ to “grow and build itself up in love,” the strict adherence of some Christians to this bit of advice has, in some cases, caused significant division. Some Christians are so deferential to this command that they won’t even attend a party where there will be alcoholic drinks, in an effort to remain pure. (Remember, Jesus brought the wine.) Many churches and Christian campus organizations prohibit anyone in a leadership position from drinking at all in the presence of those in their care. And many sober Christians look down their noses at those who like to take a glass of wine or two with their dinner.

And yet, curiously, I have never seen a remotely comparable reaction to those who believe that it’s okay to waste their time every now and then. This may sound facetious, but consider it carefully, because it’s not. Remember, when Paul tells us not to be drunk, he is really urging us to spend our time in service of the Holy Spirit instead of ourselves – to be fully committed to our Christian purpose: to love. Note also that the instruction against drunkenness doesn’t even make sense as a law: there has never been a clear line between soberness and drunkenness, so unless we call for a total ban on alcohol, which Paul clearly doesn’t do (1 Tim 5:23), or provide an exact number of drinks which crosses the line, which Paul also doesn’t do, such a law would be impossible to consistently enforce. But some of us have latched onto his instruction as if it were a law, and now we avoid drunkenness with all the zeal of a Nazirite, while simultaneously missing the deeper intention of Paul’s words.

Let me be clear: it is true that alcohol often has devastating effects, especially for those prone to addiction. And for some, abstaining from alcohol entirely is the best way to live in a loving, Christ-honoring way. (Remember, Paul said he’d even give up meat if it would help his brothers and sisters.) But alcohol is not always so devastating, and only those who believe Paul’s word to be law feel the need to pretend that it is. And while this legalistic attitude toward alcohol may only have a minor effect on our ability to do what we are called to do – love God, love others, and love ourselves – the death of legalism is a death by a thousand cuts. That is, every instruction that is cut out of its context does a little bit more to suffocate our ability to build loving relationships with those who don’t follow the laws we follow. Over time, we find ourselves developing the contours of our communities around these laws, and our communities begin to feel more and more at odds with everyone in the outside world. Sound familiar?

This is not just the predicament of the modern Christian; it is the very situation Paul condemns in Galatians 2:11-14. Peter, fearing the opinion of those who mandated circumcision, stopped eating with the Gentiles because they didn’t follow the same laws he did. Paul strongly opposes this behavior, and uses it as an example of the division legalism causes in Christian community. Our modern Christian communities regularly find themselves similarly split, with strict adherents to certain rules on one side, and those who eat and drink with Gentiles on the other.

If Chapter 1 didn’t impress on you why Paul speaks about the law in such drastic terms (e.g. “the ministry of death” in 2 Cor 3:7), perhaps now it is a little more clear. Laws are appealing to us in part because they appear so much more simple than the work of following Christ. But if anything has the power to destroy the bonds of Christian fellowship, to set humans against one another and against ourselves – truly, if anything stands apart as the mortal enemy of our call to love itself – it is our human tendency toward legalism.

Conclusion

We cannot serve two masters. Either we stand by the idea that we must love, no matter what, or we stand by the idea that our rules must be followed, no matter what. And if we choose to stand by our rules, not even Paul, the author of those rules, is on our side.

The reason Paul always explains his guidance is so that we can live by wisdom rather than by knowledge, and learn for ourselves what it means to love. Part of being a follower of Christ is recognizing that life and love are very complex and they take wisdom and maturity to wade through. Just as Jesus perceived that the Sabbath law was about something much deeper than remaining idle on the Sabbath, his followers understand that sometimes, in order to truly love, we have to break the rules.

So yes, there may be times when love calls for us to disobey Paul’s warning against drunkenness, or some of his other instructions. This idea may make you very uncomfortable if you are used to following Paul’s instructions as laws, and that’s okay. We’re all still learning how to live by the love principle, instead of the old way of the law. But if we choose to return to our prison cell of strict rule-following instead of working through the complicated realities of freedom, we can never develop a mature and discerning love.

To some readers, these points might seem obvious – of course Paul wants us to love, and to think carefully about the things we do. But for me, this new understanding of Paul was nothing less than a paradigm shift. I once lived in a state of Christian legalism, going through the motions of love, but too tied to the law framework to actually learn to love with maturity. And I still occasionally struggle, as we all do, with the desire to hold myself and others to simple rules rather than trace everything I do back to love. But when I finally began to grow in my understanding of these truths, I began to experience and participate in a love that was much greater than anything I had ever known. I pray that you find, or have already found, that same love.