Law and Love: Why Few Should Become Teachers

“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged by Love.” -  James 3:1

A great struggle for humanity and the journey of life through earth, is understanding the difference between Law and Love, while understanding their marriage. The two becoming one makes all the difference in the world. The Law is extremely dangerous when people teach or believe it’s an end itself, as if following rules or behavior modification is the goal to live rightly in the world. We are not on a journey to behavior modification, though that can be helpful for a time, we’re on a journey to become a life-giving spirit that does not need to be told how to behave. We are on a journey to learn to naturally do what Divine Law means from within. If not understood from within, we seek outer rules to follow unto death, both literally and spiritually. When the Law remains outside of ourselves we are outside the experience of its inner meaning.  

The end of the Law is when someone loves because they want to rather than because they are told to. Only loving because we “ought to” feels like death, because the inner Light of Life is not fully leading us, and therefore we are still unconscious to what we are designed to be. The good news is that the feeling of death has a resurrection behind it if we go deeper into what God placed within and has written on our heart. 

However, many misunderstandings are written over what God wrote there. Many misunderstandings come from those who teach the law, but do not love.

This is especially true for religious teachers who must learn to actually live from the inner Light of Life or else they burden their listeners with a kind of knowledge that thinks it is living in the meaning of God. They unconsciously teach the exact opposite of the Law’s inner meaning, which creates walls of division within and between people, all while zealously believing they are proclaiming the truth. It’s a difficult task for sure, namely because these teachers typically use law and facts so literally to teach something that can only be understood by experience, rather than mere descriptions or definitions of what something is. Stories and practices, rather than literal facts, typically help us get nearer to the truth of a meaning. Stories speak to the inner heart and allow what God has written there to come forth, while practices learn to embody their meaning from within, so the words become flesh in us rather than guidelines that remain outside of us. 

Who then shall teach us?

It is understandably hard to not become a teacher as James instructs many not to, because we all in some sense teach or love to share what we know. We live in an era of 20+ year old life coaches who often lack the experience of actual life to guide people deeply, regardless of their following and seeming success. As humans we love to share our knowledge, which is a divine desire helpful to the degree of the spirit it is being shared in. We also have an innate desire to learn, so we accumulate many teachers over the course of our lives.

“I am not writing this to burden you, but to warn you as beloved children. Even if you have ten thousand teachers about Christ, you do not have many fathers actually living in the Reality of Christ…” (1 Cor 4:14)

There are differences between teachers who talk about God and teachers who live from the power of God within. One lives from the law and the other lives from love with the latter knowing all knowledge fails to find its meaning if not found in love. We can learn a little of this by someone who helped me fix my air conditioner. 

I once YouTubed how to fix my air conditioner (in a few minutes!) with an $8 part rather than paying an expert hundreds of dollars. Someone else’s generosity allowed this by sharing their knowledge freely. This does not mean experts should not be paid to help, as part of life is learning to allow yourself to be helped and give to those who do, especially when you are not capable of doing something, but it does contrast a difference between those who require payment to teach the law and those who live its meaning freely.

Love teaches us to learn to be of help to others, without charge. We are to learn this divine nature that freely gives and receives. The cycle of freely receiving and freely giving is a fulfillment of Life and Law.

“As freely you have received; freely give.” - Jesus (Mathew 10:8)

“Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches.” - Galatians 6:6

Knowing The Teacher

“But you are not to be called “teacher” for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers and sisters.” - Jesus (Matt 23:8)

“Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” - (Matt 7:24-29)

I draw your attention to two things. There is only one Teacher who freely gives us life and desires to teach us all things. God speaks through everything, literally and symbolically, as everything was created in and through God. We are to learn to recognize when The Teacher is speaking through anyone or anything. The second is how Jesus used story to communicate living the Truth, rather than just quoting laws. 

We learn all truth, in its deepest meaning, by our Teacher who speaks to, from, and within our heart. Notice Jesus taught differently than the teachers of the law. Their inner life was awakened when he spoke. Now we are getting closer to the depths of how Law and Love must be married.

We can learn what the Law is by learning what the Law does and does not do.

The point of the Law is to guide and guard us as we learn how to love from within. It cannot, of itself, love from within. If anyone teaches us law but does not love, they are misinformed, while spreading misinformation as if it was the end of truth. To be misinformed is to be informed in sin, which we will define to assist in being freed from the Law’s misunderstanding. We are made to be informed in love, therefore transforming us into the formation of Love like the One who freely gave us and freely receives us; the Teacher who freely gives and freely receives. Sin is defined as missing the mark, or leaving the path of Inner Life, which looks for life and guidance outside yourself instead of being guided from within. 

The Law is helpful to guide us outside ourselves as we learn the formation process of Love. If we use the Law only outside ourselves, like rules to follow, we cannot fulfill its meaning. This is why people often rebel because of the impossible feeling of being able to, or wanting to, fulfill the Law’s apparent requirements. The Law becomes a burden rather than a guide, but it was meant to be a guardian until we develop Love within. 

“Before the coming of this Love (Jesus), we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the Love that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this Love has come, we are no longer under a guardian.” - Galatians 3:23-25

This truth is not just referring to Jesus Christ coming in the flesh, but is revealing the process of our human journey initiated by God from the beginning. Christ existed in the beginning and before, therefore before Jesus was manifested in a body. This is why teachers of the law may get offended, even when teaching about Jesus, when Jesus says things like, “Before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58) The Law has always been a guardian until the life of Christ is recognized from within.

When Jesus revealed his universal connection of existence before a thing is realized, people held in bondage to the law they preached picked up stones to kill him. They were still held in the grips of death thinking the law was an end to itself not realizing the One standing in front of them was revealing its fulfillment through a human journey. Christ came in Jesus to reveal God in humanity, which often looked for God outside itself, or if religious, through following rules outside instead of learning what was to come from within. It is a pure gift for Christ to come in body to show us outside ourselves what is to be known within. Christ is the embodiment of Love, against such a thing, there is no law! (Galatians 5:23)

The Law had become so dangerous because it can only find its inner meaning in Love. God is Love. (1 John 4:8) Anyone who promotes law above Love, even in the name of Love, does not actually teach the truth, but often its opposite. This is why many of the religious teachers continually worked against Jesus thinking they were being of service to God. Love however, is the meaning of life and is the only guide to the meaning of the Law. The Law guides us to Love through a surrendered will that knows this Love (God) from within.

That is the only power, by which Law and Love are married.

Love and Law: Meaning

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the answer for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” - 1 John 4:7-11

Christ is our ultimate door through which we know our Teacher. It is to know God is Love in actuality and being, which is the embodiment of knowing the Law’s purpose and what Love is really like.

“Let your light shine before people, that that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” - Jesus (Matt 5:16-17)

“For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” - Galatians 5:14

“For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. - Romans 6:14

“What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law.” - Romans 7:7

“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” - Romans 10:4

Christ is The Teacher of humanity, always was and has been, whether in Jesus or in creation, as all things were created through Him. (Col 1:16-17, John 1:3) This situates us inside the Larger Story of the meaning of life and the journey to learn to love.

Many kids often comment how they did not like listening to their parents (Law) growing up, but when older, realized what their parents were instructing was right from love, regardless of how imperfect. This is similar to our journey of growing up in Love. We might miss the reason why an instruction is helpful when immature, as we would rather do something else, but when we age, we may see the reason was to guide us into maturity. If the point of Law was only to be obedient to it, without the results of freedom that come from within, we would miss the point. The point was to guide us until we are mature enough to live in the freedom of love by choice, rather than being told what to do. 

Only Lovers Should Teach The Law

Only those who love should preach the law. They know its limitations and purpose. They do not preach the law as the end in itself. Only those who love are in position to know when to preach the law and when to preach its fulfillment in love. They will not be stuck in the law's duality, therefore can use it when necessary to guide and guard. For example: When someone refuses to forgive, the law will be upheld. When someone forgives, the law will be fulfilled. When someone refuses to love, the law can guide them, when someone chooses to love, the law will not be necessary.

The life and story of Jesus is the embodiment of this entire process by which we are to understand Law and its fulfillment in Love. We see how Jesus understood when to use the Law, namely with people who were so intent on thinking it was an end to itself to create righteousness, and when to use the stories of Love to shatter those burdened expectations. His life revealed the nature of God who freely loves, freely gives, and who freely receives all from God who is all in all. He instructed his disciples to share this Reality to the ends of the earth and that it was better that he goes away so that the Spirit of this reality would come upon all humanity and be developed within them, rather than only listening to Jesus in the flesh instruct them from outside themselves. 

This was the great mystery revealed:

“The mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now revealed. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ and Love. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.”- Colossians 1:26-29

Simply put, only teachers who love should teach the law as many teachers are not loving. They might say they “love the truth” but they love the feeling of being right in justification of their knowledge. They are not teaching from the energy of Love. They think their ways leads to salvation and the knowledge of God, when in fact it can do the exact opposite, hence the reason for much religious trauma, baggage, and needful deconstruction. Many have to unlearn those teachings trying to be obeyed outside themselves when Truth can only be known from within.

Jesus put it this way to some zealous religious leaders:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.” - Mathew 23:15

Ouch!

These teachers think that God only arrives when they get there to teach.

Unloving teachers who teach the law create dynamic burdens for people. They create walls of division in the name of truth, often making their converts twice removed from an awareness of the Reality of God. They think of themselves as the Law, as an end unto themselves, where no one can learn about God unless they teach. Love however, tears down the walls of division and their burdensome requirements in order to free us from this bondage to experience what is Real. There is only One teacher and He is already teaching you. So then, the Law can be helpful us as a guide, yet it must find its fulfillment in learning to find Love from within. 

Within, written on our heart, is where we find Christ who’s been with us the entire time teaching us to surrender to the Law of Life by which Love is born. Love then grows within us as we live the deeper meaning until eventually there is no law. The two have become One and Love has swallowed obligations whole. The only thing left is the freedom of choice to freely receive and freely give Love. Anything less, is a lack of awareness of Reality, which feels like suffering to all who resist its freedom, especially by holding onto anything that cannot fulfill us.

Here then is the marriage supper. This is the banquet set before you, in you, and in your enemies. This is the journey of life: To remain in Love as Love remains in you.

-PH

“As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing of Love teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.” - 1 John 2:27

“That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also find themselves in us so that the world may know you.” - Jesus (John 17:21)