The Sum of the Law

In opening WSC 42 to my children yesterday, we noted that the sum of the law is our relation to the Lawgiver. The second great commandment flows from the first because man is made in God's image. 

One thing I forgot to tell them this time (though we have done, many times) is that man's being made in God's image is because of how God had decreed to make the ultimate display of Himself and His glory in the Son: as the incarnate God and Savior. 

In this way, the sum of the law is intimately tied to knowing Jesus as God, glorifying Jesus as God, loving Jesus as God, and enjoying Jesus as God. 

Apart from this, there is neither loving God nor loving neighbor. The proper way to love God is to know and love Him especially through His Son. The proper way to love oneself is to love God in this way. And the proper way to love our neighbor is to aim, in all of our law-keeping, at his loving God in this way.

Impietism More Widespread and Dangerous than Pietism

I realize that there is a possible danger of becoming so reflective about spiritual things that one does not labor well in this life—to be a soul without a body, here, so to speak. And I understand that there is an introspection that is not spiritual at all, for it dwells little upon the Lord Himself and much upon the labyrinth of one's own thoughts and affections. Yes, there is such a thing as false piety. And it may or may not be helpful to call it "pietism" (aside from the fact that this is a technical term for splinter-movements within Lutheranism).

But I don't think I have ever met such a person. Ours is an age of epidemic, lethal impiety. The visible church is full of those who profess faith but have little thought of God, take little time with Him, make much of the temporal and little of the spiritual. They treat the means of grace as if they have little effect upon real life, spiritual pleasures and blessings as if they are worth much less than temporal. Of such the churches are full. And yet there are many who constantly warn against "pietism" in the churches, warning against too much of an emphasis upon certain habits and realities that actually comprise a necessary and crucial biblical piety. 

So, dear reader, watch out for those who are always railing against "pietism." It may be that they are selling you a soul-destroying impietism, by which you will assure yourself of spiritual life and forgiveness and godliness, where there really is none.