Since biblical times through the progress of salvation history, the concept of salvation has consistently been revealed as God’s governmental intention. The psalmist in Psalm 83:18 declares, “That they may know that You alone, whose name is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth.” The word, “governmental” implies the rule of God. God’s desire to rule is intrinsic to His eternal nature. His rule bears no tyrannical motive, but a relational one in goal and purpose. In short, God rules because God loves.

This concept is vividly demonstrated in the history of Israel as God’s chosen people—a people redeemed, called out, taught, and led into covenant relationship that was to increasingly manifest the Presence of God in the earth both in their private and national lives. In the experience of such a relational reality, Israel invariably fulfilled her call as a witness nation in the midst of the nations. She was not to pattern her existence like the nations around her that were built and sustained through military and economic might. Her pursuit was not to be territorial expansion or the conquest of nations. Israel’s exclusiveness as a chosen people was embedded in a faithful and obedient relationship with Yahweh—a relationship that was to determine the nature and purpose of her existence.

God’s Governmental Presence

“And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel” (Exodus 19:6).

The design God created for Israel in the practice of a continual relationship with Himself was the priesthood. The choice of a Levitical priesthood was for the purpose that an entire people would gradually enter and embrace the priestly state and practice of serving God in an obedient relationship. Priests were to stand before God first (ministering to Him), after which comes the confronting of men with God. The order was irrevocable. The very foundation of God’s relationship with man is foremost theocentric before it is anthropocentric – God first and man follows.

In the habitual function and mentality of a priest, the children of Israel were called upon to a single hearted, undivided love and devotion to God Himself: “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6: 4-5).

The SHEMA (the Hebrew word for Hear) was God’s governmental love in demonstration for the sole purpose of governing the hearts and minds of the children of Israel. The love that governs is God’s kind of love. It’s the love that establishes and orders the affection of a man in totality. In responding to His love, a man’s nature is brought into the transforming process where behavioral changes are made real. Sin in its essential working in human hearts produces and forges an appearance that is false. It is far from reality. Much of our human relationships that have gone through breakdown, sorrow, and pain have in one way or another been due to false appearances. Jesus’ indictment of the Scribes and Pharisees rings still: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matt 23:27). The absence of reality is the fermentation of death that follows all that we eventually do or say.

The Love That Governs

The Apostle Paul’s conception of the nature of God’s love corresponds precisely to the SHEMA. Writing to the Corinthians he declared, “For the love of Christ controls and urges and impels us, because we are of the opinion and conviction that (if) One died for all, then all died; And He died for all, so that all those who live might live no longer to and for themselves, but to and for Him Who died and was raised again for their sake” (2 Cor. 5:14-15. AMP). The love that controls, urges, and impels is the nature of the love of God. It is in the nature of God to rule. The deity of God is His rule (Pannenberg 55)¹. God would not be God if He does not rule, but His rule is fused in His nature – His love. His love comes with His rule. Paul was persuaded that being loved by God was the beginning of the governmental Presence of God in a man.

The Corinthians, like so many in the early days of the church, was not lacking in spiritual gifts. What was starkly missing was the behavior that is pivotal in ordering, directing, sustaining, and dispensing these Spirit-given gifts. Personal behavioral failures had resulted in corporate disharmony. Thus, was the state of the church at Corinth.

At the center of a church so present with a rich variety of gifts yet accompanied by dilapidating behaviors, Paul dynamically and assuredly proclaimed, “But earnestly desire and zealously cultivate the greatest and best gifts and graces (the higher gifts and the choicest graces). And yet I will show you a still more excellent way (one that is better by far and highest of them all –love)” (1 Cor. 12:31. AMP).

What followed in the 13th chapter of I Corinthians was the revealing of the nature of the love of God that was divinely inspired. It is the “highest of them all” because it is the deepest of God’s foundational Trinitarian Being – The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit is Love. Love that is behavioral in nature, that is patient, is kind, is not jealous, does not brag, and is not arrogant. Paul profoundly saw that the love that redeems man is the love that governs man.

From Shema To Shalom

“Of the increase of His government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from the (latter) time forth, even forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this” (Isa 9:7. AMP).

The Father’s purpose of SHEMA was towards the ultimate realization of His SHALOM. Shalom, the Hebrew word for “peace,” intriguingly is connected with two Hebrew verbs – “leHashlim,” which means, “to fulfil that which is lacking” and “leShalem” which means, “to make a payment.” Peace was to be more than the cessation of war and strife; it was more than just the absence of troubles. Peace, the Father’s Shalom, is the fulfillment of something lacking and a paid bill on our behalf.

Both actions point to God’s redemptive love in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ. The Father’s love in His Son poured into our hearts (Shema) begins the process of restoring our broken humanity; first by paying our debt to sin through His sacrificial death followed by His resurrection life that brings wholeness into every part of our being. The love of God, in an increasingly experiential way, bears the rule of God into every area of our lives. Where darkness once inhabited in motives and desires, light progressively invades. Where corrupted will and conduct once pervaded, the conviction of the Spirit turns insistent. Where He reigns is His peace. Obedience must follow. The Father’s love waits until our yielded will opens to the Prince of Peace that perennially comes again and again.

1 Pannenbeg, Wolfhart. Theology and the Kingdom of God. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1969. Print.