“You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’”(Jas. 2:8).
This quotation from Leviticus in our reading today has a very distinguished track record. Not only does St. James use it in his letter, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself’”(Jas. 2:8), but St. Paul also puts it to use in his Letter to the Galatians. “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal. 5:14). But of course most of us will recognize it from Jesus’ Summary of the Law. They ask him which is the greatest commandment, and Jesus tells them to love the Lord with all your heart and soul and might (another quotation, this time from Deuteronomy), to which he adds, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39). If we were compiling a list of Scripture’s greatest hits, this verse, Leviticus 19:18, would surely be on it.
Neither St. Paul nor St. James lets on that they know Jesus had quoted it before them, though they surely did; both prefer to go directly back to Leviticus. For Paul, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal. 5:14) sums up the whole law, while James calls it “the royal law” (Jas. 2:8).
The classical Greeks knew that a “royal law” was a law given by a king, authoritative on the face of it; and the ancient Hebrews certainly knew that the command of the king needed to be obeyed. “Keep the king’s command because of your sacred oath” (Eccles. 8:2), it says in Ecclesiastes. The king’s word certainly laid down the law in Israel, and those who were wise obeyed it.
But the phrase, “the royal law” was not used in ancient Israel, nor did Jesus use it himself. Under the old covenant, God was the principal lawgiver in Israel, not the king. A formulation like this one ran the risk of obscuring God’s rule, of confusing the power of God with the command of the king. Ancient Israel had a robust anti-monarchical tradition; they were keenly aware of the disadvantages of having a king bossing people around. For a long time they even argued about whether or not they should have a king! “The royal law,” in our reading today, even though unique, has got to be the law given by God: the law recounted in the five books of Moses, the law given by the King of the universe.
Curiously enough, the closest that the Old Testament gets to “the royal law” is “the royal road” (Num. 20:17) which gets a mention in the Book of Numbers. This was “the king’s highway” that ran through the land of Edom: a road that belonged to the king, helping him get from place to place. Kings had to travel fast, to enforce the law and to keep the peace, so their “highways” were special and well graded.
One commentator on “the royal road” imagined that the “royal road” must be a metaphor for the law itself, the commandment given on Sinai. God was the lawgiver, the law leads us to God (Philo, De Post. Cain). You can see how St. James might have gotten the idea of “the royal law.” If there can be a “royal road” then there can be a “royal law.”
In other words, he’s saying that the Levitical command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18), is the way Christians navigate the world: both the way they live in it, and the way they travel back to God. The “royal road” is the way we get from where we are to where we need to be. It is the best way to progress from one situation to another; it is the way with the least obstruction, and the way commanded by God. “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’”(Jas. 2:8).
There is a reason, of course, why Jesus, in summing up the commandments, gave this “royal law.” Love of neighbor requires that we develop a capacity for sympathy, an amount of self-awareness, of who we are as children of God, and a recognition of who others are in relation to God. It’s “the royal law” that invites us to see ourselves and others as God sees us, as beloved children of God. The divine perspective calls for humility and confession on our part, because we all fall short; it requires that we desire to return to the path, to the “king’s highway” that returns us to God.
Perhaps we can end with St. Augustine, who said once in a sermon: “In loving your neighbor and caring for him you are on a journey. Where are you traveling if not to the Lord God, to him whom we should love with our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind? We have not yet reached his presence, but we have our neighbor at our side. Support, then, this companion of your pilgrimage if you want to come into the presence of the one with whom you desire to remain forever” (Tractatus 17). Or, as St. James put it (once again), “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Jas. 2:8).