A young man, hoping for the reward of his fiancée’s smile, hands her a bouquet when she comes to the door. He is obeying the ‘laws of love’ because he loves, not because he is concentrating on the rules. Is that legalism? Obeying the rules is loving, and you have to know what they are. When entering a town on a highway, the speed limit goes down. It is unloving not to know the rules. Why do I feel like you are characterizing me as the young man shoving the bouquet in his fiancée’s face, saying, “Here, I have to do this because it’s a law of love!”?
There are indeed laws of love, the moral law, which is elaborated on extensively in the NT and that we need to be cognizant of and obey because we love, like the speed limit, not because they are rules that we are checking off. The antinomian seems to pretend that they are not even there and have been cut out à la T. Jefferson, not even being willing to recognize the labels. I reject the label of legalist.