<p>2:8<i> However, if you fulfil the royal law, according to the scripture: You shall love your neighbour as yourself, you do well</i>- <i>&nbsp;</i> &quot;Royal&quot; means the Kingly law- James' comment on the emphasis which Jesus gave to the command to &quot;love your neighbour&quot; in Mt. 22:39, and especially to the giving of the &quot;new commandment... that you love one another, as I have loved you&quot; (Jn. 13:34). Mt. 22:37,38 clearly states that the command to &quot;love your neighbour&quot; was secondary to that to love God. Yet the &quot;new commandment&quot; of Jn. 13:34 to love your neighbour (&quot;one another&quot;), and James' calling of this &quot;the royal law&quot; implies that now the law had been ended on the cross, including the ten commandments written in stone (Col. 2:14-17), these two commands were one- because to love God is equivalent to loving your spiritual neighbour, because by calling on the name of Christ the neighbour therefore carried the Name of God, and thus to love the neighbour is the same as loving God. This is the teaching of the preceding v.7, as we have seen. Alternatively, &quot;the royal law&quot; may refer to the entire Mosaic law- seeing that the law was fulfilled in the keeping of that one commandment, to &quot;love your neighbour as thyself&quot; (Rom. 13:9). Gal. 5:14 says the same, and as in James 2 the context is of not biting and devouring one another within the ecclesia, as a result of Judaist infiltration to stir up strife (Gal. 5:11,12,15). If the command to &quot;love your neighbour&quot; was fulfilled with no subsequent despising of poor brethren, &quot;you do well&quot;. The Greek for &quot;well&quot; is the same word translated &quot;good&quot; in v.3- the rich were invited to sit in a &quot;good place&quot; in the ecclesia, i.e. in a place of spiritual honour and respect. Thus James is saying that the ultimate qualification for sitting in the &quot;good place&quot; in the ecclesia was to love the members of the ecclesia as oneself, especially those whom it was tempting to despise. If the &quot;royal law&quot; refers to the whole law of Moses, it should be noted that <i>we</i> must fulfil it in spirit. It is easy to think that the Law was fulfilled solely by Christ's death on the cross.</p>