“The behaviour with which biblical ethics is concerned is not simply the behaviour of individuals; the principle of society bears intimately upon all ethical studies and it bears also upon biblical ethics. Hence the biblical ethic takes account, not only of individuals as individuals and of their behaviour as such, but of individuals in their corporate relationships. There is corporate responsibility and there is corporate action.”

-John Murray in Principles of Conduct p.13

"Love is without question the fulfilling of the law. It might be more accurate to say that love is the fulfilment of the law. It will surely not be challenged if we say that love is both emotive and motive; love is feeling and it impels to action. If it does not impel to the fulfilment of the law, it is not the love of which the Scripture here speaks. In a word, the action to which love impels is the action which is characterized as the fulfilment of the law. Again, since love is in the category of feeling which creates affinity with the object and constrains the outflow of affection for the object, the fulfilment which love constrains is not the fulfilment of coerced and unwilling formal compliance, but the fulfilment of cheerful and willing obedience. Without such constraining and impelling love there is really no fulfilment of the law. Law prescribes the action, but love it is that constrains or impels to the action involved."

-John Murray in Principles of Conduct p.22

"The antithesis which is oftentimes set up between love and commandment overlooks this elementary fact. Love itself is exercised in obedience to a commandment—'Thou shalt love'. We cannot get away from the fact that love in this case is not ultimate or original. Love is dictated by a consideration that is prior to itself. Love is obedience to a commandment which comes from a source other than itself; it does not autonomously excogitate or create itself. We must resist that perverse conception of the nature of love that we cannot commanded to love, that love must be spontaneous and cannot be evoked by demand. It is true that the command or demand will not itself create the love. Commandment of itself has no power to generate love or elicit obedience. But it by no means follows that love is not commanded. Love is commanded, and love is exercised in response to the commandment even though it is not the commandment that creates or generates that response. In this respect the commandment to love is like every other commandment. The commandment to feed the hungry, for example, does not itself create the disposition or will to do so; but feeding the hungry is action elicited in response to the commandment.

This fact —that to love is itself a commandment—should serve to expose at the outset die fallacy and perversity of that pattern of thought which is intolerant of the notion of keeping or observing commandments. If this notion is not biblical then we shall have to eliminate the commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets."

-John Murray in Principles of Conduct p. 23

“Day by day we make decisions on how to act, we form attitudes and cultivate emotions, we set goals for ourselves and try to attain them. We do these things individually, as well as in various groups: our family, friends, church, community, occupation, state. In all of these contexts the kind of people we are, the kind of goals we have, and the kinds of rules we observe in decision-making are ethical matters. All human behavior and character is subject to appraisal according to moral value; every one of our attainments (whether they be aims that are fulfilled or character traits that are developed) and every one of our actions (whether they be mental, verbal, or bodily behavior) expresses an unspoken code of right and wrong. All of life is ethical.”

-Greg Bahnsen in By This Standard