The love and fear that a person uses to perform a commandment are
like the wings of a bird.
Just like wings lift a bird s body upward, so is the role of love and fear to lift the “body” of the commandment or the words of Torah to a higher level.
Love and fear are not the essence of the commandment, nor do they create the commandment.
But they lift the commandment and position it on a level in which it has the significance of a mitzva, where there is a differentiation between the holy and the mundane.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz