Question:
“What does the law of God require?
Answer (Kids in bold):
“Personal, perfect, and perpetual obedience; that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love our neighbor as ourselves. What God forbids should never be done and what God commands should always be done. “
Memory Verse:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
– Matthew 22:37-40
Commentary:
The law of God demands perfect obedience. But as Christian believers, we are saved by the grace of Christ, apart from the law of God. That paradox causes many believers to struggle with their proper relationship to God’s law.
One group believes that their freedom from the law’s penalty also gives them freedom from the law’s demands. It’s a great relationship to take advantage of because we love to sin. However, God’s law is designed to reflect God’s holiness. When we surrender to Christ, he takes our sin and gives us his holiness. This new standing with God through faith should produce the fruit of obedience to God’s law. The law shows us a God who is perfectly holy, and he deserves the honor, reverence, and obedience that is due to Him. Obedience to God’s moral law is part of worshipping our God whose law is perfectly holy.
The other extreme ties God’s favor with their own keeping of God’s law. This minimizes the demands of God’s holiness because they think that it’s within their power to keep it. Even if you boil all the law down to Jesus’ commands to love God and love others. We fall short. God’s law is demanding, not lenient. Paul asked in Galatians 3:3, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”
Failing to love God and others is the very thing that condemns us, and Jesus didn’t soften the law, rather he turned up the heat when he equated lust with adultery. The light of God’s law shines on our helplessness without the grace of Jesus.
Believers recognize that to be rightly oriented to the law of God means that you are first condemned by it. However, we don’t curse the law or shun it because it is the shadow of God’s holiness cast upon our hearts. Instead, we run to Christ who fulfilled the law on our behalf and gives us forgiveness full and free. This turns us to a life of worship, thankfulness for the God who redeems us and makes us righteous, and we increasingly delight in obedience because it pleases our Father and makes us look more like our Savior and brother Jesus Christ.
Resources:
Prayer:
Great Law-Giver, you have spoken a perfect law, and you deserve perfect obedience. Let us not merely think that your law requires outward submission; it demands the full assent of our minds and our hearts. Who is equal to such a task? We confess that we fall far short of keeping your law. Amen.
Other Scripture References:
James 2:8-10; Deuteronomy 10:12; 1 John 5:2-5; John 1:17; Galatians 2:15-21