Everyday Gospel: A Daily Devotional Connecting Scripture to All of LifeExemplo

God’s commandments are not a means of earning his favor but a gift of grace to those upon whom his favor already rests.

It is vitally important to understand that God’s law is wonderful and important and that you and I cannot obey our way into relationship with God. If you and I had both the desire and the ability to perfectly keep God’s law, then the entire redemptive narrative and its core message of grace would not have been necessary. Or if the law of God had the power to rescue and transform our hearts and breathe new life into us, then the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus would not have been necessary. The righteousness that God requires is impossible for us to achieve by our determination to keep his commands. God’s law does a wonderful job of exposing our sin and is a beautiful guide for our daily living, but it is powerless to save us from ourselves and make us acceptable to our Creator.

Exodus 19 is an example of how God’s gift of careful recorded biblical history is so helpful for us. Think with me for a moment about when God’s law was originally given. Think about that moment when God led his recently freed children to the base of Mount Sinai. They were there to receive God’s magnificently wise law because he had already set his love on them and had already redeemed them from slavery. God now gave them his law, not so that through it they would become his, but because they already were his. His law was a gift of grace to them.

Does that last sentence confuse you? God knew that the children of his love had no idea how to live, so in his law, he gave them a structure for their daily living. In submission to his law, they would thrive in peace and harmony. God also knew that they would be exposed to all kinds of temptations as they lived among the pagan nations of Palestine, so his law would provide protective boundaries to them. But there is more. God knew that his children were designed by him to be worshipers, that they would either worship him or surrender their hearts to idols. So at the foundation and core of his law is a call to worship him and him alone. In his law is guidance and protection, given so they might live at peace with him and with one another.

God’s law was given to Israel not so they could somehow earn his love, but because he already loved them and had moved to redeem them from slavery by unleashing his sovereign power.

It’s humbling to admit that we, like the children of Israel, have no power or ability whatsoever to earn our way into eternal communion with God. It is humbling to know that our most righteous moments fall woefully short of his holy standard. It is humbling to confess that we have no hope apart from his grace. But it is wonderful to remember that Jesus perfectly kept the law as our substitute and that, by grace, in him we stand before God righteous and accepted by him forever. What we could not earn, Jesus earned for us. Now that’s grace!

For further study and encouragement: James 1:22–25