God has outlined standards for His people in the first five books of the Bible known as the Torah. These books describe how sinful mankind may have a relationship with a holy God. Moses summarized what God requires of His people:

And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the LORD’S commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today for your good? ( Deuteronomy 10:12-13)

Joshua reiterated these standards in his farewell speech to his people:

Only be very careful to follow the commandment and the Law which Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you, to love the LORD your God and walk in all His ways, and keep His commandments and cling to Him, and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul. (Joshua 22:5)

We may think that we love the Lord, but do we love Him with all our heart and soul? If we take an honest assessment of our lives, we realize that we are not always consistent in walking in all His ways. The Apostle Paul provides insight to this dilemma as he revealed the function of the law:

Therefore the Law has become our guardian to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. (Galatians 3:24)

The word guardian conveys the idea of a tutor or schoolmaster. God’s Law was to reveal to us that we cannot keep His Law in our own strength and that we need a Savior. The Apostle Peter testified before the Jerusalem Council our inability to keep the Law:

Since this is the case, why are you putting God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our forefathers nor we have been able to bear? (Acts 15:10)

We do not keep the Law to earn God’s grace, but we are able to keep the Law because of God’s grace:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and in a godly manner in the present age, (Titus 2:11-12)

Are you trying to please God in your own strength, or are you living by grace and walking in the power of the Holy Spirit? We are able to meet the requirements of the Law by resting in the vicarious, substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ to live His life through us. God never gives commandments without providing the means to obey the commandments – His commandment is our enablement.

But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are. (Acts 15:11)

Rick Higgins

Associate Pastor – Discipleship.  The Church at LifePark