What's Wrong With Me and the World?
What does God demand of me?
- One might say that God demands obedience from me.
- And that is certainly true.
- Yet that answer does not cover the depth of God’s demands.
- God is not pleased with external or ritual obedience.
- He desires obedience from the heart.
- God wants my love.
- That is why the law is summarized “You shall love the Lord ... and your neighbor as yourself.”
- It is possible to obey God without loving Him (an empty obedience).
- However, it is impossible to love without obeying (cf. John 14:15).
Furthermore, God requires perfect love,
complete love, love for both God and my neighbor.
- The summary of the law emphasizes this when it says,
- “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
- And the reference to heart, soul and mind certainly emphasizes the fact that God demands that I sacrifice my whole self as a living sacrifice of love and gratitude to God.
Through God’s law I come to know what a wretched person I am.
- I have wandered away from God through my disobedience.
- I have lost all the wonderful gifts which God had given me at creation,
- gifts such as purity, integrity and uprightness.
- Can I keep all this perfectly?
- No, I am inclined by nature to hate God and my neighbor.
There are some who claim that the law is
no longer in force today.
- They say that in the Old Testament there was the law,
- but today there is grace, i.e., the command to love.
- In the Old Testament they had to strictly obey these laws,
- but in the New Testament I only have to love God and my neighbor.
However, Christ said that
the law has not passed away (cf. Matthew
5:17)
- and as we read in John 14:15, love for God will produce obedience to His commandments.
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