Our obedience is a product of faith and is expressed as love. The reason we obey him is because we believe him. It is different from old testament law.  We don’t believe that our obedience makes us better people.  We do not judge ourselves or others by a set of laws. We cannot earn our salvation, but our heart’s desire is to please him, rather than to please ourselves, and it is His Spirit who enables us to do it.  That’s why it is written, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.”!  We must recognise that we are sinners, saved by grace!  Serving our God does not require a set of laws but an attitude of repentance and thankfulness. 

We can be confident in God’s faithfulness but we cannot afford to take his grace for granted or to become arrogant about our place in his household.  It is written... “We are confident, I say and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.  So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.  For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due to him  for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.  Therefore, since we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men”. (2 Cor. 5:8-11).

“For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.  And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” (2 Cor. 5:15)

 

Recognising our own place as sinners who have been forgiven, is crucial in the way Christ taught us to relate to others. This is made clear in the following passage:

“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.  In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’   They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.  But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.  When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’  Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.  At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.  Jesus straightened up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’   ‘No one, sir’, she said.  ‘Then neither do I condemn you’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.’” (John 8:3-11).

This scripture spells out the difference in attitude between the old covenant and the new.  After all, who has the right to enforce the law, when we are all lawbreakers?  Only Christ himself has lived among us without sin and that is why he is appointed to judge.

We have all broken God’s law at some point. That’s why it is written, that the law “was against us and stood opposed to us”, because we were all condemned to death as law breakers, but thank God for his forgiveness through the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. -  “For in Christ all the fulness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fulness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.  In Him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done with the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism and raised with Him through your faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead.  When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ.  He forgave us our sins, having cancelled the written code, with it’s regulations, that was against us and stood opposed to us; nailing it to the cross.”  (Col. 2:9-15)

 

Let us never forget, that through baptism into his death and resurrection, we have received forgiveness!  For this is the whole point of the new covenant; that “repentance and forgiveness will be preached in his name to all nations”. (Luke 24:47)  If we forget that we have been forgiven through God’s grace - then we may become self righteous and start to think that we actually deserve a place in his kingdom!

 

Luke 6:37 “Do not judge and you will not be judged.  Do not condemn and you will not be condemned.  forgive and you will be forgiven.”

 

Matt. 6:14,15  “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”