Good rules for his loved family
In life, we often experience consequences when we break the rules. I loathed being sent to the headmaster’s office or being put in detention at high school for some ‘wrong’ that I had done during the day. I can also recall being sent out of class at primary school and waiting in the cloakroom knowing that I would ‘get the strap’ for throwing rocks during the morning interval.
How often do we come to the Ten Commandments in the same way! We feel guilty as we reflect on our failures to live as God’s people. This may be because of the sense that we have lived ‘like an atheist’ toward God and on account of all the not-good thoughts, words and actions we have had toward others.
As we read the Bible, it soon becomes evident that there was no person (except one) who ever followed God’s commands. Even God’s chosen people, who were rescued from Egypt and received the Ten Commandments, floundered when they didn’t believe or trust that the Lord their God would care for them, and they thought he would leave them to die in the desert.
The right way to come to the Ten Commandments is to realise that God sees us as his enslaved people and comes to rescue us ¬– to set us free – just as he did for the Hebrews: ‘… It is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works so that no one can boast.’
Doing good for us is what Jesus did on the cross: ‘While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.’ The fact is we don’t keep the ‘family rules’; we don’t get past the first rules. We like to think that God loves us because of the good we do, but remarkably, God loves us only because of Jesus Christ, who brings us God’s once- and for-all-time forgiveness and a brand-new life with him now and forever.
Lord, give us your Spirit to love and accept people who are different to ourselves and help us treat others in the same kind way you treat us. Amen.
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