The Perfect Law of God, Our Failure and Sin, and the Good News of the Mercy of God in Christ Jesus

To love God is to obey Him, to keep His commandments. Love is fulfilled in the law obeyed from the heart in love. Psalm 119 extols the psalmist's love for God's holy commandments.

Friends, if we find we have antinomian (anti = against; nomos = law) tendencies, if we hate certain commandments of God, if we are rebellious and hostile at the thought of obeying God out of love for Him, then the problem is NOT with the law. Rather, WE are the problem.

Our sin is the problem.

The ONLY solution is to run to Jesus the Christ in repentence and ask for His forgiveness for our sin, in faith in Him, His perfect righteousness and mercy. Mercy and truth have kissed in Christ Jesus. That means that He is the righteousness of His people, and He--though sinless--endured upon the cross the eternal God-forsaken suffering, death, and shed blood that His people deserved to receive in God's righteous wrath. He took their punishment upon Himself as their propitiation, their substitute before a righteously wrathful God, in order that God can righteously extend mercy, the deliverance from the curse of our sin, to His people in Christ Jesus, that is, through faith in Christ Jesus.

God's promise of salvation and eternal life for whosoever believes in Jesus is for all people from every tribe, tongue, and nation in all the earth, and for all times, eras, and future generations.

And once a Christian is saved, what to do? Study and meditate in the word of God (the Holy Bible); pray the words of Scripture to God; obey the commandments of God, walking in the Spirit of God; and thus love God and your neighbor (your fellow man). To love God is to obey Him.

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Lyrics: Matthias Loy, 1863

Music: ERHALT UNS, HERR L.M.
           Geistliche Lieder, Wittenberg, 1543


--from Trinity Hymnal, Baptist Edition


The law of God is good and wise
And sets his will before our eyes,
Shows us the way of righteousness,
And dooms to death when we transgress.

Its light of holiness imparts
The knowlege of our sinful hearts
That we may see our lost estate
And seek deliv'rance ere too late.

To those who help in Christ have found
And would in works of love abound
It shows what deeds are his delight
And should be done as good and right.

When men the offered help disdain
And willfully in sin remain,
Its terror in their ear resounds
And keeps their wickedness in bounds.

The law is good; but since the fall
Its holiness condemns us all;
It dooms us for our sin to die
And has no pow'r to justify.

To Jesus we for refuge flee,
Who from the curse has set us free,
And humbly worship at his throne,
Saved by his grace through faith alone.

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