Delighting In Christ And The Law

A sure sign of falling in love with someone is taking an interest in the things they are interested in. A boy dating a vegetarian girl might develop a passion for a new cooking style. Similarly, a girl might start avidly following a new sport if she starts going out with a rugby-mad boy. All this is out of love, and the desire to please the one they love.
In Ephesians, Paul writes that we ‘were once darkness but now you are light in the Lord’ and as a result, we are to ‘live as children of the light’ (Eph. 5:8). There is a crucial connection between what we are now in Christ and how we are to live for him. Paul sums this up with the intriguing challenge to ‘find out what pleases the Lord’ (Eph. 5:10). Having the desire to live for Christ is one of the hallmarks of authentic Christianity, but how do we know what pleases the Lord? We must listen to Jesus for only he can determine what pleases him. In those intimate moments in the upper room, Jesus gives us an answer: ‘If you love me, you will obey what I command’ (John 14:15).
What are Jesus’ commands?
Talk of commands probably leads you to think of the Ten Commandments; that’s certainly what the disciples in the upper room with Jesus would have thought. It would have evoked memories of Old Testament history, when God made a covenant, giving Moses the law governing every aspect of life for Israel, from worship to farming. Classically, people have divided Old Testament law into three categories: ceremonial laws (to do with how God was to be worshipped); civil laws (to do with how to live as a nation); and the heart of it all, the moral law, which was summarised in the Ten Commandments.
As we see later in the article, Christians are now under the New Covenant. We understand that the ceremonial laws have been fulfilled in Christ. Similarly, the civil laws have also been fulfilled, since they were for a time when Israel was unique among the nations as a theocracy. We cannot ignore the beauty of these fulfilled commandments. They give us a glimpse of our Heavenly Father’s holiness and the cost of redemption, and show the importance of living a life different from those who do not know God.
However, the moral law, or the Ten Commandments, is different. The description of how God gave the law to Moses on Sinai, engraving it on to two stone tablets with his own ‘finger’, is at the very heart of the Bible passage in Exodus, and as we read it, we find elements of ceremonial and possibly civil law in it. For the disciples in the upper room, loving Jesus by keeping his ‘commandments’ had its focus on the moral law.
Does this talk of loving Christ by keeping the law and commandments trouble you? Isn’t the law of God there to show up sin in us (Rom. 3:20)? Isn’t Christ the end of the law (Rom. 10:4)? Aren’t Christians now under grace and not law altogether (Rom. 6:14)?
The law leads us to Christ
All of these things are true, but they point to what was going on when we first came to Christ for forgiveness. Galatians 3:24 summarises this with, ‘the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ’. Wonderfully, this is what the law of God did when it showed up our sin, giving us a glimpse of God’s holiness. It stripped away any sense of self-confidence in our own righteousness and showed us that we needed something greater. By God’s grace, the law led us to Christ for his forgiveness and perfect righteousness. Now we are ‘in Christ’, the law can never demand we fulfil it because, wonderfully, Jesus has done this on our behalf. The law has done its work in leading us away from ourselves, and towards Christ.
Living the law of God
The same law that showed up our sin and condemned us now points us to how God wants us to live for him, as people who are now righteous in Christ. Not slavishly or out of fear, but now out of love and in worship. When Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:10 to ‘find out what pleases the Lord’ he is pointing to the moral law as part of the way Jesus would have us express our love for him. The more we grow in this the clearer we understand that Jesus is not shouting, ‘Obey what I command!’ like an order barked from a drill instructor. Instead, we are listening to the invitation from our greatest friend to walk life with him, following the path he prefers and we do this because we love him.
Delighting in God’s law
It’s tempting to think that everything the law does now is always negative, in the same way a speed camera is only interested in us when we break the law. Yet, in Psalm 1, we read of a man delighting in God’s law, meditating on it day and night, and the law builds him up to make him strong and fruitful. God’s law does not just show up sin, now that we are in Christ, it also leads us to the ‘paths of righteousness for his name’s sake’ (Ps. 23:3).
Under the New Covenant, we have even more reason to delight in God’s law because of Jesus and what he has done for us. In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus asked us not to think that he had come to abolish the law, but to understand he had come to fulfil it (Matt. 5:17). Fulfilling the law cannot mean finishing with it, as in the same sermon Jesus goes on to unpack what living out the law’s requirements look like, with an emphasis on what our attitudes to other people should be.
Under the New Covenant, we have even more reason to delight in God’s law than those who lived under the Old Covenant. Hebrews 8:10 tells us about the New Covenant, ‘I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts.’ The law is no longer on tablets of stone but deep within us and has become central to how we think and live life. Whenever we read the law, we read it wearing Christ’s robe of perfect righteousness and rejoicing that he has met all its demands for us.
What Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount about the law of God is as challenging as it is beautiful. You know your own heart, and inevitably you will find yourself asking how you can live to such a high standard. Every Christian knows the struggle between knowing how God wants them to live and battling their selfish desires. This inner tension is summed up perfectly by Paul in Romans 7:22-23: ‘In my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind.’ It’s a real battle and we can easily collapse into the brutal false comfort of legalism or into despair.
The power of the Spirit
There is, however, a lovely answer: the Christian looks to live loving Christ, by obeying his commandments, through the power given to them by the Holy Spirit. Paul told Titus that it is God’s grace that enables us, ‘to say no to ungodliness and to live godly lives in this age’ (Tit. 2:12). It’s not by a great and solo effort of our own energy and will, and it’s certainly not out of a sense of fearing God to terrify us into action. Instead, it is by the work of the Holy Spirit in us, who inclines us to delight in God’s commands and empowers us to live by them. This is one of the most liberating things about being a Christian; we are now free from the ‘curse of the law’ (Gal. 3:13) to both delight in the law, and to show our love for Christ by living by it.
For all of this, we completely depend on the Holy Spirit who is always at work in us. What an amazing comfort this is as we look at the challenge of loving Christ by keeping his commandments! What a help this is in the times we struggle to follow him! This is why Paul wrote, ‘keep in step with the Spirit’ (Gal. 5:25) in the full confidence that he both leads and enables us to delight in Christ and his law. This is what pleases the Lord (Eph. 5:10). We are never alone, but the Spirit of Jesus is always with us, enabling, encouraging and leading us forward to love him and serve him well, by both keeping and delighting in his commandments.