“For this is loving God, that we keep his commandments. His commandments are not grievous.”

Faith makes the impossible possible, but love makes all tasks easy. It is easy for the Christian to obey the commandment because we love the God who gave them…

And yet, we find it so difficult. Our resident flesh still has a strong pull for the Christian against the work of the Spirit dwelling in our life. We still fight against selfishness and rampant pride. We are so used to it we don’t even notice and don’t see the depths of our depravity. We are sinful, even as Christian people and God has still to teach us so many things about ourselves, that we might know Him better as we seek His forgiveness. We can think we are keeping the commandments, but not really understanding the depth and breadth of their scope. We tend to see the superficial and don’t digger deeper into the application of them in our own personal lives. We think we don’t murder, yet we resent other people and rehearse grievances against them, rather than pray for those who hurt us and use us. We need to examine the moral law and find that we are actually law breakers and need to repent daily.

The Christian life is very straightforward – we see our sin, are convicted of it, so we repent and turn away, becoming more godly in all our thought processes and behaviours. But the difficulties come in the ability to face up and turn from evil, because our human propensity is towards that way of living. We find it easy to just fall into lazy and sinful mindsets and motivations, and forget the Lord. We must fight the fight and put self, which is our fleshly propensities, to death. The Holy Spirit will lead, teach and convict us so that He helps us in our fight against temptation, sin and the enemy, Satan.

For the Christian, the motivation to keep the commandments comes from our love of the Lord and not some stoic idea of sticking with things and tightening our resolve to be good. We love our Father in heaven and want to please Him and that gives impetus against the forces of temptation. His laws teach us and are for the protection of our life, so they are not grievous to us, but we embrace their holiness and justice.

Beloved, may we find our loving God to be sufficient today as we face life in all its faces, and may God help us to obey and please Him as He ministers to us through His Spirit.