God Wants a New Kind of Obedience by Pastor JD Greear for Summit Life
A pastor friend of mine, Joby Martin, recently told the story of taking his daughter to a birthday party. It was at one of those trampoline-filled warehouses, probably called “We Hate Kids but We Love Broken Bones.” Sure enough, Joby’s daughter felt her arm pop halfway through the fun. So he took her to get an X-ray. Diagnosis: trampoline-induced fractured elbow.
An X-ray machine is helpful, you see, but it’s got limits. It does a great job revealing the problem, but X-rays are powerless to do anything to fix it.
In the same way, the law is like an X-ray that shows us how spiritually broken our heart is, but it is powerless to fix it. Many of us try to use the law to fix our busted hearts. We might as well try using an X-ray to fix a broken bone.
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We love helping others and believe that’s one of the reasons we are chosen as Ambassadors of the Kingdom, to serve God’s children. We look to the Greatest Commandment as our Powering force.
The purpose of the law is not primarily to correct sin, but to reveal sin.
As the Apostle Paul puts it, “No one will be justified in his sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law” (Romans 3:20 CSB).
The law was supposed to function like a mirror that reveals to us how sinful we are. By looking into it, we see the shape of what our heart should be—and what it isn’t.
Take, for instance, commandment 7, “Do not commit adultery.” This shows me that I’m supposed to love purity so much that any sexual desire I have for someone besides my spouse is outweighed by my love of purity, my love of God’s design.
Or commandment 9, “Do not lie.” This shows me that I should love honesty so much that I’m never tempted to lie, even when doing so would gain me some advantage.
