Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
By nature we all have a love/hate relationship with God's Ten Commandment law. "The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Rom. 8:7). As descendants of the fallen Adam, with his sinful nature, that is our natural condition--"enmity" against the pure, holy law. Don't let anyone kid himself that he/she was born with a sinless nature. We all need to be converted. But there is also a sense in which we fallen humans have a love affair with the law, because God promised in the Garden of Eden that He would implant in every human heart an "enmity" against sin and its author, the "serpent." This is true of every human being, for Christ is the "Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (John 1:9).
God doesn't keep His purposes to Himself, He is not shy to say what He believes. "This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour: who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:3, 4). So, this love/hate relationship is true of everybody and all adds up: "That which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I" (Rom. 7:15). What an unhappy tension! The reason why God did not leave us in a 100 percent hate relationship is because He loved us.
The law of God in the Ten Commandments has often been misunderstood, even misquoted. Most printings of it in charts leaves out the indispensable preamble: "I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" (Ex. 20:2). Before we come to even commandment #1, He gives us Good News. He does not say, "I would like to deliver you out of bondage, IF ... IF" No! He says, "I have [past tense] brought you out of bondage." And there we have the Gospel proclaimed to us before the law is given!
Christ has already done what God promised in the Garden of Eden He would do--He has trampled the serpent on the head. "What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Rom. 8:3, 4). All this Good News is included in the preamble to the Ten Commandments, which is why a wise writer said long ago that they are ten promises, if we correctly understand them.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: November 21, 1999.
Copyright © 2012 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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