The Facts of the Matter!

I trust that you will take some time not only to think about these facts, but also to take them to heart:

FACT #1: God never intended for the Ten Commandments to be our means to righteousness because He knew that we could not keep them, and He was fully aware that the standard they set was far beneath His standard for holiness (Matthew 5:20-48).

FACT #2: God never intended for the Ten Commandments to become an object of our affection; instead, He clearly defined them as the ministry of condemnation and judgment—the ministry of sin and death (2 Corinthians 3:7-9).

FACT #3: God released us from the Law of Commandments, especially the law that required us to love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind because (1) He knew that the Law would imprison us in disobedience and, consequently, we would never love Him; and (2) He never intended for any law or system of laws to be the means to our righteousness or the means to our loving Him (Romans 3:20; Galatians 3:21)

FACT #4: The church has taught—religiously taught—that loving God is absolutely essential for righteousness, so much so that most of us have spent our lifetimes trying to prove to God that we love Him, when in fact Jesus (not our love) is our righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21).

FACT #5: According to the Scriptures, we fulfill the Law by loving one another as He has loved us (Galatians 5:14). Obviously, this is accomplished ONLY as (1) the result of our having been released from the Law and, thereby, from its curse; and (2) the result of our having been empowered to love by the Spirit.

FACT #6: True Christianity is about relationships, and if we miss this, we miss the heart and essence of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

MY PERSPECTIVE: The person who believes these truths will love God because loving God is the fruit of resting in His finished work and, I might add, God does know the difference between “love” that is the fruit of Old Covenant works and “love” that is the fruit of our New Covenant rest—the former being self-centered, the latter being Christ-centered.