The law is our “schoolmaster.” It was “put in charge to lead us to Christ” (Galatians 3:24). The law is meant to show us our need for grace. If you fall short of its standards as often as I do, then it has probably exposed many times for you your deep need of a Savior. Living in the shelter of God’s love provides the grace to desire to keep God’s commandments. We simply cannot do it in our own strength. You show me a law, and my heart will tell you how to break it. My flesh, of its own accord, desires to rebel.
But God’s extravagant love motivates me to follow hard after Him.


Love motivates like that. It transforms the most rebellious heart into a pliable, relenting, penitent heart. When you read of murderers and adulterers, liars and cheaters, ungrateful ones and unforgiving ones in the Bible whose lives were changed, it wasn’t because they finally kept the law perfectly. It was because the love of Christ came to bear on their lives, and they went out thankfully from there, obedient and changed.