Lawbreakers

“May the LORD our God be with us, as He was with our fathers. May He not leave us nor forsake us, that He may incline our hearts to Himself, to walk in all His ways, and to keep His commandments…” 1 Kings 8.57-58 NKJV

The Old Testament is a poignant demonstration of the fact that man cannot keep the commands of God. Just read the book of Genesis, and read it honestly. It is a disturbing narrative because we see God unchanging, faithful, and true, and we see man changeable, unfaithful, and treacherous. Yet the command remains.

Jesus made this even more clear when He said that sin begins not with what we do but with what we think. It’s impossible to please God, then.

Or is it?

Behold the GodMan. Jesus Christ, God with us, fully God and fully man, the Prince of Peace because in Him dwells the fullness of the deity and the perfection of His image in the Son of Man. Christ came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and fulfill it He did, showing us the Way with His own life and blood.

If man was ever to keep the commands of God, it was clear even in Genesis that God needed to dwell in him. If God does not dwell in man, man cannot keep his commands. Praise God, then, that we can be one with Him as He is with the Father.

Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple, like the book of Ecclesiastes, is a demonstration of how even the wisest man who ever lived didn’t have as much revelation as we have in Christ. Solomon would have marveled at salvation by grace through faith, at the Way to the Father being not just a gift but a gift for all on whom God’s favor rests—not just the natural children of Jacob but the children of the promise.

Solomon defiled himself with many distractions. He disobeyed the command of God in many ways, not least of which was to keep himself from intermarrying—making his allegiance—with those who did not believe in the promise and had not submitted to it. As a result, the hundreds of women to whom he joined himself brought desolation into the land of promise. Under their influence, Solomon raised "high places" of worship to abominable gods, ancient principalities that required child sacrifice and worse.

Solomon, like all of us can, tripped over the command, veered into self-justification, and died in self righteousness long before his physical death. Solomon, wise as he was, worshiped the creation instead of the Creator.

In Christ there are no high places. It is the low places that are lifted up, just the same as it is that it is not the dust that matters but the breath, the voice, the word that gives life to it.

In Christ we are not victims but victors. The entrance point to this Way of Life is repentance. What a gift we have in the possibility to turn from all that enslaves us and kills us!