Why Bother?
This is a good and fair question based on a snippet of Scripture being misunderstood. The Law of God instructs us on how to live; in doing so, it does point out our sin, with sin being defined as breaking the law of God (1 John 3:4). The curse of the law, or rather the penalty of it, is death (Romans 6:23); this is known as the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). We needed this curse to be our tutor, showing us our great need for a savior (Galatians 3:19). Our savior has now come, we no longer need the curse of the law to point us to Him; now we just need to follow Him and His example. What was His example? He was without sin; He did not break the law of God. He did more than “try” to not break the law of God, He simply didn’t.
Why Bother?
Where does that leave us? Unlike Messiah, we have all sinned (Romans 3:23). We will all sin again. Does this mean we should stop following Messiah? Why should we bother? If we might not keep the law of God perfectly all of the time, what excuse does that give us to purposely break the law of God all the time? None. Should we stop following His example? Of course not.Look at the 10 commandments found in Exodus 20, which ones have you broke?
Maybe you did not break them all physically, but perhaps you broke them in your heart (i.e. Matthew 5:28). According to Messiah this is still breaking the commandment and not following Him, should you stop following the 10 commandments and your Savior because you have failed to already?
How many of us can say we will never break one of the 10 commandments again? No one.
So, should we say that we do not have to do the 10 commandments because they are too hard to keep and we cannot keep them? Can we not do all things through Messiah (Philippians 4:13)? Should we now go out and murder, steal, and covet all that our neighbor has, including their spouse, and commit adultery as well?
What about the two greatest commandments of loving God and loving others (Luke 10:27)?Have we ever been guilty of loving ourselves at the expense of loving God or loving others? Of course…Have we ever been unloving to someone else? Of course again…
Will you ever be unloving to someone else again? It’s very likely that it will happen. Should we get rid of the commandments to love God or love others, because they are simply too hard, or because we have a tendency to break them? Of course not.
Does it make sense to break a commandment all of the time just because you might break it some of the time? Does it make sense to say, “why bother keeping the Law of God, we will just break it because no one can keep it perfectly”
That is the same as saying, “why should I eat, I am just going to get hungry again.”
…”or why should I take a bath or shower? …I am just going to get dirty again.”
Our Creator did not send His Son to save us by grace through faith from our breaking of the law of God (sin) just so we can go and always break the law of God.
WHY BOTHER?
Once we come into the faith we are promised to be saved by His grace; we should see the whole law of God as an added joy, the perfect way to live out our lives.
Yeshua is the Word, He is our example. We are to strive to follow after Him in our lives, after all He said to follow Him; Peter (1 Peter 2), John (1 John 2:6), and Paul (1 Corinthians 11:1) all reiterated our need to follow Messiah as our example. Before He came, we had the Torah to teach us how to live and the penalty of death to point us to (or show us) our need for Him. Once He came, we had an example of how to live the Torah and atonement covering our sins for when we deserve death. By grace through faith in Messiah we have salvation, eternal life, and atonement for our sins. Without Yeshua there is no salvation, there is no eternal life, there is no atonement for our sins.
We bother with striving to follow the law of God because it is the life that Yeshua lived; it is following Him as He called us to do. We follow it because He is our shepherd and we love Him. Do you want to do what your Messiah did, then follow His example. He is the Savior, the living Word, the Torah.
Maybe if we could see the law of God the same way that the author of Psalm 119 wrote of it, as freedom and truth, something to delight in, then maybe we would understand we don’t have to keep the Law of God, we get to.
Click for more on these topics in the below teachings:
Why Bother?
The Tutor
The Way
Believing