After the fall, God could no longer express His love and care for Adam and Eve as He had in the beginning. All of humanity was living in a broken relationship with God. Now people were living with their eyes opened to the knowledge of good and evil. Because people had no connection with God on the inside, the rules had to come from the outside. Therefore, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments as guidelines for the independent soul.
God knew what was best for man. He wrote the commandments like a loving father making rules to keep his children safe and happy. Just as a father might tell his child, “Don’t stick your finger in fire,” God gave these laws to protect His people.
The Ten Commandments, along with other laws in the Old Testament, clearly defined what people should and should not do. However, even when people wanted to, they just couldn’t obey all the rules. The soul, cut off from God and clouded by lies and fear, couldn’t follow His instructions. Before Moses received the Ten Commandments, the people had said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do” (Exodus 19:8). And yet, soon after those same people had given up on the Lord and worshiped a golden calf.
Even David, God’s chosen king of Israel, failed to keep the law. He wrote sincerely, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God”(Psalm 42:1–2). Yet David’s soul was fickle. He had an affair with Bathsheba, the wife of one of his loyal army officers. Then to cover it up, he had the man sent to his death in battle. God’s chosen king disobeyed four of the Ten Commandments; he coveted, committed adultery, lied and murdered.
Nothing was wrong with the law God gave His people; it was just that it couldn’t be followed. The law was not designed to be kept by the efforts of mankind. It was designed to show us God’s standard that, apart from relationship with Him, can never be kept. The purpose of the law was not to make people good; the purpose of the law was to show people that life guided by the soul can never be good. Despite having the knowledge of good and evil, the soul can’t live rightly on its own.
In the New Testament, Jesus summarized the Old Covenant law—that couldn’t be obeyed. When He was asked by a Pharisee about “the great commandment in the law,” Jesus replied, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets”(Matthew 22:37–40).
These two greatest commandments in the Law summarize what is best for us. “God is love” (1 John 4:16) and He created us in His image to reflect His love-nature to the world. But, these two commands are Old Covenant commands and therefore impossible to obey. Think of trying to love God with all your heart, all you soul and all your mind. How could you possibly do that? And even if you could, how could you then, having given all your love to God, have some left over for your neighbor? And how could you love your neighbor as yourself if you didn’t really love yourself, because you didn’t know God loved you?
Even though the law couldn’t be obeyed, the Pharisees were deceived into thinking they were obedient. But Jesus called out their true condition, “Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness”(Matthew 23:26–27).
Following rules can make a person look good by their own definition—from the outside. But it cannot make a person good by God’s definition—from the inside. Our true goodness comes from an inner relationship with our heavenly Father that flows through us to others. In God’s design, right living flows from right being. We were created as human beings, not as human doings. Being in relationship with God allows us to know his love for us and to naturally follow his rules. Paul summarizes this clearly when he says, “Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law”(Romans 13:10).
God doesn’t define right living as obedience to any set of rules—not even His own. Neither does He define sin as disobedience to the law. Sin, in God’s view, is not just doing evil as defined by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is also doing “good” under that same tree. Both the good and the evil are equally death producing—because they come, not from the Spirit, but from the independent soul. Sin is doing your own thing—no matter how “good” that thing appears.Sin is missing the true goal and purpose of life; it is living apart from God and being led by the independent soul. Again, Paul makes this clear: “Whatever is not from faith is sin”(Romans 14:23).
By showing the total failure of the law to make us good, God planned that we would come to know our desperate need for a Savior. Paul says, “The law was our tutor to bring us to Christ” (Galatians 3:24).
Our old, soul-guided nature always wants to live by rules. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil has deep roots. Every religion of the world caters to the desires of the Adam-nature to do something “good” to please their god(s) and earn their favor. Jews try to obey the Law of Moses. Muslims try to follow the Koran. Hindus try to appease many different gods and goddesses with a variety of sacrifices. Christians too can be easily deceived into trying to gain God’s favor through “good” deeds generated by the independent soul such as going to church, witnessing … or even loving others.
We cannot please God apart from our relationship with Him. God wants us to let His life and love flow through us.
In my own life, I had completely missed this point. When I did good deeds, I believed those deeds put me in right standing with God. Adam’s clouded mindset had darkened my thoughts. I believed the lie that if you do good things, God will love you, but if you don’t, He won’t.
That lie so warped the framework of my life that I tried desperately to do “good” things. In high school I got straight As. I earned the position of number one on the tennis team. I was president of the Girl’s League, the California Scholarship Federation and the church youth group. Pushed by the lie, I earned two separate undergraduate degrees in four years, attended graduate school, wrote numerous publications focused on helping sick and disabled children, aiding starving children in Kenya, raised four kids and worked as a volunteer for a mission organization. But … nothing was enough. Life was a constant struggle to accomplish the impossible and be “good enough” to earn love from others … and God.
Trying to love as commanded in the Old Covenant was the root of my problem. My independent soul couldn’t generate the love.
But Edna had seen past the whitewashed walls and the shiny ornaments that decorated my good Christian life. On that hot August day, she had spoken the truth, “Mary, you don’t love.”
She had identified the problem. But what was the solution?
Reflection Questions:
- In what ways is the law currently hindering you and/or helping you to live as God designed?
- Imagine and describe a growing relationship with God?
- In what ways might you be living by rules and regulations?
- In what ways might you currently be trying to earn God’s love and approval?
- In this chapter the author says: “Sin is doing your own thing—no matter how ‘good’ that thing appears.Sin is missing the true goal and purpose of life; it is living apart from God and being led by the independent soul.” How might your independent soul be causing you to miss your true goal and purpose in life?