The Way To Full And Abundant Life – The Law and The Gospel

The Way to Full and Abundant Life

The Law and the Gospel

Romans 1.16, 17

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

The Law of God is our life.

Jesus said that He had come to bring full and abundant life to everyone who believed in Him. By His perfect life He achieved the righteousness we need to be able to dwell with God forever. By His death and resurrection He bore the wrath of God against our sins and opened the way to new life in Him. But of what does that life consist? The barest summary of it is, loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves. When we love God, we know the fullness of His joy and gain the benefits of His promises. When we love our neighbors God actually lives His love through us, using us to enrich and edify others by the grace He has extended to us. The Law of God encodes, in outline form, the behaviors which, as we walk in them, lead to full and abundant life (cf. Lev. 18.1-5). All the Law of God, as we learn to live in it, teaches and leads us in how to love God and our neighbors. If we really want to live, to realize all the righteousness, peace, and joy in the Spirit that our new life in Christ affords, then we will take up the Law of God for our daily meditation and obedience (Ps. 1). So again, we cannot proclaim the Gospel without also pointing to the Law as the framework of the way of holiness, the life to which all are called who would follow Jesus.

What place does the Law of God have in your walk with the Lord? Would you say that you are experiencing full and abundant life according to God’s Law?

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.