If you've spent any amount of time at all in the church, you've likely heard the term Law vs. Grace, which is what this passage speaks of. Most of the Old Testament speaks of how God set up the law as His special covenant between His people and Himself. So... why the change? Why the need for a new covenant? It certainly wasn't because the original Law and covenant was bad. God didn't change it because He had to. He could have decided to wipe out the entire fallen creation that He had made because we had hurt Him so grievously, and a few times (as with Noah and the Ark) He very nearly did. But instead, in His love, God saw the frailty of man and His weakness and IN LOVE He made another way. He saw how difficult it would be for us to keep His perfect law, so in love, He gave us Jesus to cover all our sins, even the ones we have yet to commit. If held to the true standard of holiness, we would never measure up. So He made a way in the wilderness. (Isaiah 43)
We hear this a lot, and we do live now under grace, not the law. But do we really believe it? We say it, but so often it seems that we try to attribute a strict, works-based love onto God. We try to do all kinds of good deeds as though this will somehow make us more worthy of God's love. We try not to do bad things that might make God angry or ashamed and somehow love us less. That's not how grace works. Nothing good we can do will make God love us more, because He can't love us any more than He already does. Nothing we can do will be so bad that He will love us less. (which I certainly find encouraging!) We do try to please Him because it is the right thing to do (according to the law), but let us try to respond as God first did to us, with love being the first reason for doing anything.
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