Loving or Lawkeeping?
In Mark chapter 10 Jesus encounters a young man. Most Bibles title this passage as ‘the rich young man’, or something similar. But it was not his wealth that was the problem it was his attachment to it!
This young man was fastidious in his religion. Every law that Jesus mentioned, this man had kept. He was a lawkeeper in the sense that every written rule he kept. The problem with lawkeeping is that very often it is done for the wrong motives. The careful keeping of every minute detail of every law was a feature of the Phariseeism, but it did more to boost the egos of the doers than it did to gain them entrance into the kingdom of heaven!
In God’s eyes lawkeeping is seen as the fruit that grows on the tree of love for God, and not something clinically produced in isolation from a genuine relationship with the living Lord of the universe. It is not that the law need not be kept – it must – but it must be because we love the lawmaker, not to prove how good we are.
God knows that ‘there is none righteous’ – that’s why he sent Jesus to suffer the punishment for our sin. It’s only when we love him and ask him into our lives on this basis that we can bear loving fruit and not mere lawkeeping.