When we talk or hear about God's law or the Ten Commandments, love is usually the last thing that comes to mind. We tend to imagine large stones and towering inscriptions laid out before us, written by the hand of an angry God, a righteous Judge. We see the bold words “YOU SHOULDN’T” and we cower in fear. We tend to equate the law of the big ten with courthouses, cold, insensitive, demanding, condemning. We see them devoid of any emotion, warmth, affection, understanding, forgiveness. Instead, we bowed our heads in fearful anticipation, waiting and grimacing at the sound of that hammer of justice. We bow our heads in shame, immersed in the shadow of the law. Guilty, condemned and, at the same time, deep in our guts, we despise such commandments and restrictions, feeling intense surges of rebellion in our hearts. “Who are you to tell me what to do,” we say. For in our minds we regularly separate love from law, because they seem diametrically opposed, antithetical to each other. This is simply not true. Anarchy is really a lack of love. God did not hear the cries of Israel, only to impose strict commandments on a severely oppressed people, enslaved under a cruel dictator; no, God did not deliver a people from one form of cruel slavery, only to subject them to another kind. This is not salvation. Yes, this new freedom has limits, but only because love has limits. So it is also true that we were slaves of sin and now in Christ we have become slaves of righteousness. Slavery forced us to act in rebellion, now love compels us to such unspeakable things, because love now leads us into active submission to our “new” Master. It is a glorious paradox of freedom. Don't you know that if you present... middle of paper ......inst us, cursing and condemning us. Jesus came to fulfill the righteous requirements and receive all the blessings of covenant keeping. In fact, Christ became the inheritance, the promised land, the Sabbath rest for all who would enter it. Look with me at this great biblical doxology: Indeed, we confess, the mystery of godliness is great: God was manifested in the flesh, confirmed by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed in the world, raised in glory. (1 Timothy 3:16) God can never be less than God Himself. My prayer, as you read this book, is to look at the Ten Commandments in the light of redemption, as a covenant of love, as a marriage covenant, of boundaries in our lives. relationship with the Heavenly Father through the blood of his Son and the Spirit as our guarantee. God says: “I love you, do you love me?”