The Law God gave to Moses reflected His perfection, restating the Law He imprinted on our hearts when He created us in His image (Romans 2:15). So, if you explore the different cultures throughout human history, you will discover much overlap with the Ten Commandments.
God engraved His written Law because the law in our hearts faded, corrupting over time. He handed His Ten Commandments to Moses around 1400 BC. So, for 1400 years, God’s chosen tried to follow His Law, but they always fell short. True, the Law helped restrain violence, teach virtue, and train people in a holy way of life. Not once, however, did the Law give life.
Years came and went. Men fathered sons. They grew up, became married, and their wives brought new children into the world. They grew old and died. They all died. Everyone dies because sin cuts no slack. Go back to God’s words to Adam. “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden except the tree, which gives knowledge of good and evil. For on the day you eat from the tree, you will die!” (Genesis 2:16-17).
Adam and his descendants die because of sin. “The wages of sin are death” (Romans 6:23). God’s Law uncovers the sin within us and in our lives. No one may sin, disobey God, and live. Sin condemns you to death for insubordination.
A year comes and goes. Ages fly past. What does time take in its wake? Death! Your father and mother, sister and brother, you and me—we all die, every one of us. From our experience, sin’s condemnation speaks the final word. Time proves the Law of God, which exposes our sin, is not full of empty, idle words.
Time deals out death. Death is the funeral bell of mortality, clanging out sin’s condemnation. Stare at the Law. Take in how God’s Law unmasks your sin. God isn’t messing around when He tells you how to live.
Yesterday, we sang: “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, soon bears us all away; we fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.” We, whom time all takes away, are the sons of Adam. We are the descendants of disobedience. We fail to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. We do not love our neighbors as ourselves.
We bow down before idols of our making. We use God’s name to cover up our sin. We despise God’s instruction by not coming to receive what He wants us to learn. We dishonor those whom God places in authority over us. We hurt and kill others, if not with our bodies, our minds. We break our marriage vows. We often take what belongs to others without fair payment. We slander others.
God provides, but we want more. At day’s end, when life becomes spent, we die. We die because the wages of sin are death.
Time bears us all away. Our memory disappears. The most well-known and famous are forgotten. Truth and fiction blend into myth. The truth of someone’s life becomes deformed and distorted, except for one irrefutable fact—he is dead. Sin sentenced him to death, and he died. Time’s river flows on and sweeps away our lives.
So, we stop to consider what took place when time came to its completion. God sent His Son, not only at the right time but when time became full. Of course, the proper time arrived, but not only.
Jesus entered this world at the perfect time to advance the Christian faith. Christian Truth grew deep roots in an Empire soon to perish and, with its death, the Church of Christ would extend throughout the world. So, the right time did arrive, of which the prophets of old long foretold. God directed the events of people to make His promise of a Savior come true.
The Apostle Paul writes, “When the time came to completion” or “became full.” Why? Jesus fulfills, completes, time. He came to be born of a woman, as we all are, but His birth did not place Him under any law. Jesus is the Son of God and over the Law, but still He chose to put Himself under the Law, to redeem those under the Law, to make them sons of God.
Our Lord, Jesus, is God’s Son because he is born of the Father in eternity, outside of time. Jesus isn’t the Son of God because of some event in this world. He did not become God’s Son by being born of the Virgin Mary. No, He is “begotten of the Father before all worlds.”
Not so with us: we become part of God’s family by adoption. God adopts us because Jesus redeemed us. We become sons of God because of an event in time.
So, what happened? The Lawgiver became human, placed Himself under the Law, the same Law, which He delivered to His people. The Law, which exposes everyone’s failings, now stands to judge the Savior. God’s holy and immutable Law of love examined the heart, soul, strength, and mind of Jesus.
The Law uncovered no sin or anything impure in His heart. The Law found nothing in His entire being not devoted to serving God. The Law did not expose Jesus fading in His resolve to do everything the Law demanded. For Jesus did not fail as we do.
Jesus sweat drops of blood as He faced the anguish of the Father’s abandonment on the cross. Still, His resolve held firm. Jesus prayed for the Father’s will to be done, demanding He, though innocent, suffer as the guilty one.
So, He suffered. He enters this world without any taint of sin. He never succumbed to sin—and so sin did not pay Him the wages of death. Still, He trudges on to die. He allows God’s Law to expose our sins, which He took into Himself, allowing the wages of our sin kill Him.
Our disobedience for Jesus’ obedience. Our lives of sin for His life of love. His innocent death for our guilt. He takes our place, redeems us, and fulfills the conditions of God’s Law to buy us back from the grave. Yes, time courses like an ever-rolling stream, dragging us toward death—except when time came to its completion. Jesus came and stopped our drift toward eternal death. He stopped time dead in its tracks.
Consider your sins this past year. Consider your regrets. What promises did you break, or what bad habits grabbed hold of you, over and again? You now enter a new year, closer to the grave. What did you do, which makes you shrink from death as the feared punishment God demands of the sinner?
Now eyeball your death, which looms larger and larger, creeping closer. Where did he go? Jesus snatched him away. His poison is no more, so your death is now no more.
Sin is the sting of death, and the strength of sin is the Law. God’s Law will unmask your sin, which will come to claim you, all the way to the grave, into eternity. Now, behold your Lord who became incarnate, who placed Himself under the Law, for you. Examine His holy life.
So, when the Law announces God’s anger toward you, speak of Jesus. In God’s court of Law, Sin cannot accuse you. For Jesus took the accusations against you, for you. You now go free.
What if your conscience causes you to fear? Silence your condemning conscience with the Holy Spirit’s words. He speaks, “You are a precious child of God.” The Spirit speaks of life, which delivers to you the life Jesus lived for you. In Christ, the pangs of eternal death wither away and die.
The Holy Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of truth, cannot lie. The Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. He moves us to cry out, “Daddy, Father!” Only the Spirit, which Jesus sends us from the Father, can give us such confidence. For in Jesus, God’s only Son, in His obedience, the Father adopts us as His sons.
God chooses you and brings you into His family. Not only may you call God “Father,” but you may also claim all the treasures of His household. Male, female, young, old, lifelong Christian or a recent convert, learned theologian or child, every Christian is a son of God and shares the same treasure—the treasure of Life.
So, let time roll on and take us all away. For when time comes to claim you, he will find himself toothless. Why? Jesus came and claimed you earlier. Are you not baptized into His death and resurrection? So, let time march on and bring all the children of men to its end. You are a son of God.
Our Lord Jesus stared down the demands of God’s holy Law. He bore for us the pains of death. His innocence confronted our sin on the wood of the cross, blotting away our blemishes. He now sanctifies the passage of time for us.
Now, you can recall a Christian who died with joy-filled hope and assurance: God sets a time for a reunion in heaven. In eternity, death becomes a forgotten dream. For we will experience life in its fullness. Today, this life is ours by faith; in eternity, a reality.
Who can imagine the joy to flood our souls? We will experience a fuller joy than a child’s leaping heart on Christmas morning. Time bows down to eternity and the treasures of God’s love in Christ will fill us to overflowing, into the ages of ages. Amen.
