Good Intentions

Moses went down to the people and repeated all the instructions and regulations the LORD had given him. All the people answered with one voice, “We will do everything the LORD has commanded.” Exodus 24:3

GOOD INTENTIONS. That’s what the people of Israel had after they heard God’s law through Moses. They genuinely desired to live in the way God prescribed for them as a holy nation and his treasured possession. But less than forty days after the Israelites promised to have no other gods and to make no idols (God’s first and second commandments), they stood around a fire pitching their gold jewelry into the smelting pot to become part of a golden calf.

We, too, have good intentions. Yet we are people who bow before other gods, such as our investment portfolios and other people’s opinions. We call ourselves Christians and then act completely un-Christlike when we don’t get the service we think we ought to at a restaurant. We inundate ourselves with entertainment that normalizes sex outside the covenant of marriage. We shade the truth to make ourselves look good at someone else’s expense. We covet the better cars in the carpool line, the better figures and physiques in magazines. We are lawbreakers.

Fortunately, Jesus can do for us what the law could not. The grace of God at work in us gives us the power to obey “the perfect law that sets [us] free” (James 1:25). We can worship God wholeheartedly and take his name upon ourselves with integrity because Christ liberates us from our slavery to other gods. Our security in Christ frees us to enjoy his Sabbath rest. He fills our hearts with the same love he has for his Father so that we can honor our parents. He fills us with his very own faithfulness so that we can live in sexual purity. He enables us to treat our children as precious gifts rather than as evidence of our great parenting skills. He convinces us of all that is ours in him forever so that we can stop coveting things that will not last beyond this life.

Lord, we need so much more in our home than a code of good behavior and a load of good intentions. We need your Spirit to write your law on our hearts so that we will want to obey you. We need your holy law to work its way through the hidden places in our hearts and the habits in our home so that we can be set free from idolatry and infidelity, disrespect and dishonesty. We long to be a holy people who together enjoy the freedom not to sin, which is made possible by the work of your grace in our lives.