Purpose of God's Law

What is the law? Why is the law?

The yellow light says slow down and the red light says halt. The law of driving on the street regulates traffic, provides a safety framework to avoid accidents and tells us the perfect way to conduct ourselves while driving on the street.

In other words, the law shows the standard of perfect driving conduct. If you keep all the rules of the law all the time, you are a blameless driver - a driver who does not miss the mark even once.

If you break the rules of law even once or break a few rules sometimes but mostly keep the major ones, you have still not met the standard. You have missed the mark and are in violation of the law of driving on the street. If you are caught you have have to pay the price in proportion to the size of the offense.

The law of God, his commandments, spells out the standard for perfect living conduct. Even if one has never read the law of God, it is written in one's heart because our conscience now accuses us and now defends us. There is an unwritten law in our hearts - which we can choose to ignore or tune out over time.

Those souls who observe and realize that they miss the mark and can never meet the standard of God become seekers. They seek God with this issue that troubles them: "I cannot meet your standard, oh God, on my own effort, no matter how hard I try".

Those that try to meet the standard on their own and believe in their own effort and their own work only get trapped in a never ending search for justification through works and deeds.

Those that make a show of keeping a religious standard outwardly become hypocrites.

Others dismiss the standard of God and make their own north and work on keeping their inner compass aligned to the north they themselves created.

Yet others dismiss God entirely.

But, the purpose of the law is to help us recognize that we fall short of it, and thus propel us into a search for the righteousness that comes from God.