For most of my life, the word law carried a heavy weight.

I grew up in a very legalistic church environment. The focus often felt less like loving God and more like making sure you didn’t break the rules. The law felt suffocating, like a long list of ways to disappoint God. Over time, I began to associate God’s commands with restriction rather than love.

So when I got older, I walked away from it.

I wanted freedom. I wanted to live life without the constraints of religion telling me what I could and couldn’t do. I took my own path, convinced that life would be better if I made my own rules.

But that road didn’t lead where I thought it would.

Instead of freedom, it led to brokenness. I found myself divorced, a single mom of two, emotionally exhausted, and spiritually empty. I had chased independence and found myself with nothing—no direction, no peace, and certainly no joy.

Looking back now, I can see that even in that season, God was working. It is one of my stones of remembrance.

One day a friend invited me to a church that was very different from what I had grown up in. The message there centered on grace—on the incredible truth that Jesus had fulfilled the law for us and that salvation is a gift, not something we earn. Hearing that resonated with me deeply (probably because I had never been great at keeping rules).

It was during that season that Jesus rescued me. He met me in my desperation on my living room floor and completely changed my life. Scripture says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). That became my story. I was washed clean through the sacrifice of Jesus and brought into a relationship with Him that I had never truly understood before. I have never been the same.

This free gift—something I did nothing to deserve and certainly could never earn by perfectly keeping the commandments—pointed me to their fulfillment in Jesus. Because I was in Him, I was no longer bound by the law as a means of earning righteousness.

This was, and still is, great news. But it doesn’t mean the law was abolished, or that it stands in opposition to the Gospel.

Over the years, though, I began to notice something interesting both inside and outside the church. Many people treat grace like a free pass to sin. The idea is that if Jesus fulfilled the law and we’re forgiven anyway, then obedience doesn’t really matter. In this way of thinking, the law itself becomes the enemy.

And something about that didn’t sit right with me.

As I spent time in the Word and grew in my relationship with Jesus, I began to realize something important: the law was never meant to be a heavy yoke on us. In fact, it was always a gift.

The apostle Paul explains in Romans that the law reveals sin to us. “Through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). shows us the condition of our hearts and makes it clear that we cannot save ourselves. It exposes our need for a Savior.

And that Savior is Jesus. I am so thankful that each and every time I fall short, I feel the freedom to run to Him. I am aware of my depravity and great need of Him because of the gift of the law.

Paul even describes the law as a kind of guardian, guiding us until Christ came so that we could be justified by faith (Galatians 3:24). The law wasn’t the solution to sin—it was the signpost pointing directly to the One who would be.

But the law also reveals something else: the holiness of God.

When we read the commands in the Old Testament, we’re seeing reflections of God’s character. God tells His people in Leviticus, “Be holy, because I the Lord your God am holy.” His commands show us what righteousness, justice, faithfulness, and love actually look like.

The problem was never the law. The problem was our hearts.

Paul even says in Romans 7:12, “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.”

When I began to understand this, my perspective started to shift. Instead of seeing the law as a burden, I began to see it as something beautiful—a glimpse into the heart of a holy God.

And even more than that, I began to see how many of God’s commands were given so His people could flourish.

When God gave Israel laws about cleanliness, food, and quarantine in Leviticus, they protected people from disease long before modern medicine existed. When He commanded Sabbath rest, He was protecting people from endless labor and exhaustion. When He established laws about justice and caring for the poor, He was creating a society built on dignity and compassion.

In Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people that God gave these commands “for your good” (Deuteronomy 10:13).

That’s what loving fathers do. They set boundaries not to control their children but to protect them.

Still, the law by itself could never save us. No matter how good the commands were, no human being could perfectly keep them. That’s why Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 are so important. He said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

Jesus didn’t come to throw the law away. He came to complete what it was always pointing toward.

Through His perfect life and sacrificial death, Jesus accomplished what we never could. Second Corinthians 5:21 says that God made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

That’s the beauty of the gospel.

But grace was never meant to lead us back into the same sin that once enslaved us. Paul actually asks a question in Romans 6 that feels incredibly relevant today: “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?”

His answer is simple.

“By no means.”

Real grace doesn’t make obedience irrelevant. It transforms our hearts so that we actually want to obey.

Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Not because we’re trying to earn His love, but because we already have it.

And that’s the difference.

Legalism tries to obey God in order to be accepted. The gospel tells us we are already accepted through Christ, and that love changes us from the inside out.

The prophet Jeremiah spoke about this long before Jesus came. God promised a new covenant where He would write His law on the hearts of His people (Jeremiah 31:33). Instead of external rules trying to restrain sinful hearts, God would transform those hearts entirely.

That’s what happens when the Holy Spirit lives within us.

Obedience stops feeling like oppression and begins to look like freedom.

Looking back now, I can see that both extremes I experienced missed the heart of God. Legalism reduced the law to a checklist for earning approval. Lawlessness dismissed it as something irrelevant.

But the truth sits beautifully in the middle (as it usually does).

When we see it through the lens of Jesus, we don’t have to fear the law anymore.

We can love it. And even more, we can love the One who fulfilled it for us.

Ardently His,

Jen

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