WE WILL FAIL, BUT THERE IS GRACE.

Ephesians 2:14 & 15  “…he (Jesus) is our peace…abolishing the hostility of the commandments of the law….”

I've been reading Ephesians and thinking about God as He is revealed in the Bible.  

Life based upon actions would be a complete disaster.  Seeing the lives of Israel and the history of the people: if they did right God blessed them, if they did wrong SOONER (Achan) or later (Babylonia), judgment came with disaster marked by death, loss and misery.  It is hard to see God’s love in this.  I can see God revealing Himself, His power, miraculous provision, care for those who please Him and severe judgment (the hand of Joshua to kill them) for those who don’t – but I see little love.  There are lots of promises and lots of failures to get them.  Even King David failed even with his knowing God and the Spirit of God on him.

Under the Law, I fail and will fall into the judgment of God and death – just as Israel eventually did.  That is also the conclusion of Paul, the Jewish theologian.  In Jesus, grace is preached: simply that God loves us in spite of Him being perfect and us being mortally flawed, for which reason Jesus came from heaven and took our sins and punishment, then returned to heaven from where he sent the Holy Spirit to live inside us to help us (through His power acting inside us) and console us when we fail.

The Law of God is perfect and points the way to live and go, but we will fail to live up to it.  If Jesus is not real and if he is not God then there is no grace (given only because Jesus took our sin and punishment as our substitute).  If there is no grace, then we are lost and dead because of the Law that God revealed in the Old Testament.  If we are under that Law, then we should all hope there is no God, or believe in re-incarnation (or something else) that maybe someday, somehow, we will earn a better life.