Top X June 7, 2025 Devotional

PSALM 119:14, 47, 103 | ¹⁴I delight in the way of your decrees as much as in all riches.

⁴⁷ I find my delight in your commandments because I love them.

¹⁰³ How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

ROMANS 7:7 | ⁷ What then are we to say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”

Earlier I mentioned that God’s law is a guide to life and health and a restraint on evil. To follow it is to increase your freedom and to defy it is to lessen it. But the Reformation, calling on the apostle Paul, emphasized a third use of the law, the usus didacticus. This is the law as teacher or mirror, driving us to acknowledge our brokenness and convicting us of our sin. This aspect of the law, in which we feel the weight of our envy, or sense the pressure of failure to be wholly honest, or recognize our sexual shortcomings, drives us toward grace. Once we understand God’s real desire for us, His intentions for our hearts and lives, we realize we cannot keep the law, beautiful as it is, without His grace and His power filling us. We are moved to confession, repentance, and conversion and beyond living out of our resources. Easter and Pentecost are the answer to human failings.

Read some of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7.

Gracious God,

Thank You for taking responsibility for my shortcomings and failures. Help me turn to You today for direction, for strength, and for Your wonderful grace.

Amen.