The God-Shaped HeartSample

The Perfect Remedy

Jesus taught the people of his day that a legal, punishment-oriented approach to relationship with God is inaccurate. They focused on deeds. Jesus pointed them to the condition of the heart that leads to those deeds.

When we serve a god based on law and order, love is crushed. We may obey the rules, but we are never transformed into the likeness of Jesus. 

When a person has a fever, cough, and chills, it is certainly appropriate that such symptoms are not ignored. It is good that we know such symptoms are an indication something is wrong. That’s what leads them to the physician, who looks past the symptoms to the underlying cause and prescribes a remedy to cure them. 

This is why God gave the written law—to diagnose and protect his children from further infection, while he, through Christ, procured the remedy to cure us. 

Just as children don’t understand much about reality and need someone to instruct them, so too we sinners cannot comprehend reality as it is, including God’s original design for life and the reality of our own sin-sick condition, without someone to tell us. God has provided the written law as a tool to reveal our terminal state of being so that we will realize our need to return to our designer for healing and restoration. As we mature, and God’s design law of love is written again on our hearts, the written law is no longer needed for diagnosis. Still, the written law does something more than diagnose: it provides protection, a “do not go into the street and play” boundary, while God finishes his work of restoring us back to his original design—beings who live in perfect accord with him and his law of love. 

God, like a loving parent, gave the written law to help protect his children who didn’t understand his design law and were in danger of destroying themselves. But now, Jesus has come. He has revealed the truth of God’s character. He has lived out God’s law of love perfectly—in humanity. He has procured the remedy to our sin-sick condition. Through trust in him we can partake of his victory. In other words, we can have God-shaped hearts—hearts that are in harmony with God and love like he loves!

When has God’s written law drawn you closer to him?