The Ten Commandments: Devotions From Time of GraceNäide

Impossible To Win   

Have you ever played a carnival game and lost? Yup. Here’s why. They’re rigged so that you lose. Basketball free throw? Sorry, the rims are shrunk and then bent into an oblong shape to appear larger in front.

Carnies know that when we fail, we’ll pay for another game. And another. That’s how they win.

God makes the Ten Commandments impossible to win, but for opposite reasons. God wants us to stop trying to win his forgiveness or pay for eternal life with our performance. When we fail, he wants us convinced that we can’t be perfect on our own.

Once Jesus told his disciples, “‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, ‘Who then can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible’” (Matthew 19:24-26).

Jesus did the impossible for us. Jesus made it through the eye of the needle. How could Jesus, bigger than creation and world empires and sin and death, fit through the eye of a needle? By becoming small. By giving up bigness and beauty. By giving in to the curse of sin and death, which he didn’t deserve. And he won forgiveness for you. Now it is possible for you to follow him. And to obey the Ten Commandments.