I ChooseSample

I Choose Love Over Law (Part 1)

I didn’t know what I was doing. I chose a major and a career path in college, but I was lost relationally. I was surrounded by the excitement and energy of university life, with access to all my friends, all the time, all together. There was the opportunity to date too many people too often. I could push the boundaries of purity. Surely God wouldn’t be too mad.

I thought a good relationship was one that simply didn’t do bad things. That was “law” thinking. I thought I could tiptoe as close to the line of what I considered sex as long as I didn’t cross it. God’s love, not the law, should have been my guide. My relationship with Christ and people isn’t about abstaining from the wrong things, but about pursuing and clinging to the right things. Instead, I was doing lots of wrong things, and some of the right things, but all for the wrong reasons.

I can remember driving in my car one evening and realizing how I treated someone I dated actually revealed my heart toward God. If I let love rule my relationship by serving the other person, building them up, and putting their needs in front of my own, then that would rise like worship to God. It’d be like saying, “God, wow! You did well when You made her. I’ll cherish Your creation and treat her with respect and care.” The way I’d been going about it said something more like this, “God, I’m going to try and get away with whatever I can, without breaking your laws, cool?” See how love is so much more worshipful and powerful than law?

I thank God for His gracious love to teach me in that moment, because the girl I was dating at the time turned out to be my wife. Two kids and 10 years later, we still fight to choose love over law every day. We still submit our relationship to be ruled by God’s love knowing that our marriage is a result of His grace, an act of worship, and a picture of His Gospel to the world.

Pray: God, in what areas of my life am I toeing the line of Your law instead of living inspired by Your love? Holy Spirit, will You give me the strength to make the switch?

Joey Armstrong, LifeGroups and LifeMissions pastor at Life.Church