No List

I like lists. I write lesson plans, meal plans (sometimes), to do lists, wish lists. I just wrote a list of lists! =) Lists give me a plan & a goal to strive for. I don't always love my to do list when I can't check anything off of it! ;) But I've learned as my faith has grown that there really is not much of a "list" in faith-- not a detailed list, anyway.

"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."
Matthew 22:36-40

It's just that a detailed list is easier. A "do and don't list" doesn't make me search my heart. But God wants my WHOLE heart, and that takes time, and thought, and prayer, and reading the Word, and being with Christ's church. It is hard, and painful to face the reality of sin in my heart. But the law is incapable of saving me. The law is good, but sin makes me unable to follow the law.

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it-- the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
Romans 3:20-28

And as I have been reminded this week; in Christ, I am dead to the law. I should seek to please my Savior and King out of love, not some misguided attempt to earn His favor. I can do NOTHING to either improve or reduce God's favor towards me.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38-39

And I was amazed again when I read whispers of this in Ezekiel this week. God's plan has always been to save a people through the redeeming work of His Son.

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Exodus 20:8-11
 
So I led them out of the land of Egypt and brought them into the wilderness. I gave them my statutes and made known to them my rules, by which, if a person does them, he shall live. Moreover, I gave them my Sabbaths, as a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD who sanctifies them.
Ezekiel 20:10-12