Power to Obey

We now have the Bible answer to the question: Which will lead to happiness—entering into a life of disobedience and sin, or into a life of obedience to God? The Bible and the Ten Commandments are an unchangeable, indispensable, perfect guide to happy living. Human experience testifies to the validity of this Bible truth.

Yet hearts are still in conflict. One lady expressed it like this: “I believe the Ten Commandments are binding, I know the Bible teaches that I should follow them, I believe that most of the great preachers accept them as being a guide to our conduct, I am certain that keeping them leads to happiness, and I have tried my very best to keep them; but I just can’t do it. I simply can’t keep them and I’m beginning to believe that no one else can.”

It’s a common experience to find greater difficulty in keeping the law than in coming to believe in its validity. Why? People do not have the innate ability to keep the law.Nothing which we possess by nature can elevate our life into a perfect obedience to God’s law:

“The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.”
—Romans 8:7.

An unbelieving sinner may try to live a life of obedience to God’s commands. But in answer to such trying, over and over again from within the sin-polluted heart of a person comes the frustrated response, “I can’t obey!”

There is only one way of obedience; the Ten Commandments tell us that we are sinners in need of a Saviour:

“Through the law we become conscious of sin.”
—Romans 3:20.

The function of the law is to lead us to the utter realization that we are hopelessly lost. For what reason?

“The law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.”
—Galatians 3:24.

Jesus is the answer! Once we are at Jesus’ feet in absolute helplessness, by faith we can receive power from Him to obey the law.