Youth 180 Devotions - NCC Question 7

Youth Devo

Good morning Youth 180.

It is Thursday May 28. And it’s Thursday’s with Germ here at Youth 180.

I hope all is going well with you wherever you are today. Hope that you are getting some time outside and getting to enjoy the sunshine and company with those around you. Hopefully by this point you’ve gotten to do something relatively normal. That you are getting some small elements of normalcy these days.

Well, this morning we’re going to continue with another question from the New City Catechism.

Today we’re going to look at the question “What does the law of God require?”. That is a pretty huge question. As people who are generally law abiding citizens we normally want to be on the right side of the law, right? We tend to want to do what is required.

Well the answer to the question that we have this morning is that; what God requires from us is personal, perfect, and perpetual obedience. Now that probably sounds pretty daunting doesn’t it. Like there is no way that we can find ourselves on the right side of this law. I don’t know about you but as much as I try there is no way I can be perfect.

But what we learn from this question is that when God says that he requires from us this perfection he is doing it in the context of grace. This is how God has designed it for us to be saved. What this means is that because of Jesus, and when we believe in Jesus, God views our lives through Jesus who was perfect. What God wants from us here is to follow Jesus.

Matthew 22:37-40 gives us a model to follow which points us to the law of God. It says, “37 Jesus replied, “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’* 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

So we’re called to love God and love others.

The loving God one we can maybe wrap our heads around. God who created the whole universe. Who the bible says knitted us together in our mothers wombs. We’re to love this God with all of our hearts, souls and minds. I think when we recognize how much God loves us, when we figure that out, it draws us to love God like nothing else. I know in my own life as I’ve learned more about God my love for him has grown deeper and deeper.

A theologian named Augustine said this about God’s love for us, “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” I think that’s pretty special. That’s pretty amazing this love that God has for us.

Then the verse gives us one more law/command that we need to accomplish. It says that we need to love our neighbour as ourselves. This is arguable the harder one of the two. People aren’t always easy to love. They hurt us, they annoy us, they aren’t always kind to us. So it makes it hard to be like I love them back. But I think the encouragement is and how God works through this in our lives is that when we understand how much he loves imperfect people like us, then that softens us up a little and lets us know we can love the imperfect people around us.

1 John 4:19 says, “19 We love each other because he loved us first.” Truthfully this concept of love isn’t understood outside of God because God is love. Love exists through God, was shown by God first. And he wants us to show that love to the world, to the people around us.

The passages in Matthew, end with the world that on these two commands depend all the Law and the prophets. All the other laws and commands that we read hinge on these 2. I really believe that as we work on these 2 commands that all other things just start to become who we are. The love from God will drive us to follow all the other commands.

Let’s pray together.