Now, if you love Jesus, you can't stand up and say there are no commandments.

There are no do's or don'ts.

There are do's and there are don'ts.

It's because Christ has forgiven me and loved me that he can now say to me, okay,

you are forgiven.

Go and sin no more. So often, we have such a negative

attitude towards anything with reference to law. And particularly, we have a tendency to react

negatively to the law of the Old Testament,

because it seems to be severe, it seems to invoke hardship, it seems to involve so many stipulations

that we shrink beneath its weight.

How many times have I heard Christianity is not a list of rules. Christianity is not

a list of do's and don'ts. People are desperately trying to communicate that message to the secular

world of our society. Christianity does not find its essence in law, but it finds its essence in gospel.

It does not find its meaning in legalism.

It finds it in freedom and forgiveness and all of those sorts of things.

And to be sure the essence of Christianity is found in gospel and not in law.

And certainly we can never think of Christianity or Judaism in the Old Testament as simply

being a list of do's and don'ts or of stipulations.

That would be a distortion of the Christian faith, but let me say just from the outset, there's

no Judaism without law, and there is no Christianity without law. Even though it is true that Christianity

is not, in its essence, a list of do's and don'ts and rules and commandments and prescriptions

and laws, nevertheless, at the heart of the Christian faith is a list of do's and don'ts, of rules,

...