If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the Law as violators. For whoever keeps the whole Law, yet stumbles in one point, has become guilty of all. For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you have become a violator of the Law.
A common phrase is “keeping a clear conscience.” This gets at the desire to avoid that which makes us feel guilty and tells us we have done wrong. No matter how much we seek a clear conscience, none of us can keep the entirety of the law. Even as we try to follow commands like “love your neighbor as yourself,” we often do so with partiality and limits that make us violators of the very law we seek to follow.
For those who have followed Christ for years, we may wrongly forget we are still sinners in need of grace. We still pick what is convenient for us, avoid those who are different from us, and go through great lengths to get our way. Even after years of knowing Jesus, in our own power, we still fall short. This is why we need grace. May we live empowered by this marvelous grace in the same way Paul spoke of in 1 Corinthians 15:10, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.”
- What are some of the ways you recognize you still fall short and need God’s grace?
- How has God’s grace impacted you? How has it changed the way you interact with and love others?
- Pray for God to open your eyes to any way you have believed you have arrived instead of seeing yourself as a sinner remaining in need of His grace.
