For the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, has said: “You will be delivered by returning and resting; your strength will lie in quiet confidence. But you are not willing.”
There has been increasing occurrences of protest turned violent in different parts of the world. While it is important, sometimes necessary for the masses to express their views, grievances and make their voices heard, it is more important for us to understand why some of these peaceful expressions become destructive. One of the reasons could be the deep seeded frustration in the hearts of man caused by years of disappointment, helplessness and feeling a sense of hopelessness.
The Bible quote today talks about people would cast off restraint, cross the line which they have been controlling themselves not to cross, because of no revelation. In some translations, it is also translated as “no prophetic vision”. It means, not able to see from God’s perspective. We often feel that God’s laws, commandments and even the Bible as a whole is a book of “dos and do-nots”. We have to obey them if we want to be Christians or good people. Such motivation for obedience would not last, and will not stand the tests and trials in life. When the pressure builds up within us and from outside, we find ourselves crossing that line of restraint.
Jesus said the whole essence of the law of God is love – love towards God and love towards our fellowman (Mark 12:29-31). Paul went on further to say that love is the fulfilment of God’s law (Galatians 5:14). God gives us His laws and commandments primarily for our wellbeing.
They are to protect us from our own follies, to protect us from the consequences of others’ wrongdoing, to protect us from the accusation of the enemy, because He loves us.
The primary reason for our obedience must be because we love God and we love others as we love ourselves. When we lose this perspective, we lose the reason to restrain ourselves from exercising our freedom, even if the exercise of our freedom could potentially be destructive.
In society, we cannot avoid rules, laws and even Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) in this current time. We can look at all these as restriction to our freedom. However, if we see their purpose is to protect, love for others would motivate us to obedience. We would be happy to keep the laws.
If love is the fulfilment of the law, lovelessness leads to lawlessness.