God loves us, and shows us how to love him in return.
I’m not a dispensationalist. There are several reasons why I am not a dispensationalist, but one of the primary reasons has to do with the way that the Old Testament Law is disconnected from grace in most popular dispensationalism.
Christ was the fulfillment of the Old Testament. Not a wholly new thing, the grace of God in Christ was the continuation of the story. The law is not somehow separated from the grace of God. God’s graces is one of the primary themes of the Bible running from the fall until ultimate redemption in Revelation. The Law is not a diversion from grace, it is just another example of God’s grace.
The Old Testament Law is evidence of God’s grace toward an unruly people as he shows them how to love him.
There are occasions in our lives when we find ourselves loving people who do not know how to love us back. Children are one example. Our children come into this world selfish and self-centered. It is the responsibility of parents to teach children how to not only be loved, but to love others. We show them that loving others means sharing, listening, and responding in kindness.
In your particular family culture there are specific ways of showing love that may not be present in other families. When you bring other people into your family there is a particular difficulty in teaching them how to love within your particular family culture. Children may come in through adoption or foster care and bring all sorts of baggage that makes loving and trusting difficult and it is the responsibility of parents to show hurt kids how to trust and love. Even in-laws have to be shown (taught) how to love within their new family culture. For this reason it is helpful to sit down with new family members and explain your family culture and customs so that they will know how to love and fit in.
It is with this understanding of teaching others to love that I urge you to approach the Old Testament Law. God brings a diverse group of tribes and people groups out of Egypt and makes them into one people, His chosen people. He makes a people who were not a people into a specific group of people and he makes them his own. God loves them, not according to their righteousness (Deut. 9:4) but according to his divine love. And then, in that love, God takes a people who do not know how to rightly love him in return and he shows them.
God is not a precocious deity who leaves his children alone to figure out what would please him.
He is not a frivolous wife urging her husband, “You should KNOW what makes me happy.” God is a jealous God, but one who shows his “steadfast love to thousands who love me and keep my commandments” (Deut. 5:10).
The Old Testament Law was indeed more than the people could bear, but it was not given strictly to crush the people, but to show them how to love God in return. And then, as if that was not enough, this God of grace sent Christ–after he had shown us how to love Him and we had failed–to love him perfectly in our place and to give us Christ’s blessings for free. Christ became the fulfillment of all of the law, and in Him we have perfectly loved God vicariously.
