By Alex Wilson

When I was 17, my parents gave me my dad's 1997 Chevy Silverado. The truck was almost completely made of steel, and their thinking was simple: if Alex gets into an accident, he has a better chance of walking away because of how tough this truck is. They were right – I did get into a wreck, and I walked away from it. I even went to school that day.

This gift was meant to protect me, to help me flourish, to get me safely to school and football practice. It was given so I might live an abundant high school life. But I trashed the gift. I didn't honor it – I did donuts, raced my friends, drove without a seatbelt. I failed to honor the gift they had given me.

God's law is a lot like that truck.

In our ongoing 52-week study through the New City Catechism (by Crossway), we arrive at Question 8: "What is the law of God stated in the Ten Commandments?"

The law that God gave to Moses was a gift to His people. Think of it as a vehicle to transport them from Egypt to the promised land, to get them from point A to point B safely so they could flourish and experience the abundance of life that comes from walking in communion with God. But like me with my truck, they saw it as something to be broken.

Let's break down the Ten Commandments:

The first four commandments focus on our relationship with God:

* Have no other gods before me

* Do not make an idol for yourself

* Do not misuse the name of the Lord your God

* Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy

The remaining six govern our relationships with others:

5. Honor your father and mother

6. Do not murder

7. Do not commit adultery

8. Do not steal

9. Do not give false testimony

10. Do not covet

Jesus beautifully summarizes these into two commands: Love God and love your neighbor. The first four commandments show us how to love God, while the last six teach us how to love our neighbors.

Here's the challenging part: if you break even one of these commandments, you've broken them all. If you've kept them perfectly for 30 years but fail in year 31, you've broken them all. These laws show us how holy God is and how impossible it is for us to keep them perfectly on our own.

This is where Christ enters the picture. He takes God's law – this gift – and obeys it completely because He is perfect, the Son of God. He dies to pay the punishment for our law-breaking (death), and rises three days later by the Spirit of God.

This means we now live under a new covenant. If you trust in Jesus, you're no longer under the covenant of works (trying to perfectly obey the law to earn salvation) but under the covenant of grace. Jesus did the work for us. Even when we slip up, we remain in right relationship with God because of Christ's perfect obedience.

Now we can finally experience the gift of God's law as it was intended. Instead of seeing it as a monster lurking over us, we can view it as the gift it truly is – a guide to abundant life and flourishing.

I think back to my reckless driving days. I was searching for happiness in all the wrong places, putting myself in danger, living with anxiety. What if I had stopped and recognized that truck as the gift it was? What if I had shed my entitled attitude and instead spent time caring for it, appreciating it?

Here on Kauai where we live, I see local boys with their first trucks taking such incredible care of them – washing them, maintaining them, treating them with respect. There's a joy they have that others miss when they don't treat their vehicles as gifts.

Can we approach God's law the same way? Instead of viewing it as a burden, what if we saw it as a gift that shows us the path to abundant life? Under the covenant of grace, God's law isn't a harsh taskmaster but a loving guide, leading us to freedom rather than slavery.

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See you next week for Question 9!

With love, Alex

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