How Delight and Obedience Coexist

From Justification to Sanctification

Most of us may not associate delight as something that goes along with obedience to God's law, and I think that's because God's law has sort of gotten a bad rap. We see it as something that is supposed to be guilt-inducing and we see it as a crushing burden. It is actually spoken that way in the Bible in those terms, but it changes when we move from thinking about it in terms of our justification to our sanctification.

Ten Words to Live By

Jen Wilkin

Jen Wilkin invites readers to rediscover the Ten Commandments—ten words often misunderstood, forgotten, or ignored—and helps believers delight in the life-giving wisdom they hold for all whom Christ has set free.

Certainly, Jesus Christ goes to the cross and dies as the perfect fulfiller of the law because the law was burdensome and we could not fulfill it. But on the other side of the cross, the redeemed of Christ say that the law no longer hangs over us, but is instead underneath us as the path. It's the narrow path, actually, that Jesus speaks of in the Sermon on the Mount. It points us to what pleases God.

The law is a delight to us because it yields in us the fruit of righteousness and it forms us into the image of Christ.

So those who want to please God are now participants in the law out of joyful obedience and gratitude instead of a grudging obedience or fear. We do actually delight to do his will out of obedience to the law because we know, first of all, that it's what pleases him. Secondly, it's what leads to the blessed life that Jesus actually describes in the Beatitudes. It is given to us elsewhere in the Scriptures as well. So, the law is a delight to us because it yields in us the fruit of righteousness and it forms us into the image of Christ—who was the perfect fulfillment of the law.

Jen Wilkin is the author of Ten Words to Live By: Delighting in and Doing What God Commands.

Jen Wilkin is a Bible teacher from Dallas, Texas. As an advocate for biblical literacy, she has organized and led studies for women in home, church, and parachurch contexts and authored multiple books, including the best seller Women of the Word. You can find her at JenWilkin.net.