Finding Strength in God’s Law

“When I keep God’s law, is it restricting me or strengthening me?”

This question in Tuesday’s lesson made me stop, think, and question how I see God’s law.

Like most people, I tend to see the law as restrictive—sometimes as protecting. But strengthening? That idea has never crossed my mind. Yet it’s intriguing. How can I see the law as a source of strength instead of keeping me from something?

The lesson points out that the law is all about relationships—with God and with others. Sin destroys and weakens relationships; it fractures them: jealousy, pride, self-righteousness, manipulation, distance, ghosting, abuse. Jesus said that the thief comes to “steal, kill, and destroy” (see John 10:10). Our enemy is ruthless in his attempts to take out our relationship with God and damage our relationship with others. Sunday’s lesson reminds us that “Satan knows that he has to pull out everything he’s got in the times that we’re living in, right before Jesus comes, to keep us from having a close relationship with God.”[1]

If sin destroys relationships, then the law must protect them. Strengthen them. Jesus’ life shows us this.

Christ’s Example

People sometimes think of Jesus as a rule breaker. He touched the unclean. Ate dinner with sinners. Healed on the Sabbath. And He did break rules—human-made rules that were designed by religious leaders and tradition to keep people obedient, but that missed the point of the law: love God and love others.

Jesus did obey God’s law. He is an example of the law strengthening Him, not restricting Him.

His love for God and obedience to the first four commandments are evident. He put God and a relationship with Him first in His life. He spent nights praying, sought and followed His will—even submitting His own will in the Garden of Gethsemane and accepting God’s in spite of what it would cost. The Bible uses powerful words to describe what Jesus was feeling as He wrestled with the journey before Him, “He began to be troubled and deeply distressed” (Mark 14:33). Jesus told His disciples, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death” (verse 34).

The law didn’t restrict Jesus. It strengthened Him to love and obey even when doing so felt almost impossible.

He asks God to take the cup, but ultimately submits to His will, trusting the Father. He calls God, “Abba, Father” (verse 36). He knows that God is not just king of the universe but is a loving Father who cares. He’s learned this as He’s lived a life of love and obedience to God’s law. It’s this deep love and obedience that empowered Him to trust God completely—even when it was beyond hard.

The law didn’t restrict Jesus. It strengthened Him to love and obey even when doing so felt almost impossible.

Keeping the other six commandments compelled Him to heal the broken, touch the lepers, befriend the sinners, teach the multitudes, include the outcasts, and forgive those who crucified Him. Even when His best friends denied knowing Him and abandoned Him in the most challenging moments of His life, hiding behind locked doors in fear, His love and obedience drove Him to pursue them.

Heed the Fruit

In Jesus’ day the difference between the fruit of His life and that of the religious leaders was striking—His compassion versus their pride. His acceptance versus their attitude of superiority. His humility versus their self-righteousness. Jesus invited everyone to know God, not only including but especially the unclean sinners and even Gentiles. The religious leaders made it difficult for the average person to have a relationship with God. And often the people who needed God the most—the unclean, those battling debilitating illnesses, and “sinners”—weren’t even allowed in the temple. They were basically told, “Get better before you are welcome,” which sent a message about what God is like.

When we don’t live strengthened by the law but instead live as if we are restricted by it, we can paint a wrong picture of God and who He is to the world around us—often making Him unapproachable, unaccepting, distant, and judging, causing people to feel as if they will never be good enough—and that it’s up to them to make themselves right.

In Matthew 5:17, 18, Jesus says He didn’t come to destroy the law but to fulfill it. The author of the lesson writes in Wednesday’s lesson, “God’s law tells us about His character and what is important to Him.”[2] If God’s law reveals His heart, Jesus’s life also shows what is important to God: loving God and loving others.

This same law-shaped love didn’t end at the cross.

Jesus’ Priorities

One of my favorite examples of Christ’s incredible, unselfish, never-giving-up love is found in John 21.

He is the risen Savior. He’s conquered death and the grave—secured salvation for all of us. He could go home to heaven and His Father to celebrate and prepare for His return to get us. But He doesn’t. Instead, He pursues His disciples. These messy, failing friends who have denied knowing Him, abandoned Him, never really understood His mission, and most likely feel like hopeless failures. Especially Peter. They’re locked away, hiding, for fear of the Jews (John 20:19). Peter suddenly decides he’s going fishing. Why now? Did he feel like a failure as a disciple and decide to go back to doing something he was good at?

When we don’t live strengthened by the law but instead live as if we are restricted by it, we can paint a wrong picture of God.

The others go with him. They fish all night and catch nothing. I’m guessing the enemy is relentlessly taunting them, telling them that they are complete failures. They failed Jesus. They’ve failed at fishing. They can’t get anything right.

“But when the morning had now come, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus” (John 21:4).

The risen Savior still loves them. He stays up all night, waiting for them, probably praying, though John doesn’t say that, but it’s what He’s often done—spending the night praying for them and even for us. He prepares a fire and is there so long that it burns down to
“a fire of coals” (verse 9). Any Pathfinder can tell you that it takes a while to burn down to coal. He cooks them a breakfast of fish and loaves—did Jesus, the risen Savior, go to the market for groceries so He could take care of friends who had failed him?

Ellen White writes, “Christ’s first work on earth after His resurrection was to convince His disciples of His undiminished love and tender regard for them.”[3]

Then He redeems Peter.

He re-creates the original call on Peter’s life: fishing all night, catching nothing, Jesus’ instructions, a catch too big to handle, and an invitation to follow. He can see past Peter’s failures, pride, sin, and self-focus, to who God has called Him to be. He believes God can use Him powerfully to turn the world upside down.

Keeping God’s law strengthened Jesus. It gave Him the courage to trust God’s will no matter what. It deepened His love for messy people beyond what most of us can even comprehend—a love that can see possibilities when all we see is failure. As a result, He painted a picture of the Father that drew people—made them believe and want this God who loved so deeply, even loving the unlovable. The story of His life and love—the gospel—continues to draw people and cause them to fall in love with the Father.

So what about me?

When I keep God’s law, is it restricting me or strengthening me? Does it deepen my love for God and my trust in Him? Does it enable me to love others no matter who they are or what they do? What picture of God does my life and the way I live God’s law paint for others?

If the law feels as if it is restricting me, I am understanding it wrong. But if it is strengthening me to love God more deeply and people more freely, then I am beginning to understand it the way Jesus understood it.

[1] Nina Atcheson, in Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, April-June 2026, p. 72.

[2] Ibid., p. 76.

[3] Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898, 1940), p. 793.