There Is No Fear in Love

Connie Cartisano
Oct 5, 2023
5 min read

With my whole heart I have sought you. Oh, let me not wander from your commandments!

Psalm 119.10

( An excerpt out of the latest release from Why Is Life So Hard? Volume 6)

Can I say that I seek the Lord with my whole heart? I think so. As much as I know how.

There are times when I get sidetracked, but nothing comes back day after day like my thoughts toward God.

I love to talk to him and about him.

I love reading his words and sharing them with others.

I love being around his people.

I love getting involved in any activity or act of service that magnifies who he is.

Augustine speaks for me, “He loves You too little who loves anything along with You that he loves not for Your sake.”

So I find it interesting that I don’t immediately associate my affection for God with a fear of forsaking his commandments. He’s so beautiful, so glorious. I’m aware that he is righteous, and therefore a wrathful Judge. I just don’t dwell on it.

Thank you, Jesus.

Seriously, this is that whole Old-vs-New-Testament thing again.

Given how the New Covenant is taught nowadays, we find even the concept of commandments burdensome.

From the one and only in Eden to one dark Friday on Calvary, they have never felt like a blessing. God has made his will known and we disobey to our eternal peril.

Yet we read in the New Testament that God is not willing that anyone should perish, a person needs only to repent (2Pe 3.9). And the one verse everybody knows, that God sent his Son so that any who believe wouldn’t perish (Jn 3.16).

Not quite the message of Moses—obey or be cursed (Dt 27.26), or Ezekiel—the soul who sins shall die (Ezk 18.4,20).

But not us?

No, not us.

“Christ fulfilled the law so you don’t have to,” God said.

He wiped clean the slate of legal debt that stood against us when he nailed it to his Son’s cursed cross (Co 2.14).

Thanks to Calvary, we just don’t know God that way.

He sent a Savior to seek us when we were lost (Lk 19.10) and find us he did. He did not come into the world to condemn the world but that through him the world might be saved (Jn 3.17).

He became my sin so that I might become his righteousness. (2Co 5.21)

The commandments, and their burden to “increase transgression” (Ro 5.20), are behind us. We now live at peace with the Righteous Judge of All the Earth. Glory to the One and Only.

So what do we do with verses like Ps 119.10? Have they become irrelevant?

To love my Savior is the deep desire of my heart. I want to please him and I’m willing to take his correction when I fail, because I love him.

Old Testament regulations that brought nothing but shame and guilt have been set aside in Christ, where there is no condemnation (Ro 8.1). We are no longer required to obey them from the same place as God’s Old Covenant people. This might be where our understanding goes wrong.

God never expected his people would obey every jot and tittle of the law. If he had, he would not have included the annual Passover and atonement rituals. In doing so, however, he built into their covenant the failsafe of substitutionary atonement. God’s covenant heart (to be God to those who are his people) has not changed.

To keep his covenant, Old or New, only he could satisfy the demands of his own holy nature. He withheld the punishment accrued by their sin under the Old Covenant (Ro 3.25), until at the crucifixion, he poured out his wrath on all sin. The only person in all creation who could withstand such holiness was the God-man, and his body died under it. The beautiful by-product of this event, the point of it, was to forge in Jesus a divine-human Spirit. That’s what Jesus surrendered to his Father with his last breath.

We who are in Christ know our God in ways that Old Testament characters could only sniff from afar.

Unlike David, we know what it’s like to be guilty and not fear losing his Holy Spirit.

Unlike Moses, we know what it’s like to know God’s unconditional favor.

Unlike Isaiah, we know what it’s like to stand in the throne room of heaven and not fear death.

Elijah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, Zechariah—they all longed to behold the salvation that brought us to God (Mt 13.17), that allows us to “serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days” (Lk 1.74b-75).

This is our salvation, and it is glorious.

Here’s the thing. There’s a new standard—aka commandment—in town.

We get it from Jesus himself. It has two parts.

New Commandment Part 1: Love God. The Lord your God.

Can we do that? It’s our choice. It’s not too hard.

I know first hand. He daily restores my soul. I do not wander from his commandments because he leads me in paths of righteousness, and I follow where he leads. It has become second nature to me to do what pleases him, not because of a command but because I love him. Like cooking my husband’s favorite meal, or buying my daughter’s favorite color, what amounts to obedience (doing what someone makes clear is their will) is only love working itself out.

Jesus said this, too, linking our love for him with obeying his teaching. He’s not telling us to do it to prove we love him. Rather, because we love him, he knows our actions and choices will be pleasing to him.

And can you appreciate what a gift it is to have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, motivating us to will and to act according to what pleases the Lord? That’s the promise (Ph 2.13), and it makes sense. The Holy Spirit is the love of God poured into our heart (Ro 5.5).

It honestly doesn’t get any easier, and the only reason it seems hard is because we have not taught our souls what’s good for them.

Oh! So that’s how a verse like Ps 119.10 stays relevant.

No matter that we occasionally fail.

He’ll keep us from wandering when our heart cries out daily to be kept on paths of righteousness.

“Cause me to hear your lovingkindness in the morning, for I trust you. Cause me to know the way in which I should walk, for I lift up my soul to you.” (Ps 143.8)

To Do

How are you doing with “New Commandment Part 2: Love Your Neighbor”? Do something for yourself today—buy a treat, make a meal, do what you love. Now go do the same for the person living next door. Write about how it felt to think of them, deliver the “gift,” and how they responded.

Can I say that I seek the Lord with my whole heart? I think so. As much as I know how.

There are times when I get sidetracked, but nothing comes back day after day like my thoughts toward God.

I love to talk to him and about him.

I love reading his words and sharing them with others.

I love being around his people.

I love getting involved in any activity or act of service that magnifies who he is.

Augustine speaks for me, “He loves You too little who loves anything along with You that he loves not for Your sake.”

So I find it interesting that I don’t immediately associate my affection for God with a fear of forsaking his commandments. He’s so beautiful, so glorious. I’m aware that he is righteous, and therefore a wrathful Judge. I just don’t dwell on it.

Thank you, Jesus.

Seriously, this is that whole Old-vs-New-Testament thing again.

Given how the New Covenant is taught nowadays, we find even the concept of commandments burdensome.

From the one and only in Eden to one dark Friday on Calvary, they have never felt like a blessing. God has made his will known and we disobey to our eternal peril.

Yet we read in the New Testament that God is not willing that anyone should perish, a person needs only to repent (2Pe 3.9). And the one verse everybody knows, that God sent his Son so that any who believe wouldn’t perish (Jn 3.16).

Not quite the message of Moses—obey or be cursed (Dt 27.26), or Ezekiel—the soul who sins shall die (Ezk 18.4,20).

But not us?

No, not us.

“Christ fulfilled the law so you don’t have to,” God said.

He wiped clean the slate of legal debt that stood against us when he nailed it to his Son’s cursed cross (Co 2.14).

Thanks to Calvary, we just don’t know God that way.

He sent a Savior to seek us when we were lost (Lk 19.10) and find us he did. He did not come into the world to condemn the world but that through him the world might be saved (Jn 3.17).

He became my sin so that I might become his righteousness. (2Co 5.21)

The commandments, and their burden to “increase transgression” (Ro 5.20), are behind us. We now live at peace with the Righteous Judge of All the Earth. Glory to the One and Only.

So what do we do with verses like Ps 119.10? Have they become irrelevant?

To love my Savior is the deep desire of my heart. I want to please him and I’m willing to take his correction when I fail, because I love him.

Old Testament regulations that brought nothing but shame and guilt have been set aside in Christ, where there is no condemnation (Ro 8.1). We are no longer required to obey them from the same place as God’s Old Covenant people. This might be where our understanding goes wrong.

We who are in Christ know our God in ways that Old Testament characters could only sniff from afar.

Unlike David, we know what it’s like to be guilty and not fear losing his Holy Spirit.

Unlike Moses, we know what it’s like to know God’s unconditional favor.

Unlike Isaiah, we know what it’s like to stand in the throne room of heaven and not fear death.

Elijah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, Zechariah—they all longed to behold the salvation that brought us to God (Mt 13.17), that allows us to “serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days” (Lk 1.74b-75).

This is our salvation, and it is glorious.

Here’s the thing. There’s a new standard—aka commandment—in town.

We get it from Jesus himself. It has two parts.

New Commandment Part 1: Love God. The Lord your God.

Can we do that? It’s our choice. It’s not too hard.

Jesus said this, too, linking our love for him with obeying his teaching. He’s not telling us to do it to prove we love him. Rather, because we love him, he knows our actions and choices will be pleasing to him.

And can you appreciate what a gift it is to have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, motivating us to will and to act according to what pleases the Lord? That’s the promise (Ph 2.13), and it makes sense. The Holy Spirit is the love of God poured into our heart (Ro 5.5).

It honestly doesn’t get any easier, and the only reason it seems hard is because we have not taught our souls what’s good for them.

Oh! So that’s how a verse like Ps 119.10 stays relevant.

No matter that we occasionally fail.

He’ll keep us from wandering when our heart cries out daily to be kept on paths of righteousness.

“Cause me to hear your lovingkindness in the morning, for I trust you. Cause me to know the way in which I should walk, for I lift up my soul to you.” (Ps 143.8)

To Do

How are you doing with “New Commandment Part 2: Love Your Neighbor”? Do something for yourself today—buy a treat, make a meal, do what you love. Now go do the same for the person living next door. Write about how it felt to think of them, deliver the “gift,” and how they responded.

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