Hi Rosemary,
Turn the other cheek. Forgive seventy times seven. Give, expecting no return. Love perfectly, since hatred is murder. Love perfectly, since lust is adultery. Love perfectly, since your heavenly father is perfect. Fail in this and you will die, as surely as Adam died. No second chances for Adam. No restarting the game. One strike, and he was out. Thorns, thistles, cancer, coffin.
If you want Law, there it is. A giant ogre of a thing, looming large. Overwhelming. Inflexible. Truly written on stone. Just as the law of the land demands justice, so too does the law of God. "On the day you eat of it, you shall die."
Certainly, ask God for mercy. We are 10 million in debt and headed for the salt mines. Who in their right mind wouldn't beg for forgiveness? But what happens to the debt? It doesn't simply evaporate. Justice will not be denied. Someone must bear the loss. You might reply that God bears the loss, and I'd agree. Christ is God, bearing the loss. Christ is the revelation of the suffering of God under the weight of our sin. The cross is the price of mercy. The father of the prodigal son wept as the stupid boy stalked away. Christ is those tears, that broken heart.
David threw Goliath down. In their anointed king, Israel had the victory. In the same way, Israel's anointed king has thrown down the law. In Christ, we have victory over sin and death. Justice has been silenced by a most costly grace. "Christ became sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
