The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

When you think about God, your tendency is to think he keeps his distance – and distance measured not by an arm’s length, but maybe light years! It’s easy, perhaps natural, to think that God’s idea for creation and man was expressed in his law – his commandments.

It’s easy to be convinced that your ability to approach God is governed by your success in keeping his commandments: his laws of right and wrong, do this and don’t do that. It’s natural to believe that at the heart of God there is a yearning to connect only with good law-keepers.

You know that his commandments are good, and that seems to be the correct approach. The commandments do give a sense of what’s important to God. He wants us to honor our parents, not to covet, murder, steal, or commit adultery, etc. Striving to do good things and not do bad things is commendable.

But this is not God’s message to us, his expressed idea, his “good news.”  When you believe it is, it’s actually bad news – because you learn that it’s impossible to keep his commandments even reasonably consistently. Read the Apostle Paul expound on this point in Romans 7.

Paul gives the analogy that laws are mere shadows, they aren’t what’s real. The writer of Hebrews provides the same example. The reality, the object that’s casting the shadow, is God’s Son. He is the perfect message to you from God. He has been with him, from the very beginning, and is the perfect representation of who God really is and what’s supremely important to him.

The good news is that while he was here in the flesh, he was known as “friend of sinners.” That was the derisive nickname his opponents – really religious people dedicated to keeping the law and all its commandments – pinned on him because he befriended everyone including the poor, the demon-possessed, tax collectors, adulterers, etc.

Imagine that! When God’s idea for man arrives on the scene, it turns out he wants to be friends with anyone who will listen to him and believe in him. At the center of God there is not law, but an enormous heart “full of grace and truth.”