Eternal

The following verses tell that God and the Law are eternal, but explain how this relates to us and why it should matter.

Rom 16:26 NLT says, But now as the prophets foretold and as the eternal God has commanded, this message is made known to all Gentiles everywhere, so that they might believe and obey Christ. Jesus was prophesied about multiple times hundreds of years before He was born. The message was to be to all people because God so loved the world. He knew what would happen before He created the world, but here we are with a gracious gift from Him through Jesus for all people.

Being eternal He could have decided to totally end it multiple ways, but someone got to survive to continue on. Why? Go back to our discussion on love. God has a love beyond our finite comprehension and wants all of us to come to Him and be reconciled to Him as His children. Deut 33:27 NLT: The eternal God is your refuge, and his everlasting arms are under you. He thrusts out the enemy before you; it is he who cries, 'Destroy them!' Like any good father He wants to protect us from the enemy that will only give us momentary thrills. Only through Jesus can we have an eternal peace and loving relationship with God. Everything else we run to for a refuge will prove temporal.

Many believe that the Law is gone and we only need to know Jesus. However, if we love Jesus we will obey his commandments, which include the Ten Commandments. The first two both deal with love and are the most important. You need to first be connected with God to acquire His grace and power to overcome, and then you will be able to know love as He does and obey the rest of the commandments with ease.

Luke 16:16-17 NLT, "Until John the Baptist began to preach, the laws of Moses and the messages of the prophets were your guides. But now the Good News of the Kingdom of God is preached, and eager multitudes are forcing their way in.  17 But that doesn't mean that the law has lost its force in even the smallest point. It is stronger and more permanent than heaven and earth.” So the Law is not the guide to a Christian for the Holy Spirit was given for that. However, the Law is still standing firm as it always has. It’s still here as our moral compass and can be used by the Holy Spirit to point out things we need to work on as a Christian that helps us get even closer to God and live fully as He intended. It is there as a tool that can be used by Christians to help the world understand why they need Jesus in the first place.

Ps 111:7-8 NLT: All he does is just and good, and all his commandments are trustworthy. 8 They are forever true, to be obeyed faithfully and with integrity.

God never changes. His ideas of good and evil as laid out in the commandments are never going to change. However, He did change how we are to reconcile with Him through Jesus Christ. The Law was never meant to save anyone, but to teach us all the right way to live. On our own we do not have the power to do this, so our loving Father in Heaven sent Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice to give us the way back. We can never earn this on our own power.

I prefer to stand with an eternal God who loves me so much that He wants to be sure I can connect to Him and know how to live a good life. Where do you want to stand knowing eternity waits with two options: with God or without God?

(Verses in italics)