Parents, what do you think of this?

You spend your whole day working to provide a house and home for your precious and beloved child. And here comes precious now, to dinner: iPod in the ears, hoodie pulled up. Precious drops their bag on the floor, slumps into the dinner chair—they haven’t even looked at you—pops their earbuds out and looks up at you, “Where’s dinner?” Parents, you may disagree with me, but if there were a time you could instantly fire electricity from your fingertips into your precious child it might be then!

But think about this:

God comes to you, in his love, and he says, “Look at all I have done for you. Look at this world I have made for you. Look at this eternal life I have given you. Now treat me with the honor and respect I am due. Obey my commandments.”

And what do we say back, “Where’s my dinner?” Some obedience. Some obedience that reluctantly slumps into church or serves God because they have to.

Some obedience indeed, because that kind of lazy or arrogant obedience isolates us from God. There is no peace when you’ve isolated yourself from the love of God. This is the first taste of God’s eternal punishment, and it only gets worse. If you want to give God your own work, then you better keep all his commands perfectly or you will go to hell.

Or, we can turn away from our own work and see Christ’s. Christ’s work is the end of our work because he perfectly submitted to God in our place. You see it when Christ was kneeling in the Garden of Gethsemene praying to God the Father, “not my will but yours.” You saw it as Christ submitted to hell. And what you saw wasn’t just Christ—it was you. It was you perfectly submitting to God’s will. It was you perfectly obeying God. Because everything that Christ did he did in your place. Christ’s work is perfect work—the perfect obedience that God demanded.

That’s really something, you know? God doesn’t see your disobedience because Christ did away with it by his obedience. There is only the perfect work of Christ.

So let’s you and me look at a new obedience. Knowing that God has covered you in Christ’s obedience, obey God. There is no threat from God because Christ earned his favor. This isn’t work because we don’t need to earn anything from God. Instead, we can just serve God in freedom. We're done working.