Question 91. What is the duty which God requires of man?

 

Question 91. What is the duty which God requires of man?

Answer. The duty which God requires of man is obedience to his revealed will.

There are two things God demands of people.

First, those who live apart from Christ are called to repent and turn to God. Acts 17:30, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” However, people ignore and reject God’s requirements. All people living in this world were originally God’s people in the kingdom of God, but came into the world to oppose God, so they are called to seek and find God. This is their first duty toward God.

The nature of man is greed to achieve his own righteousness. That is why people do not want to worship God and do not seek Him. However, people have a heart to seek God, and the reason is that God has planted a religious spirit in them. Acts 17:22 "Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, 'Men of Athens, I perceive that you are very religious in every way. For as I passed by and observed your devotions, I also found an altar with this inscription: 'To the Unknown God.' Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I declare to you."

God gave people a religious heart so that even if they have forgotten God, they should seek God with that religious heart. In order to do so, they should abandon their own righteousness of trying to achieve something on their own, find God the Creator, repent, and turn to Him. God comes to those who repent and opens the way to salvation. Repentance is realizing that one has left God and turning to God. Everyone can find and seek God through nature or through birth, aging, illness, and death, but most people do not repent and instead try to fill their religious heart by finding a god who is beneficial and convenient to them.

The second is for those who have found Christ, the way to salvation. Those who have reached this point are those who were in the law, and thought that keeping the law was the way to obey God's word, but realized that Christ is in the law, and that without Christ, there is no salvation. Therefore, God says that we must stop doing the works of the law, keep the words of the law in our hearts, and live under the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

Obeying the word of God is not about acting out the command out of a sense of duty, but rather keeping the meaning of the word in your heart and living according to the guidance of the Holy Spirit according to the situation. Obeying the word of God is not about the regulations of the law, but about realizing the love of God contained in it and reviving a life that was dead.

 

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