All Articles For "...And Keep His Commandments"

Without faith it is impossible to please God, the author of the epistle to the Hebrews tells us. And therefore we may say that unless we fear God, we cannot keep His commandments. Remembering that keeping His commandments is not simply conforming to them in the outward sense but performing an act of love to Him, we will readily see that this second matter, which Solomon says belongs to the whole duty of man, cannot be carried out unless we have that fear of God which is the first part of the whole duty of man. Of that we wrote...

“Fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.” Solomon said that; and we have no right to change it.

The must does not always imply the can. The must of keeping God’s commandments does not always imply either the ability to do so. The holy angels before God’s face in glory, who have never fallen and come under the dominion of Satan and of sin must obey God; and they can do so with the power wherein God created them and continues to work in them.

“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God,” John writes in his first epistle. Paul prays, according to his epistle to the Philippians, that the love of the saints “may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment” that they may “approve (or try) the things that are excellent (or differing;) that they may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ.”

That the title above is a partial quotation is evident at once. That it is a partial quotation of Ecclesiastes 12:13 is not self evident. But to all who know this text, it will be known. The full text is, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.”