Chapter 1, part 1

Note: If you are new to this blog, I suggest you start at post #1 ("Introduction") and work your way from oldest post to newest.

"What are we aiming for?"

Chapter 1 is a quick overview of two things: "What goal are we Christians aiming for?" and "How do we get there?" Marshall assumed the reader was a Christian who agreed that God's law was right and who aimed to obey it—but who found his nature contrary to it and the goal impossible. Marshall's claim was that he had the Biblical solution—"the powerful and effective means" (p.1) for accomplishing this goal.

The goal is nothing less than this: the righteous, godly, obedient life that God requires—as explained throughout the Bible and summed up in the ten commandments and more briefly in the two great commandments:

[From the Bible]

Jesus replied, "'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. A second is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

Matthew 22:37, 39 New Living Translation

This holiness is spiritual—it consists not just of external works but also of inner attitudes—thoughts, imaginations, and feelings, particularly love. It consists not only in refraining from doing sinful things, but also in longing and delighting to do what God wants, and in obeying God cheerfully without complaining, fretting, or reluctance.

[From the Bible]

So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin.

Romans 7:14 New Living translation

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.

Same verse, Today’s New International Version

We know that the law is spiritual, but I am not spiritual since sin rules me as if I were its slave.

Same verse, New Century Version

Marshall noted that while the law we're aiming for is "exceedingly broad" (p. 2), that doesn’t make it easy to hit!

[From the Bible]

Everything I see has its limits,but your commands have none.

Psalm 119:96 New Century Version

In every action we must not only hit it, but hit it fully, or else we haven’t hit it at all.

[From the Bible]

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.

James 2:10 Today’s New International Version

Worse yet, Marshall said, our love for the Lord must be absolute:

"The Lord is not at all loved with the love that is due to him as Lord of all, if we don't love him with all our heart, spirit, and might. We must love him so as to yield ourselves wholly up to his constant service in all things, and to be at his disposal of us as absolute Lord, whether for prosperity or adversity, life or death" (p. 2).

This is an uneasy place to stop. Examining the excellence of God's law and especially in the context of it being our goal is stressful because are natural inclinations are to resist it, even while we agree with it. Yet there is the goal staring us in the face.

Coming in the next post is part 2 of the chapter, where Marshall tackled the question, in his words "What are the means to this great end?" or more simply, "How do we get there?"