How am I supposed to perform these “impossible” commands!?
Deuteronomy 30:9-15
Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. (Deut. 30:11, NRSVA)
As someone who grew reared under the tutelage of legalistic theology, this has always been a disturbing text for me. Read from the background I started with, it sounds like a sort of “no excuses!” mantra that would fit hand-in-glove with legalism.
Even when I came to understand the meaning of grace and its relationship to salvation, this text was differently – but no less – challenging. If the commandment “is not too hard,” does one really need grace for salvation? Is grace an optional consolation prize for those too weak to live up to the demands of torah?
But, then, what exactly is “this command” to which Moses refers? Ah! See, there’s the rub!
As mentioned in Tuesday’s post, Yahweh begins giving hope -- in advance -- to a people He knows will end up failing and going into Exile (Deut. 30:4-5). This salvation will entail pluriform material prosperity (Deut. 30:9), but that’s not the grandest part. Material prosperity will be a second-order result of something else. Notice the three-step progression of Deut 30:6.
…the Lord your God will circumcise your heart…
so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul
in order that you may live.
This progression is absolutely necessary to produce the outcome of obedience.
Then you shall again obey the Lord, observing all His commandments…because you turn to [Him] with all your heart and with all your soul. (Deut. 30:8, 10)
This is the set up for our opening verse (i.e., Deut. 30:11). What command is “not too hard”? It is not circumcision, sacrifice, cleanliness rituals, banishing envy or lust or anything similar. Attempting those alone, we are doomed to fail!
The easy commandment is the first commandment: Love God with all your heart.
If you do this, He will treat you in the same way you treat your children. Do they ever fail you? Do they break dishes, mow the lawn wrong, leave laundry around, act petulant and naughty?
Do these failures make you cast them aside? Why not?
Isn’t it because -- while you would enjoy flawless behavior and unbroken dishes -- what you most want is to know that they love you? Aren’t you willing to overlook an infinite number of particular failures, if you know that they were trying their best out of a sincere devotion to you?
Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?
Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake?
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! (Matt. 7:9-11)