The devil is tempting us to disobey God all the time.
Loving God is a matter of tirelessly making the right choices.
As much as we want to keep up the good streak, there is also a part of us that rebels against it.
That rebellion is often voiced as “freedom” – in reality, it is freedom simply for freedom’s sake. It is a purposeless mutiny. When I rebel against God’s ways, I know I am veering off the path of true happiness. Yet, I can’t bring myself to obey God.
What a wretched man I am!
The good news is that the whole Christian message is a declaration of liberation from exactly this.
The logic of that liberation is simple, but easily misunderstood. The idea is one word – love.
I will choose obedience because God loves me, and by His grace enables me to love Him back. He loves me so much that, no reason for rebellion that I will come up with can ever truly weigh against His love. And His grace is so abounding that I have no excuse.
In the light of this, rebellion takes on a gravity commensurate with the magnitude of that love. Rebellion, which is what sin really is at its heart, becomes a statement of rejection of God – the very ground of my own existence – and thereby a vote for death.
As Jesus says,
And the judgement is this: though the light has come into the world people have preferred darkness to the light because their deeds were evil.
True repentance depends on being convicted of this truth. Ultimately, it is the Truth that will set us free.