Throughout the Bible we see that God seeks those who have faith in him. We see this first in Genesis with Adam. God looks to have a relationship with Adam and Eve in the Garden through trust and obedience. Though they disobeyed God, their failure was not just breaking the rule that God gave them, but ultimately not trusting God’s word. When you love someone you trust what they say out of love for that person. The fact that a snake(Satan), a created being, was able to convince them that God’s word wasn't true, showed a lack of trust in God’s word. However even when Adam and Eve sinned, God still focuses on a relationship with them. He is the one who seeks them out, and after asking them why they were clothed he still offers them a chance to have a relationship with Him. The rule that they shouldn’t eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil wasn’t an arbitrary rule to gain salvation, it was a rule established to build trust. All relationships require some inherent rules in order to show faithfulness. And while Adam and Eve fell from Eden they are not given the 10 commandments or any kind of law yet. The relationship between them was close enough to stand on trust and faith alone, even though they had fallen short. The same way we trust our parents, siblings, spouse, we don't have to sit down and make rules for each other if there's enough love and trust to walk with each other. Adam’s descendants also lived without a Formal law. Abel and Enoch are said to have “walked with God,” mirroring their fathers love for God and showing how faithfulness is the foundation of righteousness.
Another example of a man with exceptional faith is Noah. In scripture Noah is called “a righteous man, blameless in his generation” (Genesis 6:9), Noah loved God, we see this when he preaches to the people about repentance for 120 years. If the 10 commandments and the written down law did not exist in Noah’s time, then what did it mean to live righteous, and on what basis would the people have been able to repent? It would have been clear that people simply had no room in their hearts for God. Noah however builds an Ark for God showing that his relationship with God meant more to him than the relationship with the people around him. How many times do we choose the opinions of the people physically around us over God’s word and God’s love? God does not want to be a small part of our lives. The reason he created us was to have an eternal relationship with him. He invites us to the glory of getting to live in paradise with our creator. Again after the flood is over, even though humanity has fallen away from God, Noah’s faith is enough that a formal law is still not given. His family walks with God with the exception of Ham who like Cain shows how quickly our generations can fall out of the faith.
The faith seen in Noah and Adam is again seen in Abraham. He is called out of Ur still without any formal law or nation, yet Abraham responds in faith. When God promised descendants and a land, Abraham “believed the Lord, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). His obedience was derived from his faith, showing that when we have a relationship with God, we will naturally follow his word. This is where God makes a covenant with Abraham. Abraham is told to gather a calf, a goat, a ram, and two birds, cut them in half and lay them out to make a conventional line. In this time the custom was that the two people making the covenant would walk in between the cut in half animals, and if either of the two people break their side of the covenant that should be cut in half like the animals. God puts Abraham into a deep sleep and God alone walks the line, representing that even if Abraham is to fall short, it is God alone that will never fall short. In modern Judaism they regard Abraham as the first Jew based on the fact that he is first to enter into the covenant with God. The question to ask here is if Abraham is the father of Israel, and the first to enter into a covenant with God, why was he not given the written down law at the start of the covenant? Why would God wait until Moses to give us the Law? This is a key question to ask since Jews primarily focus on upholding the law, but there's a difference between obeying God out of gratitude for his love and forgiveness, and following the commandments as a requirement for salvation.
When we move on to Moses we see why the law is given. Yet again Moses is a reflection of Adam, Noah, and Abraham. God calls him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, and when Moses says he isn’t worthy, God tells him to trust him. Faith ultimately leads Moses. But the Israelites had now fallen. Even as God leads them out of slavery they complain constantly and wish to go back to their old ways. Sin is often portrayed as a slave master while we are slaves to sin. God was breaking them free of their slavery and yet the Israelites did not want this change. When they make it to Sinai, Moses goes up to talk to God the same way we should run to God when he breaks us free of sin, yet the Israelites had built an idol and praised themselves for their achievements. This is a direct reflection of Noah preaching to the unrighteous people, but how were they unrighteous without a law? They were unrighteous because they were not focused on their relationship with God. and Like Adam and Eve they are given a second chance. This is done by giving them a formal written law, that they may know their flaws and come back to Him. They are given the law here because without their faith there is no way to justify them, but because of God’s promise to Abraham he is going to give them a second chance. The law was not given to follow without love, and the Israelites who are shown building the idols and complaining are expected to change or be cut off. The prophets also continually remind Israel that outward obedience to the law given without inward trust was meaningless. As Hosea declared, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). Israel will struggle with sin throughout the entire old testament, and God will continually send prophets to plead with the people to turn back to him.
Now it's time to look at Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior. Jesus fulfills the Law by embodying perfect faith and obedience. He is the image of the invisible God and lives a perfect sinless life and accepts our penalty on the cross so that all those who have faith in him may be able to come to him and be forgiven. He taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who prosecute us so that they may also have a relationship with him. We are all sinners and all deserve the penalty of death, but Jesus sets us free of this plague. With this sacrifice, the purpose of the Law is shown. We see also in the law that sin requires sacrifice. And while animals can not cover the sin of man, this was done to set the stage for God’s ultimate sacrifice. God himself comes down to show not only his power over life and death, but also power over sin. Jesus did not abolish the moral core of God’s commandments but fulfilled them through his sacrifice for our sins, and his love and desire for us to have a relationship with him. The New Covenant, therefore, restores direct access to God through belief in His Son. As Paul writes in Romans 10:4, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” This clearly shows the message that God desires trust, faith, and a relationship that will naturally produce a life parallel to living the law.
The sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross was not a redemption meant for the Jewish people alone, but a universal atonement offered to anyone in all of human history who places their faith in Him as the Messiah. This pivotal truth represents the glorious fulfillment and expansion of the covenant God first established with Abraham. That original covenant, while made with Abraham and his physical descendants, was always fundamentally built upon the foundation of faith—the very faith for which Abraham was credited as righteousness. In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul makes it profoundly clear that a true descendant of Abraham is not one who is merely of his physical lineage, but one who shares his faith (Romans 4:16). Therefore, through Christ, God has opened this covenant of promise to all—Jew and Gentile alike—who walk in the faith of Abraham, making us all spiritual heirs to the promise. We are all called to emulate the faith of Abraham, who believed God against all hope. However, the historical context into which Jesus was born reveals a tragic divergence from this patriarch's example. By the first century, many among the Israelites, despite their heritage, had spiritually returned to the old, faithless ways reminiscent of their ancestors whom Moses led out of Egypt. They had exchanged the worship of the living God for modern-day idols of legalism, political power, and religious tradition, thereby losing the true, heart-based meaning of the law, which pointed toward love, mercy, and justice. The spiritual decay was epitomized by the political leadership of the time. King Herod, known as Herod the Great, was a mere political puppet of the Roman Empire. A non-Jew from Idumea, descended from the line of Esau, he cared nothing for the authentic Jewish faith, using religion solely as a tool to consolidate his power and maintain Roman favor. In a stark parallel to the Pharaoh of the Exodus, this Edomite ruler, upon hearing the news of a newborn "King of the Jews" from the Magi, issued a brutal decree to slaughter all the male children in Bethlehem under two years old. This act of tyrannical infanticide does not reflect the moral character God demanded of the kings of Israel, who were commanded to write and meditate on His law (Deuteronomy 17:18-20). Instead, Herod embodied the very nature of the pagan nations God had repeatedly warned Israel not to emulate. This period of spiritual darkness was further compounded by a divine silence. Prophetic revelation had ceased for nearly 400 years since the prophet Malachi, leaving a profound void in the spiritual life of the nation. In this vacuum, a widespread expectation festered among many Jews for a messiah who would be a political and military deliverer—a figure to liberate them from the oppressive yoke of Rome. Their focus was on a deliverance from earthly subjugation, tragically blinding them to their deeper, more fundamental need for a deliverance from the power and penalty of sin itself. It was into this world of misplaced hope and spiritual blindness that Jesus arrived, not as a conquering king with an army, but as the suffering servant who would save His people from their sins.