Look into the Mirror of God’s Law

We must not avert our eyes from God’s law. Today, R.C. Sproul teaches that as this mirror reveals our moral blemishes, it alerts us to our need of the gospel.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t always enjoy looking in mirrors. I remember the first time I joined Weight Watchers, and the routine question that was asked by the teacher for new members is, “What brought you here? What caused you to decide to come and enroll in this class?” And he would pass out drinking straws, soda straws, and we were to use this straw to symbolize the straw that broke the camel’s back. “What was the last straw that drove you to come in here?”

When they asked me that, I said, “Because I got tired of averting my eyes from the glass in front of stores as I would walk past, and I could see the reflection of my stomach in the glass.” I got so tired of seeing that and artificially sucking in my stomach because of what I was seeing in the mirror. Got me there that time, and if you’re looking at me now, you’re wondering why I don’t look in the mirror and get over there again.

But the point is, I found that I didn’t even want to look in the mirror because I didn’t like what I saw. I wonder if that’s why we avoid the law of God, because we don’t want to look in that mirror. But we need to look in the mirror because what we see in the mirror drives us to the gospel and alerts us to our desperate need for a gospel. The mirror of the law of God, beloved, is bad news. And until we look in it, we’ll never understand the goodness of the good news.