P1030682 – We Love God!

All that the old covenant was ever intended to do was to drive men to despair and then the despair to plead for mercy and grace from a kind and loving God... When an Old Testament person saw the Law for what it really was, a ministry of condemnation, a ministry of death, and when they were slain, as it were, and when they feared hell, and when they realized their sinfulness, and when the Law had done its work and they had a repentant heart and they came to God and pleaded for mercy and pleaded for grace and pleaded for forgiveness which they didn't deserve but which they pled for, and God in grace looked at them and forgave them, that work of transformation that occurred there was the Spirit of God's work. And He was applying the new covenant work of Christ retroactively to that penitent sinner. But it was the Spirit's work. Salvation any time whether in the Old Testament or the New Testament under the old covenant or the new covenant was, is, always will be the work of the Spirit who is none other than the Lord. And isn't it marvelous, the same God who wrote the Law is the same God who liberates the repentant sinner from the bondage of the Law?

John MacArthur