Easy Yoke

By this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.

1 John 2:3

A time-honored saying warns us that “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” There were more than six hundred legal links in the chain of the Old Testament law—so many that no one could keep them all. It took the sacrifice of an innocent animal to remove the guilt of those who failed to keep the law. The apostle James clarified in the New Testament what was implied in the Old: breaking even one of God’s laws made a person guilty of breaking them all.

The yoke of the law weighed heavily on the minds of the Jews. Besides the laws given through Moses, the religious leaders added hundreds more traditions that made the yoke even heavier and harder to bear (Mark 7:1-5). But when Jesus came, He announced a different kind of yoke, one that is “easy and . . . light” (Matthew 11:30). It is not a yoke free from law, but a yoke that is easy to bear because we are given the Holy Spirit to help us glorify God and are offered forgiveness when we don’t. Christmas is a time to celebrate the fact that Christ has come to show us how to keep God’s laws.

The weakest link for us is our sinful human nature. But when we accept the Christ of Christmas, we are given His nature—a nature that wants to keep God’s law.

When the law of God is written in our hearts, our duty will be our delight.

MATTHEW HENRY