1 John 5:3-4 - In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.

In 1 John 5:3-4 John makes what seems, on the face of it, to be a ridiculous claim: the commands of God are not burdensome. What? Has John not read the Old Testament with its 613 commandments? Was he not there for the Sermon on the Mount, complete with Jesus' proclamation that His followers are required to be perfect, just as their Father in heaven is perfect?

And as if those laws weren't burdensome enough, we could add all of the self-imposed Christian commandments. 

The idea that God's commandments are not burdensome seems diametrically opposed to our experience: they certainly feel burdensome.

And yet we do have Jesus' offer of an easy yoke and a lightened burden. He does promise rest. But how does that work? How is it that Jesus' yoke is easy when He is the One asking us to be perfect?

The answer is as simple as it is profound. Though the commandments are indeed burdensome, the burden has been laid on the shoulders of another. Jesus Christ achieves perfection in our place. Jesus Christ, the culmination of the Old Testament expectation, fulfill the Old Testament laws. That same weight that threatens to break our backs actually did crush our Savior. The weights that we bear every day are simply aftershocks of our human attempts to save ourselves. The weights we feel are a phantom. They;ve already been taken to the cross, carried up the Via Dolorosa on Christ's back. We are free. We are, in Christ, unburdened.

-Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,