Trusting is:
1) A sincere inner belief in the nature and character of the God of Israel, and
2) A sincere outer belief that is confirmed by proclaiming this belief in public by means of confessing it.
What are we to sincerely believe?
First, that Jesus is Lord and second that God The Father raised Him from the dead. And what happens when we do this? We are saved and not only saved but we are “Righteoused” by God.
Our trust is in God’s Son being The Messiah. It is the kind (the only kind) that gives redemption and eternal life and it is based upon God’s great mercy and grace.
He graciously deems the faith and righteousness of His Son Jesus onto us when we trust in what Jesus did. How wonderful – we didn’t have to obey the Law of Moses first in order to receive God’s Grace!
And even though we are now righteous in God’s eyes, our sincere belief compels us to obey God’s Commands which means we do our best to do God’s Laws as given to Moses.
Sure, we going to make regretful mistakes while doing these things, but God is faithful and gives us of His Holy Spirit to slowly transform our minds into the mind of His dear Son so that we become holy in all that we do
Here now comes the motivation within us to do these things: The righteousness of following the Law must be done because we trust God in our hearts and not because we think we can attain our own righteousness from obeying the Law. This type of thinking in our own efforts is rejected by God because He said there is not one person who has tried to obey the Law and attained to the righteousness of God and if we insist on following that path anyway, we will be rejected. This is the issue that many Jews have today.
Jesus himself is the embodiment of the Law and he says we can’t understand what he’s asking us to do without the Law in our hearts. He said so himself in the Gospel of John.
John 5:46-47 “For if you really believed Moses, you would believe me; because it was about me that he wrote. But if you don’t believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”
Brothers and Sisters, there is no separation in God’s eyes between the Old and New Testaments. The New explains the Old because the New is about the Old just the Old is written about Jesus and the New is him explaining it to us.
Jesus came to show us how to obey God’s Laws, not because we can attain our righteousness from doing it but out of love for Him and in trusting in what He sent His Son to do for us.
When Jesus contended with the devil in the wilderness, what did he do when tempted? He quoted the Old Testament truths.
Very much so, the New Testament quotes the Old Testament to drive home truth behind what we’re asked to do and if we study and learn the Old Testament, we will better understand the New one!