All of history has been predetermined by God and is working out his design, like a plant that is growing from a seed into its full flower and fruit.
Thus when we read Scripture we are seeing God’s vision for that design, a world ordered according to his law as proclaimed, prophesied, and exemplified by the great patriarchs and prophets and apostles of Scripture, and fully embodied in the Messiah.
We are seeing, in them, the future, where men will deal with each other according to God’s Law, reflecting His character toward one another and toward others and the world around them. We must study these men and what they wrote in order to become like them, to respond like they did in similar circumstances.
Since all history is the unfolding of such a society, where all relationships are intermediated by God’s LawWord, the men of God in Scripture were in fact living out the future, our future, in their time. We must do the same in our time. In fact, only that part of ourselves that has been conformed to God’s character, as written in Scripture and exemplified by Christ, will survive into the new heavens and new earth.
So do not cheat yourself of future glory by letting yourself be misled as to the importance of making God’s Law your study all the day. Do not give credence to the idea that faith is somehow opposed to obedience. Moses, the Law Giver, was, as Hebrews 11 says, a man of faith. In fact it says this over and over again.
So we, by faith, must reflect God’s character through obedience to His LawWord in its every detail, and beg God’s forgiveness when we fall short, always upholding the holiness of His Law regardless of how lowly we hold ourselves in comparison.