Announcing the “Forever for Our Good” Bible Study | Read an Excerpt

Today we’re sharing an excerpt from the Forever for Our Good Bible study by Katie McCoy. In this 8-session Bible study for women, author and theologian Katie J. McCoy walks through the book of Deuteronomy, an invitation to abundant life found through faith-filled devotion to the Lord alone. At the core of Deuteronomy is love. God sets His love on us, and as we learn to love Him with all our hearts, souls, and strength, we learn to love our neighbor as ourselves. This kind of love fulfills the entire Law, puts the character of God on display through our lives, and is forever for our good. Get a sneak peek at this study with the excerpt below.

Excerpt from Forever For Our Good: A Study of the Book of Deuteronomy

Understanding what we read in Old Testament books like Deuteronomy can be hard. One of the main reasons is because we live in a completely different context than Old Testament Israel. We live in countries with man-made governments, not a theocracy with Yahweh as king. We don’t follow Israel’s sacrificial system requiring animals and grains. We wear clothes made up of multiple fabrics. Most of us had nothing to do with the crops that produced our food. So, what is the value in studying a Bible book written to a different group of people, in a vastly different time and place, that is full of rules we don’t have to follow? I’m so glad you asked.

Imagine you walk into a movie theater several minutes late. You fumble your way to your seat and try to catch up on what you missed. Despite not knowing how the story began, you seem to be keeping up with the plot and the characters—until the last ten minutes. The audience (minus you) gasps in astonishment. The entire story comes together, resolving unanswered questions and tying loose ends. But because you missed the setup of the story, you didn’t know what questions needed to be answered or loose ends there were to tie. You needed the story’s foundation laid in the beginning to grasp its meaning at the end.

The Bible works much the same. Yes, sixty-six books make up its pages, but the story is one big narrative. We can’t fully grasp the depth of who Jesus is, or all He has (and will) accomplish for us, without studying the first five books of the Bible—the Law. In case you’re not yet convinced, Jesus is also an advocate for knowing the Old Testament. He taught on the importance of connecting the Old Testament laws to New Testament realities, and it’s been said that Deuteronomy was His favorite book because of how often He quoted it.

Jesus perfectly fulfilled God’s Law—all roughly 613 of its commands—and He is the direct fulfillment of many Old Testament prophecies in the prophetic books. The word fulfill means “to accomplish or carry into effect.”¹ Jesus not only obeyed the Law completely, but through His life, death, and resurrection, He brought about the fulfillment of everything the Law (along with the Prophets) had been pointing toward—God’s work of redemption, the setting right of everything that broke when sin destroyed God’s perfect creation.

When Jesus fulfilled the Law on our behalf, He inaugurated our redemption and advanced a kingdom in which God’s law would be written on the hearts of those He came to save (Jer. 31:31-34). Even more, every “jot and tittle” (Matt. 5:18, NKJV) would be fulfilled in the future, including at the end of all things, when the Lord brings complete justice and restoration (Isa. 66).

I think Deuteronomy can be misunderstood when we think of the relationship between God’s law and God’s grace. We can easily associate law with the “God of the Old Testament” and grace with the “God of the New Testament.” But this perception makes two mistakes: first, believing that law and grace are somehow in conflict; and second, forgetting that the God who gave us the law is the same God who died for our sins.

One scholar explains it this way: “God’s law shows us our need for a savior, and that we can’t possibly fulfill the demands of a holy and righteous God. But the pattern of the Old Testament is the same as the pattern of the New Testament: first comes the covenant. Then come the commands.”²

The truth is, Scripture doesn’t pit law and grace against each other the way we often do. From the beginning, God saves His people only by grace. His laws come after He establishes a relationship with them. In other words, the covenant relationship is not a result of Israel’s obedience to Yahweh’s laws. Obedience to God’s laws is the result of Israel’s covenant relationship with Yahweh. Remember, the book of Deuteronomy is about God’s covenant faithfulness to His people, with whom He has an exclusive relationship of all-redeeming, obstacle-overcoming, never-ending love, and from whom He desires loyal obedience. We can visualize it this way:

COVENANT ——> RELATIONSHIP ——> OBEDIENCE

At every point in God’s plan of redemption, God saved His people by grace. The grace of God pervades the law of God. I love how one scholar makes this point:

The Lord didn’t give Israel His law to save them from their sins, because ‘by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified’ (Gal. 2:16). Under the old covenant, people were saved by faith just as sinners are today (Rom. 4:1-12; Gal. 3:22; Heb. 11). The law reveals the sinfulness of man and the holy character of God. It explained what God required of His people if they were to please Him and enjoy His blessing. The civil law allowed Israel to have an orderly and just society, and the religious laws enabled them to live as the people of God, set apart from the other nations to glorify His name.³

The book of Deuteronomy is brimming with God’s grace to His people, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. We typically talk about law in contrast to grace. Inasmuch as we’re talking about how to be forgiven and made right with God, that’s true. No one can earn or accumulate righteousness through obedience. Our only hope is the grace of God in Christ (Rom. 3:23). But from God’s law, we also see a beautiful expression of His attributes, like His justice, holiness, mercy, and unfailing covenant love. And we see the expression of a righteous, blameless life that is set apart as His representative to the world.

Because the Bible was written within a specific time, place, and culture, we’ll have to dig a little deeper to understand the “why” behind the “what” of some laws. But don’t miss this: Deuteronomy shows us what loving the Lord with all our heart, soul, and strength looks like; it shows us what loving our neighbor as ourselves looks like; it shows us what true worship looks like. To love God is to obey Him, and to obey God is to love Him (John 14:15; 15:10).

More about Forever for Our Good by Katie J. McCoy

Works Cited

1. “fulfill,” Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, accessed December 16, 2025, https://unabridged. merriam-webster.com/unabridged/fulfill.

2. Bradley G. Green, Covenant and Commandment: Works, Obedience and Faithfulness in the Christian Life, New Studies in Biblical Theology, Vol. 33 (IVP Academic 2014), 64–65.

3. Warren Wiersbe, Be Equipped: Acquiring the Tools for Spiritual Success: OT Commentary: Deuteronomy (David C. Cook, 2010), 16.