Filled with the Spirit of truth, the Psalmist David said of the commandments of God: "In keeping of them there is great reward." (Psalm 19:11)
This is the way the Lord would have us look at the matter, but it is not the common view even among professed Christians, and for this reason so many people of the world are repulsed from accepting the Gospel.
They receive a false impression of what it is. They get the idea from much of the talk of Christians, that the Christian life consists in "giving up" everything that is pleasant, and is one continual grind of stern "duty," the word being supposed to signify the doing of disagreeable things because one is obliged to.
But that is not Christianity at all. The commandments of God are "not grievous." (1 John 5:3)
They are on the contrary, "More to be desired than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb." (Psalm 19:10)
They are not something hard that we are obliged to do now, in the hope of receiving something by and by that will make up for the hardships endured. There is ample reward in the very doing of them. The law of God is his life, and nobody can do it except by the life of Christ--"God with us" (Matthew 1:23)--in him; but the life of the Lord brings "fullness of joy." (Psalm 16:11)
Every unconverted person imagines that there is no pleasure except in a life of self-indulgence, and that to become a Christian is to give up life; but whoever accepts the Lord learns that he never before knew what life is.
The superabundant goodness of God is shown in this, that in the very keeping of His commandments, however contrary they may be to the desires of the natural man, there is a reward beyond all calculation, for all the joy of the redeemed in eternity is simply the joy that comes from the righteous life of God in them.--Present Truth, July 5, 1900--Psalm 19:10-11.