Rules provide an initial idea of the character of God, but cannot fully describe it

A rule is a description of behavior under a specified circumstance, an instance of an applied principle. Rules are meant to assist us in initiating our understanding of God’s character. Rules are waypoints on the path to similarity to Christ.¹⁰⁹¹ Rules provide a beginning of a description of Christ’s character,¹⁰⁹² but they can’t completely describe it. The objective of the gospel is to produce people who are actually more like Jesus, not just people who follow a list of rules.¹⁰⁹³ The point of rule-based commandments is to bring us to principles and on to the actual character of Christ.

The more you rely on rules for your understanding of God’s character, the less accurate your understanding of his character will be. God’s character cannot be described only by rules, because he lives by character qualities and principles. Each of God’s rules provides a low resolution encapsulation of some aspect of his character. While they provide greater specifics than principles, rules do not cover all situations, nor do they provide the necessary hierarchy of importance required to sufficiently allow for modeling what God would do when two rules conflict. A person who only has rules cannot accurately describe God, know what he would do in all situations, or why he would do it.

There are many blessings available from God that are not obtainable by those whose morality is based on rules.¹⁰⁹⁴ As all good stems from the character of God, each lapse in fidelity to the character of God created by the shortcomings of rules corresponds to a lack of blessings from being like him in that way. As long as your knowledge of him is limited to rules, you cannot say you know him. Because eternal life is to know him, rules-based morality or religion cannot provide you with eternal life.