As believers, we have not been called to a way of behaving but to a way of living. There is a HUGE difference. It takes will-power to modify my behavior. It took a miracle to change how I live.
I can feel the intensity when Jesus (Mt 23:23-27) rebukes the Pharisees and calls them hypocrites for having only an outward excellence that did not originate from a transformed inner being. “For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful…but within are full of uncleanness.” They had rules galore to excellentize (new word!) their external behavior. But rules and all the effort I can muster can’t go inside me to where consistency begins and hypocrisy is ended.
Judith Hougen in her book Transformed into Fire describes our experience when we, like the Pharisees, focus on excellent behavior; “…you are dedicated to following religious codes but, for all your performance, have only tasted the steel rigidity of rules, not the abundance that Jesus promised.”
Jesus promised a new way of living. We have been united with Jesus so that “we…might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). That is why he continually invites us to stop leading ourselves (Luke 9:23 – “deny yourself”) and follow Him into an excellent life. Into a transformed life where we stop tasting the rigidity of rules but taste the freedom of the very presence of God.
Question: What is a next step you can take to experience the excellence of the “newness of life” that is yours? Leave a comment so we can be in this together.
Actions:
- Leave a comment on your next step!
- Subscribe by email. I will drop you a short note in your inbox whenever there is a new post.
- Recruit your friends – together we can move this good news of the gospel forward. That is what we are about.
Bill, I wouldn’t have believed it but the Law of God is actually the key to the fullness of God’s grace! Once I get away from relying on my performance of the Law to please God and let it expose all my sinfulness to my attention and to God’s judgment, it brings me faithfully to my desperate need for a Savior, to Jesus Christ Himself. Once in Him by God’s grace, God’s Law then becomes the revelation of God’s will in how to live in this sin and death cursed world by His Spirit’s power. Now I understand why Psalm 1 points to a man’s delight in God’s Law as he meditates on it day and night! As Paul refers to it in Galatians 3:24-25, once the Law leads us to Christ, it becomes the servant of faith in Christ and no longer the supervisor. The Law is the Spirit’s visual guide into God’s will and way for me and every disciple of Christ. And so we come to the fullness of God’s grace in this dark and trouble-prone world as the Spirit empowers us to do all that God desires us to do (Ephesians 2:10). Who would have thought that those old commandments had some much more to offer once we have salvation in Christ!
Jack I like how you said it is no longer our supervisor…and it was a supervisor that could never be pleased. The law begins with the question as to what man ought to do. Grace begins with what God has already done. Law said I had to do something to be someone, and grace says I was made someone in order to do something.
-bill