Once again, here’s my fairly literal translation of these
verses:
“ …be serving one another through the love; 14for all the
law is fulfilled in one word, in this: “Love your neighbor as yourself … 16But,
I say, be walking [in the] Spirit, and you absolutely will not fulfill the lust
of [the] flesh, …”
Before I leave these verses, there’s one more thing I’d like
to get down on paper.
The last few years, I have been enjoying the realization
that God has made it so simple for us: “Love God; Love people.” “… all
the law is fulfilled in [this] one word.” Life really isn’t that complicated after all.
Even the 66 books of the Bible can be reduced to this simple command. Love.
But there is a problem. I can’t even do that(!). Even the
simple aspiration to genuinely love leaves me realizing how much I don’t. I’m
very glad for the command. I like that life is really about relationships. I
like knowing that. It makes even work far more enjoyable when I see that it’s
the relationships that really matter. And I hope I do a better job because I
realize that.
But. My “loving” is still inextricably bound up with getting
what I want. I love to be loving … as long as I get what I want. Don’t give me
what I want and watch me turn instantly into an impatient, angry, childish
buffoon.
Guess my point is this: As simple (and as noble) as God’s
command is, it really leaves me in no better condition than the most pompous
legalism. Make it complicated (OT Law) and I can’t do it. Make it unbelievably
simple (“Love God; Love people”) and I still can’t do it. Once again, it seems
to all of us totally logical and reasonable, if I can’t seem to get it
together, I must need new and better (or simpler) laws. But none of it works.
None of it frees me from myself. None of it enables me to rise above this awful
selfish beast that lurks in my heart (and shows his ugly face every little time
I don’t get what I want). The answer is patently NOT law. Not more law. Not
less law. Not complicated law. Not simplified law. NOT law.
I loved to read to my kids the story, “The Little Engine
That Could.” I certainly wanted my children to grow up unafraid to try,
determined to succeed at whatever they did. “I
think I can, I think I can.” It really is a nice little book and some good
thoughts to put in children’s minds. But. In the real world, sometimes you have
to simply accept, “I can’t.” And when it comes to becoming a person of love and
joy and peace and patience and kindness, I need to simply run up the white
flag. I can try. I will try. But I’ve lived long enough now to really realize
“I can’t.”
There is a very interesting interchange in the OT that is
worth recording. I noted years ago how the Israelites totally missed the whole
point of it all when God gave them the Ten Commandments and they responded to
Moses, “All that the Lord commands us, we will do.” Of course about 12 verses
later they were worshipping a golden calf. They didn’t get it. Both Moses and
God, on separate occasions, said something like, “Oh that they had such a heart
in them.” But they didn’t and they didn’t see it.
After forty years in the wilderness and all of their
failures, they still didn’t see it. In Joshua 24, Joshua issued his famous
challenge: “…choose for
yourselves this day whom you will serve.” Then
the people answered him, “Far be it from
us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods!
…We too will serve the Lord, because He is our God.”
Joshua replied, “You are not able to
serve the Lord. He is a holy God; He is a jealous God. He
will not forgive your rebellion and your sins.” But the people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the Lord …We will serve the Lord our God and obey him.”
Hmmmm. Promises. Promises. They totally did
not get it. Joshua told them point blank, “You can’t do it.” Their own history
from the previous 40 years should have clued them in that somehow he was right.
He even brought up this issue of forgiveness which they totally blew off. They
just didn’t get it. Clear back at Mt. Sinai, their response to the Law should
have been, “This is a good law, a very
reasonable law. The Lord has every right to expect it of us. But we know our
hearts, that we will not do it. We will fail. Is there not some other way for
us to be the Lord’s people? We need to be saved from ourselves!”
And it wasn’t as if there was not “another
way.” Clear back in the Garden, the Lord promised to send the Seed of the woman
to crush the head of the serpent. About 500 years before the Exodus, Job had said,
“I know that my Redeemer lives!” The people of Israel knew there was a Messiah.
They simply had never come to a point where they stood face to face with the
enormity of their own failure, and so they apparently only saw the Messiah as a
nice appendage to their own righteousness. Just like today, their legalism
eclipsed the face of God in their hearts. They really did think it was about
the rules and they really did think somehow they could keep them.
They just didn’t get it.
But do we?
I would ask again of us professing
believers, do we embrace grace as the way of forgiveness, then live under law?
I needed a Savior because of my sins and sinfulness. Do I now somehow only need
Him as an appendage to my own righteousness? Or is He my righteousness? Paul
asked this very question of the Galatians in 3:2,3: “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing
what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means
of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?”
Grace is the answer. The way of salvation
is grace but not with an asterisk. It’s not grace to be saved and law to live
by. It is grace, all grace. Grace is the air that true believers breathe; it is
the blood that flows in their veins. “Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far
and grace will lead me home.”
But when it comes to living out grace, the
agent of grace is the Spirit. Paul’s solution to our failure is not, here are
new and better rules (legalism), or no rules at all (antinomianism). His
solution is very clearly, “… be
walking [in the] Spirit, and you absolutely will not fulfill the lust of [the]
flesh.”
“When
the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made
under the Law, that He might redeem them that were under the Law, that we might
receive the adoption of sons, and because you are His sons, God sent the Spirit
of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”
Once again, it seems to all of us totally logical and
reasonable, if I can’t seem to get it together, I must need new and better (or
simpler) laws. But none of it works. None of it frees me from myself. None of
it enables me to rise above this awful selfish beast that lurks in my heart
(and shows his ugly face every little time I don’t get what I want). The
answer is patently NOT law. Not more law. Not less law. Not complicated law.
Not simplified law. NOT law.
The answer is grace, embraced as the way of forgiveness and enjoyed
daily through the power and enlightenment of indwelling Holy Spirit. The people
of Israel totally didn’t get it. God help us not to miss it.
I want to live grace. I want to be a person like Jesus who
adds to this world love and joy and peace and patience. God help me to practice
the presence of His Spirit in my heart, to allow Him to be my spirit, to inform
my thoughts and to be my attitude. God help me to read and study the Word such that
I might truly know the mind of the Spirit. May my failure to love only drive me
to depend on Him more. And because of grace, may I live out His heart, not
because I’m enamored with the rules, but really, honestly, truly, sincerely
because I love Him.
The little engine that couldn’t still wants to.
No comments:
Post a Comment