Wednesday, March 18, 2020

18 March 2020 - not laying down the law



Or what great nation has statutes and decrees
that are as just as this whole law
which I am setting before you today?

The problem is not the law. The problem is us. Without grace we twist the law and use it as a bludgeon against others and a tool to make ourselves feel superior. Without grace the law feels like condemnation rather than wisdom. It tells us what we are not doing and we rightly feel that by our own strength we cannot do it.

For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (see Second Corinthians 3:6).

The letter is not the problem. It is the absence of the Spirit that makes the law deadly. This is the reason why people in the world are so eager to embrace vague amorphous spiritualities that can make no real demands on them. It is not simply that they do not want to meet such demands. It is that they cannot meet them apart from the Spirit.

When we are truly living under the Spirit the law gives us wisdom and guidance. It is a tool of practical discernment.

Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments
and teaches others to do so
will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven.

The Spirit gives us freedom so that we no longer feel the same relationship to the law. It no longer feels like an oppressor forcing us to act in ways that are utterly foreign to us. Instead, it is a map to help us put the fruits of the Spirit, already growing in our hearts, into use.

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (see Galatians 5:14)

In this sense, "if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law" (see Galatians 5:18). It is not that the law is no longer relevant. Quite the opposite, it is now more relevant than ever. By grace we are changed so that we want to love God and neighbor more and more. By grace we are able to do so. This is the freedom of the Spirit. It is not a freedom from the law, but a freedom within the law's very heart.

He has proclaimed his word to Jacob,
his statutes and his ordinances to Israel.



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