I can’t believe it’s been a month since I last posted anything to this blog. I apologize to my few followers, and hope the delay hasn’t put anyone out too much. (Shadow, on the other hand, doesn’t care at all.)
It’s been a tough month to find time to think and reflect…hence the delay. Also, it means that this post, coming late, isn’t as well thought-out as usual. Again, my apologies. I hope it still offers a little something in the way of hope and encouragement.
So, my last post talked about how it’s impossible to keep a ledger with God. That raises several more questions, though. If we can’t get to heaven by what we do, if there is no balance sheet, then what part do works really play in our relationship with God? After all, the Bible has all those “rules.”
Question #1: What are those rules for, if not a stair-step list of heavenly requirements? If God doesn’t need us to do good things, then why did He tell us to do those good things?
Two reasons come to mind.
First, life really does work better under some conditions than others. Life works better if cats…
• Use their litter boxes so their humans don’t have to clean up messes behind the couch.
• Catch mice so humans don’t have to set traps or face starvation.
• Leave the couch alone so it looks like a couch and not a bad knitting project.
• Stay off the cupboards and don’t eat things that will kill them.
Those rules don’t hurt the cat; they make life easier for all involved. In the same way, life works better if humans value life, value relationships with each other, and value their relationships with the Creator who created them. Simple, really. I’m going to quote from the Jesus Storybook Bible again. Ready?
“’I want you to love me more than anything else in all the world -- and know that I love you too,’ God told them. ‘That’s the most important thing of all.’
“God gave them other rules, like don’t make yourselves pretend gods; don’t kill people; or steal; or lie. The rules showed God’s people how to live, and how to be close to him, and how to be happy. They showed how life worked best.”*
Second, when we try to live by the rules, we realize how much we need God’s grace.
The Storybook Bible continues:
“’God promises to always look after you,’ Moses said. ‘Will you love him and keep these rules?’
“’We can do it! Yes! We promise!’
“But they were wrong. They couldn’t do it. No matter how hard they tried, they could never keep God’s rules all the time.
“God knew they couldn’t. And he wanted them to know it, too.
“Only one Person could keep all the rules. And many years later God would send him -- to stand in their place and be perfect for them.
“Because rules couldn’t save them.
“Only God could save them.”
You can think of all those rules as a kind of mirror. Looking into it shows us not how clean and pure we are, but how dirty and in need of a good, old-fashioned scrubbing down. In Romans 5, Paul explains, “But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20, NRSV).
The more we try to follow the law, the worse we see we are. The worse we are, the more grace we need. The more grace we need, the more God supplies. Beautiful, isn’t it?
On the other hand, if you insist on trying to work your way to salvation, even knowing all this, the consequences are very different. When speaking to Christians who contemplated being circumcised under Jewish law, Paul had this to say:
“You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace” (Galatians 5:4, NRSV).
So, good works--the law--are no substitute for God’s forgiveness. The law simply shows you how much you need forgiveness. The absolutely great news it that forgiveness is there, freely supplied for all who will take it.
“For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17, NIV).
*The Jesus Storybook Bible, pgs. 105-107. Sally Lloyd-Jones. Zonderkidz, 2007.
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