Holy Grit — Confronting Legalism with Grace - Tuesday
Today’s Verse
John 1:17
For the law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ. (NLT)
Believe it or not, I have more stories about school! In college, I took a very rigorous business writing class. The class was pretty large and had some big-time “front-row Joe” types totally locked in on how to write business torts and things of that nature. From the back row, I couldn’t believe what we learned after our first project was graded. My B- was totally understandable, so I didn’t join the crowd around the professor, but I was curious because it wasn’t a normal occurrence.
“I don’t give out 100s. Yes, there were no errors or revisions, but nobody completes perfect work.” I was baffled (and slightly validated for my middling efforts), and the straight-A students were in shambles. Leaving, I couldn’t help but acknowledge that that was an impossible and arbitrary standard to have in place as a professor.
Jesus put a similar damper on the Pharisees. Matthew 23 summarized in my own words condenses down to, “You’re awfully concerned about holding people to a law that you, at best, claim to get 100% correct, and in doing so you lack any grace or true leadership.” It’s quite a bit more pointed than that, and I encourage you to read it because it truly comes across as one piece of the old law VS Jesus’ fulfillment of the law.
There's an odd tendency I notice in myself when it comes to God's grace. Whenever I feel unsure or uncomfortable about my relationship with grace, I start creating arbitrary rules—little benchmarks to convince myself I'm moving from a spiritual B- toward a perfect 100%. It's as if, even though I've already received my "diploma" of grace by accepting Jesus, I sometimes choose to re-enroll in classes, struggling unnecessarily to earn a degree I've already been given.
REFLECTION
The central problem with rules and laws is that in focusing on these, we step away from the perfect gift of grace Jesus provided with his sacrifice on the cross and step towards a works-based faith that says forgiveness is about what I do instead of what he did.
