| T |
he grave sin of some of our teachers is that they present a gospel that leaves people languishing under law. I’ve been there, done that; therefore it hurts me all the more. For most of my life, I’ve been in Christ. However, most of my Christian experience was more like that of the wretched Israelite described in Romans 7. Part of Paul’s point from Romans 5, through to the first few verses of Romans 8, is that Israel–though in possession of the law–was in Adam. Israel had an incredible vocation to bare for the rest of the world. She was given Torah, and according to Romans 5.20, the law (Torah) was given so that the trespass would increase. Law brings about the knowledge of sin and can do nothing more by itself than condemn (see Ro. 3.19-20). Part of the dark mystery of Torah is that it was eternally intended that the written code would lure sin in so that it would serve to focus sin’s power upon one people; Torah was intended to have the effect of heaping transgression on the back of God’s chosen people (and, of course, eventually their representative Messiah). It was part of Israel’s glorious but mysterious vocation that she’d fail miserably so that in her failure and her exile, Christ would come to the rescue and grace would abound.
Are we going to allow the whole system to be reversed? Are we going to promote a creed, a new Torah etched in stone by the hammer and chisel of religious sectarians who are duped into thinking they are doing God’s business by forcing others to bend beneath the heavy burden of their freshly fashioned tablets? Do we not understand that if we are under law rather than grace then our only route is to endure the grief of inviting transgression in heaps? God forbid! If any of us is teaching a gospel that highlights law and diminishes grace, that extols commandment keeping while giving lip service to faith and grace, then the effect is to (in ignorance) push God’s children out from underneath the safety of His wings and back into the Adamic life of doubt and despair. The balance of our talking, our teaching, our preaching must be weighted toward Christ and the salvation He offers by grace through faith. If the scales tip the other direction, if we are spending our energy teaching (or listening to) an elaboration on the minutia of precision obedience while marginalizing the effect and the intent of the death and resurrection of Jesus, then grace will be voided.
Any tinkering with the gospel that exalts law and diminishes grace by constantly glorying in the one to the neglect of the other, any understanding that leads to contempt for other people because they aren’t as “right” as we are, any retelling of the story that promotes a written or unwritten creedal formula as the basis for justification, any religious chatter that pushes the cross into the shadow of some new fangled list of do’s and don’ts is a hazard to spiritual health and will create those who look like the antithesis of the law’s real intent.
The thing Torah was intended to do (it’s righteous requirement as per Ro. 8.3-4) was to develop a people who would love God with all their heart, souls and mind, and love neighbor as self. But the law was made weak by the sin of Israel, especially her failure to understand the purpose of her vocation in being a light and blessing for the world (a light not just for the Jews). Paul says that his understanding of all that God had been up to, from Adam to Christ, allowed him to affirm the law as a good thing; not a thing that we are to be under now, but something once fulfilled could be seen as holy, just and good. Again, the intent of the law was to form a people in the midst of the nations who, in faith, really loved God with the totality of their being, and who loved other people as they loved themselves. But the law couldn’t reach its objective . . . until Jesus. What Jesus did was to take up the mantle that Israel had dropped, showed the way of true humanity in loving God and His fellow man, died to condemn sin, and was raised for our justification. And when we put our faith in Him, when we are baptized into His death and resurrection, He sends us His Spirit. By the means of Jesus and His Spirit we are finally in a place (in Christ) and given the resources (the Spirit) whereby we fulfill the righteous requirement of the law, marked out by our absolute trust in God through Christ, and the production of the fruits of the Spirit which enable us to love rather than hate, be at peace rather than fight, to be patient rather than give up, to speak grace rather than anger, to serve rather than demand service, to rejoice rather than grumble, and all the rest.
Because it was my experience, and the experience of so many whom I know, that much of my life in Christ was actually spent with my head and heart still in Adam, I pray that the message of the real gospel will ring throughout our communities and the world. If the world sees us as bitter, hateful, contemptuous, elitists, and all the rest, it will know that we are not disciples of Christ. The energy for discipleship is found not in any written code, but in a message etched upon our hearts, a message embraced by faith, a message with a Man at the center, and more than a Man, a God who came to liberate us from the curse of Adam, liberation we can enjoy if we’ll only listen to Him carefully, if we’ll hear Paul in context, and if we’ll run far and fast from those who are sucking grace from our lungs in their zeal to manage God’s kingdom.
