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From slavery to a palace
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| LAST WEEK I remarked that Christianity is
the only religion which is a faith in the true and full sense of the
word. It is the only religion in which faith takes precedence over
works. Some people feel edgy when they hear such talk. Let’s understand this: I am not saying that faith is a substitute for morality or decency. I’m not saying, “Go out and steal and lie and cheat and commit adultery and murder — it doesn't matter, as long as you have faith.” That’s the accusation people made against St Paul, and he said, What! Shall we sin so
that grace can abound? God forbid!
Our deeds do not and can not save us. I’ve pointed it out repeatedly.
Every single thing that you and I do, no matter how good it seems, is
tainted with selfishness and pride. The old General Confession used in many
churches declares,“There is no health in us...” The best we do will never be good enough to gain us salvation. It only heaps up condemnation against us. The more we try to cover our sin with a cloak of deeds, the more rebellion we heap up against ourselves. I was talking to a young man who felt very guilty about how he had lived his early life. He felt a very real need to make amends. “I am always tired,” he told me. I asked him why. “I have so much housework to do. I clean, cook, wash up, do the washing... I am always busy and always tired.” “But you live with your parents, and your big brother is at home. Don’t you all share the work?” I asked. “Oh, no,” he replied. “I have given my parents so much trouble, and now I have to work hard because of all the wrong I have done. I don't want my parents to do housework. I have sins to pay for.” I said, “How many dishes do you have to wash up to remove what you did somewhere else at some other time?” He didn’t know. So I said, “You have a giant sack of sins on your back, weighing you down. No matter how matter how much housework you do, it can’t even touch what is already done. And don’t you sometimes still do wrong things? All the washing up in the world can never remove all your new sins, either. The load on your back gets heavier and heavier, and all you do is vacuum the carpets. Nothing you can do will ever touch that load.” So I explained about Jesus. “I’m a Buddhist,” he said. “I don’t believe those things.” I told him it seemed foolish to me to keep doing something futile rather than rethink your belief system. Paul tells us how things are under law, and it’s exactly like what my friend experienced. He was in bondage. ...when we were children, we were in
slavery under the basic principles of the world.
It’s a principle which applies regardless of the exact slavery involved.There’s a tradition in some churches that today they talk about the circumcision or the baptism of Jesus. Today they reflect on how Jesus shows us a model, an example, for our own lives. It’s true. What he shows us is an example of bondage and of freedom. Under the law, he was bound, too; under grace he was free. Once again, don’t get me wrong. Jesus was never a sinner under the law. But he suffered under the full weight of the law so that he could be tested in all ways as we are, but without sin. In Luke’s Gospel account, we read, LK 2:21 On the eighth
day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name
the angel had given him before he had been conceived.
His parents omitted nothing from the law’s requirements. He had to be
circumcised on the eighth day. That was the law. A boy not circumcised
on the eighth day was not a true Israelite. 22 When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord” ), 24 and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.” Circumcision is painful even for tiny babies. They are sore when it is done, they are sore as they heal, and, until the wound heals, every time they wet themselves, they scream. The upside is this. Women married to circumcised men rarely get cervical cancer, and some sexually transmitted diseases are also less common among circumcised men. So it has health benefits, but it is painful. However, the main reason for circumcision is that it was the minimum legal requirement for entry to the people of Israel and the covenants between God and Israel. Also, you will see that Mary and Joseph offered the right sacrifice for a firstborn son. Under the law, every firstborn son belonged to God. The first–fruits always belonged to God. It was a constant reminder to put God first. And God provided a substitute under the law. No one would want to break his or her firstborn son’s neck to give him as a whole offering, to the Lord. So a lamb could be given in his place, or, for poor people, two doves. Joseph and Mary provided the two doves. They didn’t have the money to buy a lamb, but they could afford the two doves. Jesus came under the law by circumcision; he came under the law by sacrifice, and he did it for you and for me, to redeem us from the bondage of law. You don’t need me to spell it out for you. You don’t need every word defined and explained. Law binds. Law condemns. Law enslaves. You know how the Jews were: you couldn’t drag a chair across to the table on the Sabbath, for fear that the chair leg would dig up the dirt of the floor and you’d be a lawbreaker for ploughing on the Sabbath. All these regulations existed to remind the Jews every day that God had to come first in their lives. But soon the regulations became important in themselves. People raised to strictly observe them judged themselves and others by how well they kept the rules. You know how Muslims are: they have to wash themselves and dress in certain ways before their prayers are acceptable to Allah. Failure to observe these rules threatens any hope of receiving Allah’s mercy on the day of judgment. It may be silly, but it is believed very sincerely by Muslims. Even Christians can become law bound. In the church I went to as a teenager, to go to the corner shop on Sunday and buy a Coke on a hot day was to desecrate the Lord’s Day. The bondage of law was one cause of the Reformation in Switzerland. Ulrich Zwingli was a priest who believed, based on his Bible studies, that the Catholic Church should make changes. But he was not in favour of doing anything to cause a split like what happened in Germany. One Easter, he was getting Orders of Service printed for special services. There were problems. The print job was running late. It was late Thursday night when Zwingli headed off to the Printer’s to see how things were going. When he arrived, the Printer and his staff were still working hard, but they stopped briefly to greet Zwingli and tell him how it was going. And, because they hadn't eaten since morning, the men had a quick and easy snack — cold sausage and beer. Someone found out and dobbed them in to the Bishop for eating meat just after midnight, in the first few minutes of Good Friday. And the Bishop excommunicated the Printer and his staff. Zwingli was so angry at the injustice of it all, the destructive legalism, that he spoke out, and the church people rebelled with him against the rules and regulations which considered religious duty more important than human need. Sometimes we look at such leaders and say, “If he hadn’t spoken, if she hadn’t acted, everything would have worked out without such division and such hurt on all sides.” But the fact is that the mass of the Zürich population was ready to rebel, and, if Zwingli hadn't given them a direction and a set of guidelines, the whole situation would have blown up, and who could tell what damage would have occurred? When the French people rebelled in the 1790s, Kings and Bishops were beheaded alongside each other; Christianity was brutally suppressed, and atheism ran riot. France hadn't had a true Reformation like Germany and Switzerland had had. There were no viable alternatives, and the angry masses followed Christianity’s opponents. The bondage of law was too much for people to bear. What kinds of bondage are you under? Let’s search our hearts, because bondage can be so subtle that we don’t even know it exists. When our dog, Max, was young, Joshua had his 21st Birthday party at our place, and we didn't want Max jumping all over the visitors. If you who remember Max, you know that his head came up to my waist when he was standing normally, and he could jump to my head height. Here’s what we did. We put him at the side of the house, closed the gate at the street end, and closed the other end with two fruit boxes, held down by two or three bricks each so they wouldn’t slide if Max pushed them. All night he stood at the boxes and whined, but he couldn’t come past them. To him, they seemed an impenetrable barrier, though he could easily have ripped them up with his teeth, or just stepped over them. He was trapped — in bondage to an illusion. Are you trapped by illusions? Are you unable to do certain things, not because a direct word of Scripture forbids them, not because you have been led by the Lord to follow a specific practice, but because someone once told you, “These things are wrong,” and now you can’t overcome them? For years, I had to wear a tie to church, because going to church without a tie was disrespectful to God. Where does it say that? I struggled for years against the suggestion that I could underline text books to highlight the important statements. Nice people don’t mark books. I had a struggle to learn to hug, after all, people might take it the wrong way. It was even harder with men than with women, because I certainly didn’t want any men to get the wrong idea! Rules, rules, rules and regulations. They bind us and enslave us. Jesus came to set us free. ...when the time had
fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, 5
to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of
sons.
Jesus didn’t come from outside and shout at us for our stupidity in
being bound. He came from inside, as someone who fulfilled all the
regulations. He came from inside and gave himself to lead us all out of
our slavery.When his disciples plucked and ate wheat on the Sabbath, he defended them, though the strict rules said it was a sin. When he met tax collectors and irreligious people and prostitutes and people in defacto relationships, he didn’t condemn them for not being perfect; he visited them and spent time with them, and enjoyed their friendship, and led them to find better ways of living. When he met women, he didn’t pray, like some Pharisees, “I thank you, God, that I am not a woman.” He welcomed them, and gave them roles in his ministry team, and freed them to be themselves. When Jesus died, he didn’t merely die for our transgressions of moral law, he didn’t just die to bring forgiveness for stealing, adultery, covetousness, murder, false witness and all those other breaches of basic principles; he also died for our breaches of the rules and regulations which perhaps exist for a reason, but serve only to bind us. That is why he was perfectly obedient to the religious law as well as to the moral law. He knew, he understood, he faced the same struggles we do, and he emerged victorious, the conqueror of all forms of bondage. My aunt said, “I am in my 70s. My mother died a quarter of a century ago. But every time I go to walk into my own house, I hear my mother say, ‘Did you wipe your feet, Joycie?’” Whether you are bound by the guilt of true moral failure, or by the guilt of not wiping your feet before going indoors, it doesn’t matter: Jesus died for all your sins. If Jesus had come from a less legalistic background, of he had even come from the more liberal strands of Judaism, there would always be some doubt: did he give himself to cover all my sense of guilt and failure, or only for my specifically moral breaches? And then there would be the inner battle, “When I turned on the light, did I break the Sabbath or only a human regulation. When I wanted to steal the money I saw lying on the shop counter, was that a covetous impulse, or a mere thought that struck me? When I ran in church, was I treating God with contempt, or only being a bit exuberant?” I don’t need to sort any of that out: Jesus died for me. I am no longer in bondage to the law: I have the status of a son through faith in Jesus, the true Son of God. I come directly the God the Father by his authority. Free at last!
Free at last! Praise God almighty — I’m free at last! I want to ask you to think very carefully: have you ever really come to him by faith? He gave everything to pay your debts to God. He bled, he suffered, he died, so that, by faith, you could be exactly like him in your relationship with the Father. If you have never truly surrendered by faith to Jesus your Lord, will you do so today? He will free you from bondage, and lead you to abundant life. May it be so, AMEN |
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| © Peter R. Green 2003. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. | |
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