Rom 9:1-5 / Lk 14:1-6
Jesus was a good Jew and he loved the law, because its purpose was to help people do right by one another and in the process to grow closer to God. That was the law’s purpose, but all too often it’s not what happened. Many people, especially those who were experts in the law, became fixated on the externals and on all the minuscule details of thousands of rules and regulations, and they forgot the larger purpose behind the rules. Notwithstanding that, they seriously thought they were doing just fine, and they went so far as to attack Jesus for not being like them. “Imagine,” they said, “curing sick people on the sabbath!” No wonder Jesus said, “The letter of the law kills, but the spirit gives life.”
It’s a problem that confronts people of every age: Following the letter of the law, but missing its real point and its inner truth. It happens when we live on the surface and don’t go any deeper. And it leads us into a kind of self-righteous blindness that proclaims to the world that we’re just fine, even though we aren’t. So what’s the answer? Ignore the rules and forget the law? Not at all. The real answer is to look inside the rules, find their real purposes, and then commit ourselves to those purposes, which may even cause us to set aside this or that man-made rule from time to time.
So how are we doing? Here are some questions that may help us find out. Do I generally know the “why” of my actions or do I just run on radar? Do I keep God’s people at the center of my “screen,” or do I focus mainly on keeping the rules? As I interact with people, is my primary goal to help them become more alive and more true?
If the answer to any of those questions is “no,” Jesus has some urgent inner work for us, and it needs to be done now!
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