Day 2563 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.
Matthew 5:17 NIV
Another one of those verses that just stops you in your tracks. Or at least that's what it did to me. Don't know how many times I went back and re-read this one last night. I think there's this misconception about the Law, God's commandments, and the freedom that we have in Christ. As we talked about yesterday, we manage to twist things around to mean what we want them to mean. But that doesn't mean that we've actually changed the truth.
We want freedom from responsibility. Freedom to do anything we want. Freedom to see salvation as a get-out-of-jail free card. But that's not what it is. It isn't some safety net that we should rely on to catch all of our mistakes and make them all disappear. So it's no wonder that you hear some talking about how Christ is the end of the Law. Or perhaps you'll hear them quote Romans 6:14 saying that we're no longer under the Law but under grace.
Whatever the spin, it doesn't work. This verse in Matthew makes that perfectly clear. Christ did not come to this earth to end God's Law. He didn't come down here to give us all some hall-pass to run wild. He didn't die on that cross so that we could live the rest of our lives under the assumption that we're now free to do as we please. He died on the cross to show us just how real sin is and just how dangerous it is to live our lives under its control.
But Christ himself tells us very plainly in this verse that He did not come to abolish the Law. It still stands. God's commandments aren't some historical list of good ideas. They're not some ancient rules that no longer apply to our lives. But sadly, in our quest to selfishly live however we want to live, we've taken the idea of His freedom and spun it around to mean that we can run wild and count on His willingness to die all over again if need be. Our selfish arrogance really does know no end!
Christ didn't erase the Law that God gave us. He showed us how to follow it. He lived a perfect life as an example of how to fulfill that Law. He is the culmination of God's Law, of His expectations, of His desire for how all of mankind should live. He is the example, not the end. While we may conveniently want to see it some other way, our desires to shirk responsibility don't have the power to overrule God's authority. We have to stop looking for loopholes and start learning to hold ourselves accountable for our actions.
Yesterday we talked about fairness and how our God is the ultimate example of fairness. He's fair in sending us a perfect example of how to follow and fulfill the Law that He calls mankind to live by. But it's pretty unfair of us to expect Him to throw out the Law just because we choose to fail to follow it. Again, we're the ones who are unfair, but we’re good at finding ways to overlook that fact so that we can avoid a little more responsibility.
In all honesty, if anyone really thinks that God is suddenly okay with things like murder, adultery, stealing, lust, greed, or any other sinful thing then they must not understand who God is or how He works. He doesn't waver, doesn't change, doesn't compromise. So if we think that He's willing to erase His Law just because we've failed to uphold it then we're nuts! That's just not how it works folks. And we really shouldn't expect anything else.
God is still on the throne. His Law is still in place. And His Son came to show us how to live life in a manner befitting His expectations. Jesus didn't come to put an end to the Law. If He put an end to anything regarding God's Law, now that we have a perfect example, it's an end to our excuses for failing to choose to do what's right in favor of what's wrong so many times. We now know better because He taught us. So rather than looking for a way to shirk His expectations, perhaps we should realize just how seriously He takes the Law and just how much it should mean to us if we truly want to call ourselves Christians.
Comments
Post a Comment