Day 2593 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.
Romans 3:20 NIV
There's a pain that hurts and there's a pain that alters. Unfortunately, we've been taught to see pain as nothing but a negative thing to be avoided at all costs. That's why the truth is regarded with such disdain anymore. It hurts. It stings. It confronts the places we try to keep hidden and forces us to consider perspectives that don't involve us being correct. So we instinctually run from the truth and anything or anyone who forces us to deal with it.
People look at God's law as this list of things that we can't do. And when they start digging down into what it says, they’re hit with this painful realization that they've broken many aspects of His design. The truth of God's way compared with ours leaves us with the understanding of just how wrong we've been. It makes us either admit we've screwed up or it forces us further into this delusion that has us believing that we're not as broken as the truth says we are.
Sadly, most choose to stop. They stop listening to the truth about what they've done. They tune out that little voice that speaks up whenever they're about to make a mistake. They ignore anyone who has the audacity to talk about sin and how pervasive it is in our world today. They lash out at those who have the courage to speak the truth rather than what they want to hear. All because they've bought this idea that all pain is bad.
But the thing about the truth found in God's law and His will for our lives is that it's one of those pains that help us. On the surface, it opens our eyes to dealing with so many things that we've spent a long time trying to avoid. It opens wounds that we thought were healed. It dredges up past mistakes that we had swept under the rug. It forces us to be honest with ourselves so that we can come to see our flaws and follow that road toward the healing that only comes when we admit that we need it.
The fact is that nobody will ever be righteous. None of us will be perfect. God has shown us the difference between right and wrong and He calls us to live our lives in a way that upholds His desire for us to follow His path rather than our own. That hurts. It hurts our pride. It damages our ego. It goes against this human arrogance that has blinded the masses to reality. And that's why people hate it. That's why they loathe the idea of faith and our preaching against this world's plethora of impropriety.
But friends, as much as God's law stings at the beginning, that pain leads us to salvation. It helps us see our flaws so that we can start working to do better. It helps us understand the gravity of what Christ did for us so that we can more fully grasp the enormous gift of salvation and how much better we ought to be striving to do in life. It's a pain that helps. It helps us learn to do things a better way, to aim to live according to God's will.
As much as we may not like that, we need it. We need to understand that none of us will ever earn enough, be enough, or accidentally do enough things right to overcome the brokenness of our human state. We need His grace because we cannot uphold His law flawlessly. But it's only when we finally come to see our imperfections and our inability to be good that we can see that He is truly our only hope. We have to understand just how broken we are so that we can comprehend the fact that He is the one who puts us back together.
Friends, stop running from the truth. Yes, God's law hurts. It makes us realize that we've spent a whole lot of time doing a whole lot of wrong. But God didn't give us the law to hurt us or to punish us. He gave us His law so that we could better understand the vast difference between right and wrong and then make the changes necessary to live better lives. We can't afford to see His way as anything but perfect, upright, holy, and righteous. His way is the only one that leads to our salvation from who we've been and the lives we've lived.
If it takes a little bit of humiliation to find humility then so be it. Because it's only when we've been humbled that we can look up and see the underserved grace that we've been given.
Comments
Post a Comment