Free From the Law

The church has a hard time finding a balance between grace and law. On one side, we have those who believe that God is so full of sweetness and light that everyone will receive eternal life. On the other, we have those who live in constant fear of violating the letter of the law or, worse yet, committing the unpardonable sin.

We live in a free society governed by law. The US Constitution says we are free to choose our religion, share our beliefs by mouth and in print, and assemble peacefully, among other things. State and local laws tell us how fast we may drive, what rights property owners have, who has the right to drive a car, and the penalties for breaking the law. We have freedom in some areas, and we are restrained in others. And we are responsible for our choices in all areas.

Two Uses of the Law

Historically, that has been seen as one reason for the Law: It is meant to restrain sin, to be an impediment to everyone doing what is right in their own eyes regardless of the consequences to others. In this respect, the Law is something of an instruction book for living together in peace.

The second purpose of the Law is to let us know when we miss the mark. When we sin, we should feel guilt. This is a moral universe, and part of the image of God within us is that we innately know right from wrong. Granted, some are sociopaths and some have different definitions of private property and the public good, but everyone understands "Thou shalt not murder me." Or lie about me. Or take what is mine.

We live in a broken, messed up world, and that impacts every part of our lives - even our sense of guilt. We may feel no guilt when breaking some rules, and we may feel false guilt when we have done something that is right. Because the world is permeated with sin, we cannot depend on our feelings of guilt to be correct. Satan tempted Eve by getting her to think that doing what God prohibited would actually be a good thing - and with sin, guilt entered the world.

In all of human history, only one man lived the Law in such a way that he never knew guilt. Jesus was God made Man, lived in this broken world for thirty-some years, and never once did anything that upset God the Father. (He did a lot of things that upset the religious leaders of his day, but that's another thing altogether.)

The problem with the Law is that sin has entered the world, we are all selfish, and we are all subject to being led astray. Calvinists have a notorious reputation for piling on the guilt: "I am a miserable sinner and know I will be damned" is one line that comes to mind from a book we read in my Canadian Literature class in high school (as best as I can recall it). Baptists and Catholics and moms are also good at laying on the guilt.

We're susceptible to this kind of abuse because our sinful, selfish nature misunderstands the Law. We want to be free from the Law and allowed to do anything we please. There are some religious factions that preach that when Jesus Christ broke the power of sin through his death and resurrection, it was to give us license to do whatever we want to. This perverts both Law and grace, because not all things are good (1 Cor. 6:12 and 10:23).

We are guilty of violating God's rules. In the flesh, every single one of us has sinned and fallen far short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). We are incapable of living as God wants us to under our own strength (Rom. 7:18, Gal. 5:17). We are selfish, and we obey the Law only to avoid punishment or when it is to our advantage.

That's the beauty of the Golden Rule, which seems to be part of most moral creeds. Do to others as you'd have them do to you doesn't fly in the face of God's rules; neither does it fulfill them.

On the other hand, there is sufficient mercy and grace in the blood of Jesus to cover every sin throughout history and to allow every human being entry into the Kingdom of Heaven. We can all be free from the Law that brings guilt, but we should never use that freedom as license to do as we please. That not only falls short of God's desire, but of the Golden Rule as well.

Legalistic Sundays

Growing up in a fairly legalistic tradition and also attending Christian schools during the week, it was interesting to hear how other families observed Sunday as a day of "Sabbath rest". Some kids had to take naps. Some were not allowed to play outdoors. Some could play outdoors but not ride their bikes or engage in team sports. Some were not allowed to watch TV on Sunday. Some could not go swimming. And almost none dared to buy anything - except if you were on a trip and running out of gas.

Doctors, pastors, and gas station attendants were among the few jobs where it was necessary to work on Sunday. Farmers were obligated to milk their cows on Sunday, but worried that taking in crops might violate the Sabbath, as in "Obedience" (a poem by Sietze Buning, pen name of the late Stanely Wiersma):

Were my parents right or wrong

Not to mow the ripe oats that Sunday morning

with the rainstorm threatening?

Almost all businesses were closed on Sunday in those days, and my brothers and I felt very fortunate to belong to a family that would go to the lake on Sunday - and would even buy ice cream cones on the way home. While others were fighting against stores that wanted to open on Sunday, we felt superior because we could thumb our nose at those legalistic Sabbath rules. (In retrospect, that smacks of pride!)

To this day there are Christian sects that have such a high view of Law and such a low view of grace that even baptized and professing members may only feel themselves worthy to receive communion a few times in their lives. On the other side, we have those Christians who have such a high view of grace and a low view of the Law that there is no restraint on sin.

The Third Use of the Law

John Calvin said that there was a third use of the Law. It doesn't exist just to restrain sin and let us know our guilt; it also exists as a guide for righteous living.

The Jews were already free from bondage in Egypt when they received the Law. Obeying the law was never meant to be a way to earn freedom; it was a set of rules that would allow those God had already set free to live together in peace.

The same thing applies today. Jesus Christ frees his followers from bondage to sin and boils the Law down to two statements: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. And love your neighbor as you love yourself."

This summary of the Law is not binding on those living apart from God. You cannot love God if you don't believe that he exists. You cannot love God if you are deathly afraid of him. You cannot love your neighbor if everything you do is rooted in self-interest. You cannot live the law of love until you comprehend that you are known and accepted and forgiven and loved by God - and you don't have the power to do that without the Holy Spirit living inside you.

Until we are in this kind of relationship with God, we are susceptible to spiritual abuse - the same kinds of legalism and license that humans always fall back on in order to get what we want. We're told that we have to observe the Sabbath, have to tithe precisely ten percent to our local congregation, have to obey our parents without hesitation, must never lie, and must never long for anything we do not have. We are told to fear God, not to embrace him and be embraced by him.

The flip side is the libertine standpoint (a word coined by John Calvin). Free from the Law, I can do whatever I want to do on Sunday, tithe if I feel like it, disrespect my parents, twist and stretch the truth, and lust after anything and everything. We are told that we are absolutely and completely forgiven by God - and he has no expectactions of us.

Living in Love

Both are equally wrong. Free from the Law, we're given new life by the Holy Spirit. Knowing that we are loved by God, we want to see his smile instead of his frown. The natural response of love is to put the other first - to make God #1 in our lives.

If you've been in Christian circles for any amount of time, you've probably seen a picture of a chair or throne with the word SELF in the seat - and the statement that God wants that place in the center of your life. As simple as that sounds, it's true. It may not be easy to do, but it is true. God wants to be in the center of your life, flooding you with his love, and this can only happen when you make God #1 in your life.

Only from that point - only with God's love pouring into you - do you have the ability to love others as you love yourself. Try to love others under your own power, and you will run out of steam. You will get frustrated and ornery and depressed and angry. You don't have enough love inside you to love even one person the way you love yourself, not unless God unleashes his love through you.

That's when the third use of the Law manifests itself in your daily living. Knowing God's love and allowing it to work in and through your life, your new nature wants nothing more than God's smile. You don't stress over sin and guilt and breaking rules; walking in righteousness becomes like breathing as long as you continue to walk in grace and let God have first place in your life.

There is a balance of law and grace, but we can't find it on our own. Only when we surrender our pride, step out of the spotlight, and allow God to become preeminent in our lives will we find that balance - and by the grace of God and the power of the Spirit, that becomes our new nature.

Others will not understand. Legalists will try to judge and bind you with the Law. Libertines will tempt you to do anything that may make you happy. But you will have the peace to live in love and the knowledge that what makes you happiest is making God happy. Perfect love really does drive out fear (1 John 4:18).

As St. Augustine said, "Love God and do as you please." As long as it's done in that order, it's a way to walk in grace instead of license.

Broken and Remade

Honestly, it's not an easy thing to reach that point. Most of us cannot divest our egos unless and until we are broken and without hope, handing over the pitiful remnants of our broken lives to God in desperation. We have come to the end of ourselves, and in our despair we hope that God will come through for us.

The good news is that God is love, loves us, knows our every failing, and longs to take us in his arms and heal our brokenness. When we come to him in weakness, he binds up our wounds and heals us. When we despair of control, the Holy Spirit is ready to live within us and give us direction. Our old, broken, sinful nature gives way to a new, healed, spiritual nature that draws us into God's will - although the old nature will still tug at us.

This is where we find victory over the world and peace with ourselves. This is the time when we can put down our striving and find rest. This is the place of Sabbath rest and shalom that enables us to walk in true righteousness instead of slavish obedience to the Law.

God offers new life to all who are willing to give up their old ones. The Lord Jesus has paid the price to wash away your sin, and the Spirit is ready to live within you and make you holy. Only then will you be free from the treadmill of legalism or the emptiness of living to feed your own desires.

When the Son sets you free, you are free indeed!

Why Christmas?

What's it all about? From the songs, decorations, and ads, you'd think the holiday was all about family, food, and receiving a boatload of gifts. You'd think the important players were Santa (a.k.a. Saint Nick), Rudolph, Frosty, and a lot of elves.

You'd never guess that Christmas is one of the most important religious holidays in the entire history of the world.

Everything started when God created time and space, populating it with stars and planets and creatures. The high point of creation was making human beings, and Genesis tells us that God would walk with Adam and Eve every day - until that fateful day when they chose to distrust God's intentions and learn about good and evil.

God, who lives outside of space-time, chose to enter his creation and spend time with his creatures because he loved them. When they sinned, God, who cannot bear the presence of sin, gave up his daily walks with Adam and Eve. But he had a plan that would fix everything.

God would take on human flesh and live among us, first as a fetus within Mary's womb, later as a child, and finally as a teacher, redeemer, and lord. God, who once walked in Eden, spent 30 years inside creation as a creature. God, in the person of Jesus, rubbed shoulders with sinners, told them of God's love, condemned fakers, and never sinned. Through his life and death, he broke the power of sin (defined as doing what pleases us rather than what pleases God) and made it possible for humans throughout history to live in a right relationship with their Creator.

The purpose behind Christmas isn't receiving loot or spending time with family; it is recognizing the lengths to which a God who is love is willing to go to demonstrate that love to selfish people. Jesus came from heaven and took on human flesh with all the limitations of a baby - totally dependent on others to feed him, comfort him, and change his diapers. The God who made the cosmos emptied himself and became one of us to the point of accepting execution for a crime he didn't commit - all because he loves us and doesn't want our selfish pride to come between us.

The story of Christmas is the story of God invading history to liberate those held captive by sin. God offers us a gift of new life that nothing in the mall can hold a candle to. All we have to do is receive it.

Therein lies the rub. To receive this gift, we need to empty our hands of pride. We can know about the gift and see the gift and create wonderful theologies about the gift, but we cannot accept the gift until we make room for it. We cannot live in a right relationship with God as long as we place our desires ahead of God's.

We were created by a God who is love so that we could be loved, and we are loved whether we accept this gift or not.

We live in a broken, messed up world, and we have learned distrust from childhood. Because we are surrounded by sin and infused by selfisness, we live in fear of others and of God. We want what we want, and we'll do whatever is necessary to get it, taking it by force or subjecting ourselves to others so our needs will be met.

Despite millenia of legalistic religious teachings, God does not hate us and is not out to condemn us for breaking his rules. He loves and and wants us to love him. If we don't, then we have chosen hell.

There is nothing we can do to earn God's love. Following his rules perfectly won't earn us anything. God will never love us more or less regardless of what we do, but if we don't come to him - if we turn our backs on God, we have chosen our path.

God loves us and demonstrated that love in Jesus. He asks us one question: Do you trust me?

God calls us into the freedom of trusting his love and his plan for our lives. He promises that good will even come through the bad things that happen to those who love him. He asks us to put aside our agenda, spend time conversing with him, and live a life that reflects the love he has given us.

If you have learned to trust God, you have already received the most valuable present.

If you haven't yet chosen to trust God, know that God is love, that he knows and loves you no matter what choices you may have made, and that he wants to be in a relationship with you for the rest of your life.

God doesn't insist that we live perfectly to merit salvation - or that we live perfectly because we have received salvation. He calls us to live honestly, to own up to our mistakes, to reflect the grace he has shown us, and to know a deep and lasting peace that will keep us rooted every day.

Santa and Rudolph and Frosty and presents under the tree are nice things, but knowing the love and peace to be found in trusting God makes them pale in comparison. May you know the grace of God this holiday season!

The Matrix Has You

The Matrix is one of my favorite movies of all time. It may be 10 years old, and I may have watched it several dozen times, but every new viewing remains a treat. The special effects blew us away, but it's the depth of the story that keeps me coming back.

Theology?

The Matrix is one of those films that readily lends itself to philosophical and religious discussion. How do we know what is truly real? And doesn't Neo seem to be a Messiah figure?

I'm not going to argue about the Wachowski brothers' theology, which is imperfect. Of course, we have to admit the same is true of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Barth, and every other theologian who has ever lived. We see in a dim mirror, as the Apostle Paul put it.

The Matrix can really stretch your mind. It helps me challenge long held assumptions and reframe my thinking. It's stimulating.

Analogies

We're created beings, and we can't really grasp God, eternity, or just how God knows everything. I was a philosophy major in college, and these are heady concepts. We can glimpse parts of them, but never comprehend the whole. (As Augustine said, "If you believe that you have comprehended God, what you have comprehended is not God." God is too big, too other, too holy for mortal minds to fathom.)

I've found some analogies that help me understand creation, eternity, predestination, and human responsibility a bit more.

• Creation is like a book that God has written. He created a plot outline, fleshed it out, made edits and revisions, and when that was done, he spoke and it came to be. As some fiction writers know, some characters take on a life of their own a sometimes follow a path the author would just as soon avoid. (For example, read about Joshua in The Arm of the Starfish by Madeline L'Engle.) Just as human author lives outside the timeline of their stories, God exists outside the timeline of creation.
• Creation is like a play that God has written. He wrote the whole, gives each of us a role, and judges us on how we live our part. Do we trust the playwright, or do we actors believe that we understand the play better than its creator? Do we embrace the life that God planned for us and live it to his glory?
• Creation is like a movie that God has scripted, directed, and edited. When we view a movie, it's put together a certain way, even if the scenes were filmed in a different order. Some scenes end up on the cutting room floor. Some scenes are shot over and over again until everything works just right. The producer has a vision, and the only thing that counts is the end result, not the exact steps involved in creating the final cut.

These are imperfect analogies, but I find them helpful.

To top it all off, the Son of God became a character in the book, play, or movie. Somehow.

It's mind boggling.

'The Matrix Has You'

The Matrix gives me another set of analogies. We discover that what everyone believes is truly real is just a massive multiplayer virtual reality created by the machines. Everything works as we expect it to because the story masters/programmers make no allowances for anything else. Life is predictable and comprehensible. And when things go awry, they send in the Smiths, special programs designed to deal with the few who won't conform to the parameters of this virtual reality.

As many philosophers have asked, "How can I trust my perceptions?" In The Matrix, you can't, because the true reality is that human beings are functioning in a virtual world while their bodies are used to power the machines that enslave them through this simulation.
The key idea behind The Matrix is that there is a true reality behind perceived reality, and because it is truly real, those who can tap into that truth are able to bend or break the laws of the virtual reality. Neo can dodge bullets, move at inhuman speeds, and come back from the dead because he knows he has a real existence outside the simulation.

What we perceive is a construct designed to emulate what is real.

The Matrix Has Us

I'm a Boomer. I grew up and attended school in the 1960s and 1970s. It was a heady time. Science had given us computers, television, rockets, nuclear energy, and much more. We had grasped reality with the laws of science, and nothing would be beyond our grasp. We might inhabit space. We could play with the power of the atom. We could find a way to cure any disease. What we considered unimaginable wonders would become commonplace by the 21st Century. And science fiction became my favorite form of fiction.

Using the scientific method, we would eventually be able to understand and control everything. Beyond the physical world, we could analyze individuals and societies. Even theology - the study of God - became subject to the scientific method. Well, religion. In the end, the universe is comprehensible, and we have or will develop the tools to comprehend it.

The name of this matrix is materialism. Materialism holds that matter is the only thing that exists. There is no reality that cannot be counted, measured, and analyzed. We are the sum of our body chemistry and the electrical impulses coursing through our bodies. If spirits exist as some sort of residual energy after we die, we can detect them. And we can fix psychological problems with electricity, surgery, or chemistry.

By definition, Christians are not materialists. We believe that something exists outside the cosmos, outside the material world. The universe is a created thing, and while we may not be able to measure God, he exists. Not only that, but part of who we are is intended for eternity, for a life beyond the restrictions of this physical world.

That said, many Christians are functional materialists. We theoretically believe in a God not bound by the laws of nature, but we live as though the material world is all that is real. Heaven and the hereafter may be different, but here and now we live as though we are bound by physical reality - by the matrix.

Breaking Free

I have a really hard time believing - really, truly, honestly, completely believing - that what we understand to be the real world is really a construct, a virtual reality that we cannot distinguish from anything else. Yet if we take the Bible as truthful, we know that God intervenes and is not constrained by the laws of creation. Jesus turned water into wine, healed the sick, multiplied fish and bread, cast out demons, walked on water, and came back to life after he had died.

We read of healings in the Old Testament and the New. We see the walls of Jericho crumble. We hear the locks of a prison undone so Peter can walk out. And yet we have a hard time believing it could still happen, because we have been conditioned by the matrix of materialism. There are incurable diseases (at least at our level of scientific knowledge). There are circumstances that God cannot change. Whatever our theology, in practice we see God limited to acting within the laws of nature.

Nonsense. God has never been bound, not even when Jesus took on human flesh and lived among us. Like Neo in The Matrix, Jesus was able to tap into the reality behind perceived reality.

Cosmic Christ

In the very simplest terms, Jesus came to save us from sin, to break the barriers between us and God. But there's a lot more to it than that: Just as all of creation was subject to sin through the actions of Adam and Eve, all of creation is redeemed through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul saw this clearly while writing his letter to the church in Rome. Here are three translations of the relevant passage:

"Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay." (Rom 8:20, 21, NLT)

"For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God." (Rom. 8:20, 21, NIV)

"...all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe - people and things, animals and atoms - get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross." (Col. 1:20, The Message)

Paul comes back to this theme in Colossians, when he says,

"...through [Jesus] God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross." (Col. 1:20, NLT)

There's a catch: Everything that Jesus accomplished through his death and resurrection has not yet been completed within creation. The last chapter has already been written. It is finished. However, we are living inside the story, and while we know how it will end, the brokenness of this world will not disappear until the new heaven and new earth are made at the end of this story.

Beyond Materialism

Albert Einstein changed our understanding of the universe when he figured out that matter and energy are flip sides of the famous equation E = mc². Energy can be "released" from matter, a truth that showed itself in the atom bomb and nuclear power plants. On the flip side, matter is a form of energy - minuscule subatomic packets clinging together, orbiting each other, and making up the physical world. (Let's not even bring up quantum mechanics, which seems so counterintuitive from a material perspective.)

Energy is matter. Matter is energy. The great I AM spoke, and light and matter and planets and creatures came into being. Out of nothing but his creative power, God invented the reality we live within.

The physical is not all there is. Energy is fundamental, and the laws of physics have some surprises, such as quantum mechanics. How can something be in this orbit or that orbit, move between them, yet never exist between them? It boggles my imagination.

No matter how deep our understanding of this, we live our day-to-day lives rooted in reality as we perceive it - naive pre-theoretical thought. In the pre-scientific world, everyday life included miracles - lightning, the cycle of day and night, spirits, powers, magic - things we couldn't explain but believed in. (Some people are such convinced materialists that they will only accept scientific explanations, such as Arthur C. Clarke's third law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.")

For those of us raised in the Western world, it's hard to break our bondage to materialism. Spirituality is a state of mind. Religious experiences can be measured. God, if he exists, set the universe in motion and no longer interferes. There is no magic. There are no miracles. All we can know (as defined by science) is material.

Real Knowing

Materialism is a matter of faith, of believing that for all intents and purposes there is nothing outside the cosmos. This is all there is.

Yet the scientific worldview is a modern development. For millennia, people have believed in gods and spirits and powers not bound by the usual laws of nature. In many cultures, that's still part of the worldview.

Even in the Western world, our naive pre-theoretical thought knows that matter is not all that is. We grasp concepts such as truth, trust, beauty, love, and hope - and their opposites. Even if science can measure changes in our brain chemistry and electrical fields, we know that there's more to these ideals than a brain state.

Although I can't scientifically prove it, I know that God exists, that he loves me, and that he is trustworthy. This is as real to me as the keyboard on which I type these words. And it's a truth so fundamental that my life would be meaningless if it were not true.

There is a God who planned and made the universe and knows every bit of it. There is a God who planned me, brought my parents together to bring me into the world in accordance with his plan, knows my every failure and selfish thought, and loves me just the same. The Son of God came to show the world this love and break the barrier of sin and selfishness between we rebellious humans and the God who planned and made us. The Holy Spirit touches our hearts to convict us of our selfishness and sin - and to reveal God's loving plan to tear down that wall and draw us to himself.

I know all that. I live because that is true. And yet I have a hard time letting God be God in the physical world. I have a struggle knowing that God can and will bend or shatter the rules of the physical world even though I have heard the stories from childhood, hear of new miracles every month, and have seen and experienced some.

Matter is energy. God transcends the laws of nature. God has touched my spirit and transformed my life. And still I struggle with unbelief in this area.

In Mark 9, we read the story of a man who brought his son to Jesus for release from an evil spirit. Like me, this father had a hard time really believing, and he confessed to Jesus, "I do believe, but help me not to doubt!" (Mark 9:24 NLT)

I know the physical world is not all there is, and I know the God behind our perceived reality, but the matrix still has me to a good extent. "Help me not to doubt!"