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Observation

People continue today to try and make the law do what the law can’t do. Law, or obedience to the law, cannot cover my past and cannot set me right with God. The law is like a mirror, it shows me where I can’t reach its standards, it exposes my sin. But just like a mirror tells me I need to go to the gym, the law tells me I need to go to a saviour. You don’t ask a mirror to enable you to lose weight, so don’t ask the law to make you right with God.

 

What is the attraction to making laws and enforcing them as a means of rightness? Is it our need to control, to be right and to label others wrong? Do I feel better if I can make it on my own rather than relying on Jesus? Is it just my ego, small self, that wants to be able to do it all myself, and congratulate myself on my performance? This attraction to law has destroyed the beauty of Jesus, it has assassinated the character of God, and destroyed so many people from enjoying His invitation to mercy, love, and grace. We must die to our law obsession, we must be comfortable without being able to sit in judgement over others, we must be able to welcome those openly whose behaviour we want to punish and reject. If the law doesn’t die – we do and in our obsession, we kill God for others.

 

There is such a deep rest that is possible in Jesus’ based righteousness. No more striving, no more obsession with behaving, no more right and wrong. Just an openness to be me, whatever me is today, and to be present with God in His intimacy without looking over my shoulder to ensure no accuser might expose me, or terrified that I might be found out to be less than the man my mask portrays. And you can be you also. No more right and wrong judging, no more I’m in your out, no more arguments and manipulation threats, finally we can be truly brothers and sisters in the family of God without dinner time tantrums. Why? Because “through this man Jesus there is forgiveness for your sins. Everyone who believes in him is made right in God’s sight.” When you get everyone has already been made right by God, we might stop trying to do what God has done.

Application

Rest. Enjoy. Put your feet up and celebrate the feast. See how beautiful the world is. See the beauty in all people. Put on the new lens of everyone is right and forgiven and see everything and everyone new.

 

Response

Thank you that you have exposed the ridiculous inability of law. Thank you that you closed the book, passed the verdict clearly down, judgment given – everyone is forgiven and right. Thank you for the amazing life this now enables me to live. Not just me personally in my rightness but as I do life with those around me. I am blessed that you have shown me the beauty of your plan in Jesus. Thank you that this enables me to see you with more clarity, and to see just how beautiful and loving you are towards me.

 

Meditation

Meditation truth – “through this man Jesus there is forgiveness for your sins, everyone who believes in him is made right in God’s sight.”

Consider:

Does the law still have a voice in your life?

What do you see differently when you see through the Jesus lens of righteousness?

JOURNEY DEEPER