Evolution of "Me-ness"

So - I was reading a blog I wrote almost a decade ago on then-current debates of displaying the ten commandments at government facilities. The Christian community was up in arms. Militant atheists were organizing and on a rampage. It was ugly.

Worse still was my response via blog as a very former version of myself. I waxed eloquent and persuasive about the virtue of posting the ten commandments (mostly that it was an invaluable resource for morality!) Ha!) while encouraging a different kind of Christian response of love and selflessness that was otherworldly compared to the atheist regime bringing the attack.

At the time I thought - let's encourage people to live out of love toward the world while encouraging an otherworldly morality. Praise God I no longer think that!

Don't get me wrong... in itself, the ten commandments are good. A supernatural righteousness is good. A loving response to a lost world - good. But to think that the law of the Old Covenant would in any way correlate to a moral life - supernatural or otherwise - is LUDICROUS! The believer doesn't need reminded of the Law, but of our sonship of God by the finished work of Christ. Like the prodigal son, we forget who we are as a saint, are reluctant to reconnect because of our false expectations of performance, and inhibit the glory of the Father by His finished work to bring us fully into perfect relationship with Himself by our identity as His child by grace alone.

The law was never intended to bring about righteous behavior, but to bring proof of our inherent UNrighteousness, driving us back to dependence on God as our Source. As Jesus proved to the pharisees of His day, those who think they have any chance of maintaining any of the law become a stumbling block to those who are truly seeking God, and their SELF righteousness is an abomination to the very heart of the Father.

All that is to say - I was shocked at my legalism of even just a few years back. I was disappointed in my encouragement of Christians trying to keep the law, as if we should live in ANY relationship to it as believers who are saved and have a righteousness from God by Grace - who IS Jesus Christ.

More than shocked and disappointed though, I was thankful.

Thankful for His revelation of a new economy of grace in the New Covenant. Thankful for Christ who is our Life, whom I didn't understand that I fully possess. Thankful for a relational paradigm of living with God, not a performance standard for gaining from God.

...And I am thankful for not only my evolutionary journey in grace - far from complete - but for the opportunity to be a part of your journey, as we increasingly discover the Life we have in Christ, the glory that is God's through His grace to us, and empowerment of that grace to live in relational righteousness - the very character of God - by His merit not ours.

I hope you are already celebrating the reality of the advent of Christ - that He came not only to give His life for you, but TO you that He might live His Life THROUGH you for His renown as you rest in Christ who is our Life and Peace and Righteousness by grace.

ridiculously graced...

-mike.

http://StoneLife.org