Grace & Law (2)

 continued from previous post...

Terry Minnick was telling me about a car wash New Hope did that was free – free as in it didn’t cost anything to have your car washed. Not only was it free – we wouldn’t accept any donations. There was one woman who insisted on paying, she tried again and again to pay, but we wouldn’t accept any money. Finally she drove away…only to return with barbeque chicken – she just couldn’t stand the grace that we were trying to extend by washing her car for free, she just couldn’t accept the gift.

            Two weeks ago I was visiting David Moore at his office. When I told him I was going next door to Liberty Gas for coffee he said, “The coffee is free.”

            Now I did hear those words, “The coffee is free,” and it isn’t that I disbelieved David, but I felt funny going into this store which I’d never been in before and just pouring a cup of coffee and leaving…I believed David, but I really felt funny.

            So, after pouring my cup of coffee I approached the cashier…who looked at me…and when I indicated that I had coffee…well…imagine what she said… “Oh, that’s free.”

            I knew that what David had told me was true – but it just felt so funny to walk into a store and get free coffee…especially when I’d never been in there before.

            Now I guess the cashier could have said, “Oh, the coffee is free but if you want to leave the store we need you to stock some shelves, or clean the bathrooms, or take out the trash.”

            I reply, “But I thought the coffee is free.”

            “The coffee is free,” she responds, “but now that you’re in here we have these things we need you to do.”

            “But I thought the coffee is free?” I continue.

            The cashier is getting impatient, “I don’t see your point. You’ve got the coffee, we didn’t charge you for it. Now please stock some shelves.”

            Bait & switch?

            Let’s turn in our Bibles to Galatians chapter three, Galatians chapter 3:1 – 3.

            The letter to the Galatians, along with 1 Thessalonians, is thought to be one of Paul’s earliest letters, written around 52 AD, it may in fact be his earliest. Galatia was a province in the center of what today is Turkey and the churches which were planted there were some of the earliest churches in the ministry of Paul.

            Most of the people in Galatia were Gentiles, non-Jews, and when they received the good news about Jesus they freely accepted the grace of God. They simply believed that Jesus loved them, that Jesus had died for them, and that Jesus had been raised from the dead for them and that by accepting Jesus as Lord that Jesus would come and live inside of them. That’s pretty basic and that’s Good News, that’s the Gospel. No bait and switch, no $99.99 high definition TV’s, none of which are in stock, no trickery, just the straight news about Jesus Christ.

            But of course, every story needs a Simon Legree, a Darth Vader, a Wicked Witch of the East, and Lex Luther or an evil wizard in Middle Earth – and every story needs that because the story of life has that, which is something we’ll probably explore on a future Sunday.

            For you see throughout Paul’s ministry he had company and I’m not talking about coworkers such as Barnabas and Silas and Timothy and Titus and Phoebe and Priscilla, I’m talking about unwanted company – company like the White Witch in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I’m talking about someone, actually a group of someones, who want it to always be winter and never Christmas – people who want to take all the joy out of life and to impose their will on others.

            These were the masters of bait & switch Christianity. These were the people who would make certain that my brother-in-law Rod Barton would never really rest in the grace of Jesus in this life – and these were the people dedicated to never giving Paul the apostle a day of rest.

            They followed Paul from Jerusalem, to Antioch, across Asia Minor, into Macedonia and Greece and finally into Italy. They have followed Paul and Jesus for 2,000 years and they can be found lurking in most churches, waiting to snatch the love and joy of Jesus away from His people.

            They showed up in Galatia with a message that we’ve all heard at one time or another, “Now that you’ve accepted Jesus, if you’re going to be a good Christian, here is what you have to do. Now that you’ve accepted Jesus, if you want to make sure you get to heaven, here’s what you have to do. Now that you’ve accepted Jesus, if you want to make sure that God still loves and accepts you, here is what you have to do.”

            That does make sense doesn’t it? After all, behavior is important to us and we want to live good lives, we want to live moral lives, and we do want to be close to God. It makes sense. It makes sense that a high definition 90” TV really isn’t $99.99, it makes sense that the coffee really isn’t free, it makes sense that Jesus may have provided a free way into the house of God but that now I need to work, work, work to maintain my salvation, my eternal life.

            Well, actually it only makes sense if I forget just what it is that Jesus did and who I am outside of Jesus; for Jesus paid a price that I could never pay and outside of Jesus I am utterly helpless to help myself, dead in sin and alienated from the life of God – the grace of God makes perfect sense if I remember the facts. But then again, most of us have a tendency not to let the facts get in the way of what we want to believe, and we want to believe that there is something we can do to earn a relationship with God…and we definitely want to believe that there is something we can impose on others to make sure they act like good little Christians – for behavior is important to us.

            So I wonder if C.S. Lewis was right – and I wonder if we really don’t have a bait & switch Christianity – in which everything is good news…until at least we get inside the building and have our membership card issued.

to be continued....