Friday, April 2, 2021
The law is itself good, but it cannot make us good. All it can do is clamp down on us whenever we break it, and we do this all the time. Even if we could keep the law to perfection, we’d only be doing it to save our own skin, which is a selfish motive, which means we’re making much of ourselves, which means we’re not in submission to God (ironically—even though we would protest that we are in submission because we’re trying to keep His law while glossing over the fact that we’re not doing it to honor Him but instead to honor ourselves), and that means we’re totally screwed.
We have no claim to receive kindness from God. Severity is what is both merited and should be expected. Mercy is actualized when this impossible situation gives way to action on the part of the only One who has the right and full claim to severity. We’re the ones who broke the law. Yes, we were subjected to futility in the hope that we might be saved, but it’s not up to us now and it wasn’t up to us then; all we can do is make a decision about what to do with what has been placed in our hands.
What we’ve earned is death. That’s what sin gives birth to; it’s as unavoidable as the next sunrise or change of seasons—it is that constant. It is that dependable. Or inevitable. But this is actually a good thing, at least in the final analysis, because death is precisely what was required in order to free us from the law and its requirements, both its perfection of purpose and its inability to save. Death pays a wage. Christ gives gifts.
Imagine if One who was perfect, from Whom the law came and to Whom it is returning, not only kept it to perfection but kept it to perfection for others. Imagine that He did all that and gave that perfect fulfillment to the whole world. Now imagine that the whole world rejected the gift. Imagine that the whole world not only did that but killed the One who had given it. Imagine that He died the death the whole world deserved but that He didn’t protest to their treatment—in fact, that He submitted to it in full, actually becoming their curses, their errors, their grief, their willful disobedience. Now imagine that He, having become the opposite of who He is, then gifted not just His perfection but the fact of His death as payment in full for everything they had done, are doing, or ever would do wrong. One righteous death stands for all eternity as the way back to peace, light, life, glory, wholeness, satisfaction, justice, and mercy.
Would not this change everything? Would not even those who had done their worst against Him turn and follow no matter the cost? Ah, the cost.
Grace by its very nature is not just costly but priceless. How much it cost Jesus to give it to us! That He lived and died not just for everything I’ll admit or everything I’m aware of but everything I’ve done, am doing, and will do even in total ignorance. What kind of love suffers this long? Only one, and it is the love that is God. As J.B. Phillips said, “We hold, in Christ, an impregnable position…the judge Himself has declared us free from sin.”
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