The Law is for the Lawless, Not for You!

By Mark Drake

1 Tim 1:8-9- “But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully, realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless…”

If you have received God’s free gift of righteousness by Christ coming to live inside of you, then you are the “righteous”, not the “lawless”. Therefore, the Law is not made for you. You have something far better than the letter of the Law. You have the Lawgiver, Himself, living inside of you!

Why the New Covenant is Better than Law

The miracle of the New Covenant is “Christ in you, the hope of glory”. (Col. 1:26-27) The New Covenant enables us to live the “Inside Out” life rather than the vastly inferior life of “Outside In”. When the Lawgiver is living in us, we are empowered by Him from the inside out.

We Must Always Start at the Right Starting Point

We must always start with the reality that we have already been made righteous by putting our faith in the work Christ did for us on the cross. Then, as we learn to allow Him to live His life in and through us, His righteousness nature begins to live through us, affecting our actions. Our goal now becomes to cooperate with Him for inner transformation; not to become “right with God” because we are already “right with God”.

Though we will not learn to cooperate with Him perfectly in this life, we are on a progressing journey into righteous behavior which culminates in our physical death, when we will be completely changed and fully transformed into His perfect image. (Rom. 8:29) The journey does not make us “right with God”. We are already right with God because of what Christ has done, once and for all! But traveling on this life journey is dramatically “easier and lighter” (Matt. 11:28) when we understand the true New Covenant.

When the Lawgiver is living inside of you, you do not have to live struggling to outwardly obey a list of laws, by your own power and by making more sincere promises to God. Instead, He will empower and guide you from within. This is what makes the New Covenant…New! Living in the true New Covenant is intended to give us the successful life of Inside Out, instead of the failure of Outside In.

Example of Lawlessness – Traffic Laws

In civil society we must have traffic laws, because our lawless human nature is motivated by selfishness and the fear of punishment. If I drive through your neighborhood thinking only about myself and how fast I want to get to my destination, then my lawlessness (not being motivated by love) makes me a danger to others.

But if I am being motivated inwardly by agape love, I will be more careful than the traffic signs demand because my concern will be the safety of others rather my selfish desires. I won’t need the threat of punishment or the outward restriction of law because I am being controlled by a higher inner law. I will be even more careful than the law requires because I am being controlled by God’s love for the well-being of others.

True grace empowers us to live beyond the letter of the Law. True grace produces a better life than Law ever could. This is why Paul could confidently say “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” (Rom 13:10)

This is the power of true biblical grace; Christ’s life inside you, controlling you from within, as a free gift from a loving Father. And this is THE Good News!

Mirrored with permission from www.markdrake.org

Kind atheists or hateful Christians? Which does God prefer?

Pastor Shawn Craig of Crosspoint Church, also a member of the famous Christian group Philips, Craig, and Dean wrote a thoughtful post the other day about whether God prefers kind atheists or hateful Christians. When I lived in Missouri, I attended Crosspoint, which at the time was called South County Christian Center. My parents remain faithful members, and for good reason. Pastor Shawn is a Bible teacher par excellence!

In this particular post, (see the link below) I found Pastor Shawn's take on the parable of the Good Samaritan to be worth reading, although it doesn't appear that he has grappled too much with the fact that Jesus made the heretic the hero of the story, and what that might mean in terms of how Christians today should view people of different faiths. The closest parallel to the way Jews thought of Samaritans in their day is the way Christians think of Muslims today.

How would the average Christian feel today if they heard a Sunday morning sermon about a guy getting beat up, left for dead, and while the worship leader and the youth pastor pass him by, the person that actually helps the man is a Muslim named Ahmed. This is how the Jews would have heard Jesus' story. The guy that was supposed to be the "bad guy" turned out to be the one who actually fulfilled the great commandment, which is to love your neighbor as yourself.

Contrary to what Pastor Shawn seems to be saying in this post,(and I do emphasize the word seems, since I very well could have misread the post) I do think that the parable of the Good Samaritan lends itself to the question of which is more important: orthodoxy (right believing) or orthopraxy (right living)? I don't agree that it's inappropriate to ask the question of who might God prefer: kind atheists (or Muslims, Jews, gays, insert the standard evangelical heretic here) or Christians who have their theological ducts in order--that is to say, they believe all the right things--but despise outsiders.

Having said that......

Pastor Shawn makes an excellent point when he says that God prefers people that believe in Jesus.

Can't argue with that.

And, of course, I agree that the Old Testament law, as well as many of the next-to-impossible demands that Jesus sets in the Sermon on the Mount, are meant to frustrate us to the point of acknowledging that it's only by grace that we can be saved, not by any works of righteousness or merit on our own part. I just don't think that's the point that Jesus is making in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

I could be wrong.

It wouldn't be the first time.

Read the article here.

What say you?

Can rich people get to heaven?

I like stories like The Boy Who Cried Wolf or The Tortoise and the Hare, the ones where the smallest of children can grasp the moral of the tale. But a story that doesn’t resolve? Not so much. Especially if the story deals with a high-stakes issue, like –say—what do I need to do to make it to heaven when I die?

Which is why I really don’t like the following story:

A man came up to Jesus and asked him,

“Good teacher, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus said to the man,

“Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, and that’s God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”

The man replied,

“Which ones?”

Jesus answered,

“Don’t murder, Don’t commit adultery, Don’t steal, Don’t bear false witness, Honor your father and your mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

The young man said to Jesus,

“I’ve kept all of these commandments since the time I was young, what am I still missing?”

So Jesus said to the man, “If you want to be perfect, go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow Me.”

But when the young man heard what Jesus said, he went away sorrowful, because he had a lot of possessions.

Then Jesus said to his disciples,

“Listen up real good! It’s hard for a rich man to enter heaven’s kingdom. Let me say it again, it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven’s kingdom.”

When Jesus’ disciples heard what he said, they were blown away!

“Who then can be saved?” they asked him.

But Jesus looked at them and said,

“With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Leave it to Jesus to confuse the heck out of me!

Some immediate questions come to mind:

Did Jesus really mean for everyone to sell all of their possessions, or did he mean it just for this one man? I sincerely hope that he meant it just this once; otherwise St. Francis and Mother Theresa are going to have a really long time to get to know each other in heaven, since they and maybe a few saintly others would be the only ones there!

And that whole camel through the eye of the needle thing: What is that about?

And, yes, the eye of the needle means exactly what you’re thinking. Not some gate in Jerusalem. Jesus said it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle that you used to stitch that Noah’s Ark for your child’s bedroom—than for a rich guy to get to heaven.

Let. That. Sink. In.

Unless some freakishly unexplainable phenomenon occurs where camels all of the sudden start popping out of needles (imagine the Discovery Channel documentary on that one), I have to conclude that no rich person will be in heaven.

Except that’s not the end of the story…

Jesus’ disciples must have been as baffled as I am, because the story says they were “greatly astonished”, so much so that they asked Jesus, “Who then can be saved?” That’s when Jesus said, “With men, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.”

How’s that for a curveball?

On the one hand, Jesus says that it’s mind-bendingly difficult for rich people to get to heaven (and no, he’s not talking about some woo-woo experience of spiritual ecstasy on earth. He’s talking about actual heaven. Eternal life. Think of the rich man’s question). On the other hand, Jesus seems to be saying that as impossible as it is for rich people to get to heaven, even that’s not impossible with God.

Which brings me back to the beginning of the story.

Remember what the rich man called Jesus? The rich man called Jesus a “good teacher.” And Jesus replied by saying, “Why do you call me good? No one is good, but One: God!”

Some people use this verse to claim that Jesus denied his deity, but Jesus does no such thing here. Rather, Jesus is saying to the rich man, “Do you really understand the implications of what you’re saying by calling me good?” According to Jesus, no human being in the strictest sense can actually be called good. Only God is good. And no matter how much the rich man thought he had kept the commandments, he still fell short.

And so do I.

Like I said, this story doesn’t resolve for me.

If I’m going to take Jesus seriously, then I have to conclude that it’s very difficult for rich people to get to heaven. And as an American who lives a fairly comfortable lifestyle, I know he’s talking about me!

But then Jesus also says that with God all things are possible. That's where grace kicks in. So the one thing I can know for sure about this story is that when it comes to the question: Can a person be good without God? Jesus’ answer is unequivocal:

The answer is no.

(This story is found in Matthew 19:16-26)