Living Story Grace

We think less and less about the better things that Christ will bring us at his reappearance because our thoughts are increasingly absorbed by the good things we enjoy here. No one would wish persecution or destitution on another, but who can deny that at this point they might do us good?” J.I. Packer, Affirming the Apostle’s Creed

Where does hope grow? In times of hopelessness. When our hope in earthly things fades, our Christian hope swells. Earthly hope is based on limited vision which leads us to dream mild dreams by heavenly standards: a new IPad for our birthday, an A on the bio exam, a much-needed job, or a longed-for spouse.

While there is nothing wrong with hoping for good gifts in this life, Christian hope far exceeds the small story of earthly hope. Focused on resurrection, restoration, and renewal, Christian hope centers on two key chapters in biblical history. The first is the Resurrection; this real story of Christ dying and being raised from the dead invites us to die and live anew with the raised Christ. It is this story that allows us to look at a world rapidly unraveling, and proclaim with confidence, “New life will arise out of this doomed day.”

Christian hope also focuses on the end of the story told in Revelation 21 and 22, an ending that writes a new and eternal beginning. Revelation tells us that in the new heavens and the new earth there will be no more death, disease, disequilibrium, or despoiling. Instead, there will be health and wholeness, work and worship. Knowing that one day no more tears will flow encourages us to work intentionally on restoring this broken world even as we wait expectantly for a day when our Lord will come and complete the process.

And when our Lord comes, I John tells us: “we will be like him, for we will see him as he really and truly is.” (I Jn 3:4, NLT) Whether we know it or not, this is the deep hope our hearts were made for, the hope that brings our stories into focus. Because of Christian hope, N.T. Wright, tells us, we live differently in this world: “Our task in the present …is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.” Tom Wright,Surprised by Hope, p. 30

Okay, that was sort of a teaser.  I am continuing my posts on obedience, posting tonight since early in the morning my youngest and I head for the airport to fly away to Maine.  I do have a really good story about deciding my rules superseded a stewardess’s rule on an airplane and what happened as a result.  If I have time, I’ll write it out during the plane trip and share it with you on Friday.  Meanwhile, pray we have smooth flying tomorrow and a sweet visit with my Aunt and Uncle.

4. What does obedience to God look like?

Mark 12:28-31; I john 2:3-6; Philippians 2:6-11. (See previous posts for these verses written out.)

Among other things:

1. Loving God and loving others.  What does this look like?
2. Loving your enemy.  What does this look like?
3. Forgiving someone who has hurt you.  What does this look like?

Obedience isn’t easy.  But we have hope because we’re not expected to do it in our own human strength or willpower.  See the next point.

5.  How can we do these impossible things?

By the power of the Holy Spirit.

“Now, however, being changed in heart, motivated by gratitude for acceptance through free grace, and energized by the Holy Spirit, they “serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code” (Rom. 7:6). This means that their attempts at obedience are now joyful and integrated in a way that was never true before. Sin rules them no longer. In this respect, too, they have been liberated from bondage.”^[1]

J.I. Packer, Concise Theology…

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^[1]Packer, J. I. (1995, c1993). Concise theology : A guide to historic Christian beliefs. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House.

I hope for you, as for me, it has been enlightening to think about how Christians ought to understand the Law.  In one of those really cool God-things, even as I’ve been posting from Packer’s thoughts on it, I came across Luther’s preface to Galatians, which puts the law in perspective.  So today, two paragraphs from Packer and one from Luther…and tomorrow, more from Luther:

“But the love-or-law antithesis is false, just as the down-grading of law is perverse. Love and law are not opponents but allies, forming together the axis of true morality. Law needs love as its drive, else we get the Pharisaism that puts principles before people and says one can be perfectly good without actually loving one’s neighbor. The truest and kindest way to see situationism is as a reaction against real or imaginary Pharisaism. Even so it is a jump from the frying pan into the fire, inasmuch as correctness, however cold, does less damage than lawlessness, however well-meant. And love needs law as its eyes, for love (Christian agape as well as sexual eros) is blind. To want to love someone Christianly does not of itself tell you how to do it. Only as we observe the limits set by God’s law can we really do people good.

Keep two truths in view. First, God’s law expresses his character. It reflects his own behavior; it alerts us to what he will love and hate to see in us. It is a recipe for holiness, consecrated conformity to God, which is his true image in man. And as such (this is the second truth) God’s law fits human nature. As cars, being made as they are, only work well with gas in the tank, so we, being made as we are, only find fulfillment in a life of law-keeping. This is what we were both made and redeemed for.”  J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ

Now for Luther:

“Once you are in Christ, the law is the greatest guide for your life, but until you have Christian
righteousness, all the law can do is to show you how sinful and condemned you are. In
fact, to those outside of Christian righteousness, the law needs to be expounded in all
its force. Why? So that people who think they have power to be righteous before God
will be humbled by the law and understand they are sinners.”

Another in our series on the Law from J.I. Packer — it’s PERSONAL. It is not about keeping law so we earn grace. It is about how to live the relationship of love for God and love for neighbor that has already been given by grace.  Let me highlight one sentence from the paragraphs below:

“Law-keeping (that is, meeting the claims of our God, commandments 1–4, and our neighbor, commandments 5–10) is not an attempt to win God’s admiration and put him in our debt, but the form and substance of grateful personal response to his love.”

Here it is in context.  Make sure you reread the Commandments, in Exodus 20:1-17; Deuteronomy 5:6-21.  Pay attention today to how it is only possible to live this law of love through the gospel:

Now, the Christian’s relationship with God the Creator is a personal, “I-you” affair throughout. To him God is not, as he is to some, a cosmic force to harness, an infinite “it” claiming no more from him than the genie of the lamp did from Aladdin. Christians know that God has called them into a relation of mutual love and service, of mutual listening and response, of asking, giving, taking, and sharing on both sides. Christians learn this from watching and listening to God incarnate in the Gospel stories, and from noting the words of invitation, command, and promise that God spoke through prophets and apostles. And the twice-stated formula of the Commandments (Exodus 20:1–17, Deuteronomy 5:6–21) makes it particularly plain.

For the Commandments are God’s edict to persons he has loved and saved, to whom he speaks in “I-you” terms at each point. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out … you shall … ” The ten directives, which embody the Creator’s intention for human life as such, are here presented as means of maintaining a redeemed relationship already given by grace. And for Christians today, as for the Jews at Sinai, law-keeping (that is, meeting the claims of our God, commandments 1–4, and our neighbor, commandments 5–10) is not an attempt to win God’s admiration and put him in our debt, but the form and substance of grateful personal response to his love.

About 14 years ago, I fell in love with the Old Testament.  Tremper Longman III did a series of lectures at the Theological Institute at our church and taught us to bring our hearts and minds to Scripture.  He showed us the dominant theme of grace written by the Author God in the Old Testament, and I fell in love with the stories and law and poetry and wisdom and prophecy as I saw it as never before.

One day around that time, I walked in our living room and found our then 3-year-old son, Robert, “reading”  Tremper’s book, Making Sense of the Old Testament.  Study the picture carefully.  To “make sense of the Old Testament,” he did not need to turn the book around — he just needed to read it through the grid of grace.  Today, I bring Packer’s argument against the arguments that the Ten Commandments are merely ‘outdated’ laws:

Some read the Old Testament as so much primitive groping and guesswork, which the New Testament sweeps away. But “God … spoke through the prophets” (Hebrews 1:1), of whom Moses was the greatest (see Deuteronomy 34:10–12); and his Commandments, given through Moses, set a moral and spiritual standard for living which is not superseded, but carries God’s authority forever. Note that Jesus’ twofold law of love, summarizing the Commandments, comes from Moses’ own God-taught elaboration of them (for that is what the Pentateuchal law-codes are). “Love your God” is from Deuteronomy 6:5, “love your neighbor” from Leviticus 19:18.

It cannot be too much stressed that Old Testament moral teaching (as distinct from the Old Testament revelation of grace) is not inferior to that of the New Testament, let alone the conventional standards of our time. The barbarities of lawless sex, violence, and exploitation, cutthroat business methods, class warfare, disregard for one’s family, and the like are sanctioned only by our modern secular society. The supposedly primitive Old Testament, and the 3000-year-old Commandments in particular, are bulwarks against all these things.

But (you say) doesn’t this sort of talk set the Old Testament above Christ? Can that be right? Surely teaching that antedates him by a millennium and a quarter must be inferior to his? Surely the Commandments are too negative, always and only saying “don’t…”? Surely we must look elsewhere for full Christian standards? Fair queries; but there is a twofold answer.

First, Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:17) that he came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it; that is, to be, and help others to be, all that God in the Commandments had required. What Jesus destroyed was inadequate expositions of the law, not the law itself (Matthew 5:21–48; 15:1–9; etc.). By giving truer expositions, he actually republished the law. The Sermon on the Mount itself consists of themes from the Decalogue developed in a Christian context.

For further study:

Read the Ten Commandments, found in Exodus 20:1-17.  Then read Matthew 5:21-48 and 15:1-9.  How does Jesus develop themes from the Decalogue in the context of grace?