There
is a spiritual principle that I have known and believed for years. It is that
God simplifies and man complicates. This spiritual principle is one that has
kept me from trying to make things too complex or complicated. It has also
freed me up to simplify my life and help others do the same.
A
great example of this is the law that God gave the people of Israel through
Moses.
In
Exodus 20:1-17 God gives Moses the Ten Commandments. Many people think that was
the whole law. The truth is that the law given to Moses by God had over six
hundred separate commandments. God summarized those six hundred commandments into
ten. Of those ten, four deal with our relationship to God and six deal with our
relationship to other humans.
During
the years of exile of God’s people in Babylon, the group known in the New
Testament as the Pharisees developed. They took the six hundred commandments
and decided to interpret them. In interpreting them, they actually expanded
them to over three thousand commandments.
Now,
I don’t know about you, but to try to remember let alone obey over three
thousand commandments is not going to happen. I can’t do that with six hundred
commandments. Now, ten commandments are much more doable, but still a stretch.
The
law became the focus of God’s people. They began to see the law as an end in itself
and not as a means to lead them to the Giver of the law – God.
For
decades the people were taught the way to reach God was through obeying the
law. The problem was that no one could obey the law perfectly. The fact that
there were over three thousand commandments complicated the matter.
The
law was given for three reasons:
To
reveal to us the character of God
To
reveal to us the standards that we are to live by
To
reveal to us that we cannot by human effort obey the law
Raise the Roof and
Remove the Walls
is allowing God to use the law in our lives for the purpose for which He gave
it.
Jesus
comes into the world and proclaims a gospel based in grace, not the law.
One
way that Jesus does this is by simplifying the three thousand commands. He
doesn’t simplify to six hundred or even ten, but to two.
Mark
12:30-31
Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as
yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.
When
Matthew records this saying of Jesus, he adds at the end, “On these two
commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
If
we love God with all that we are and we love our neighbor as ourselves, we have
fulfilled all the law.
Now,
I can remember two commands: love God and love other people.
I
can remember them but I still have the problem of not being able to do that all
the time in my own human effort.
Raise the Roof and
Remove the Walls
is not depending on the law to deliver us and makes us right with God.
Paul
expresses that same frustration in Romans 7 where he says that the things he
wants to do he can’t and the things he does not want to do he finds himself
doing.
In
the last verse of Romans 7, verse 25, Paul says, “Thanks be to God, who
delivered me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Jesus
is who delivered Paul from the frustration of wanting to obey God but not
having the ability to do it.
Jesus
does this by dying for our sin on the cross and then sending His Sprit to
indwell us with the resurrected life of Jesus.
Paul
tells us in Galatians 2:20 that he had been crucified with Jesus and it was not
him living but Jesus living in him and that the life he lived was lived by
faith in Jesus.
The
law inside is good and holy because it is from God.
The
law was never intended to be what saves us and makes us righteous.
Grace
through faith saves us and gives us the righteous of Jesus.
Raise the Roof and
Remove the Walls is
depending on grace to save us and make us righteous.
Jesus
simplifies the law in two commandments and then sends the Holy Spirit to
empower us to obey those two commandments.
Nothing
could be simpler. It is not easy, but it is simple.
Simply
Through Jesus, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,
Joe
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