A
minister I hold in high regard recently said “Good News! –There is even “grace”
for those who are attacking the “grace message!” I say in response, “More Good News!—There is
even “law” for those who are attacking the “law message!” Grace and Law are obverse ideas, two sides of
one coin; attack one, you attack both.
We
all know the new covenant is all of grace (especially the mature); we also know
that the law is holy and eternal, never to be done away with (along the ideas
of discarding it away like trash anyways).
Rather, it was (and is) fulfilled and transfigured and internalized from
an external fiat to an internal nature.
In
pictorial form it looks something like a barb-wired fence guarding and defining
with parameters a spacious but still technically limited pasture plot; a place
where the freedom of man and the sovereignty of God coexist in harmony.
Sheep
are supposed to be in the center foot-hills on designated paths following their
Shepherd, but they technically have the freedom to roam about wherever they
desire. Instead of an onerous external
restraint of law to keep them in order and safe, however, is a kind internal
constraint of grace infused into their new nature.
Nonetheless,
they do not always obey either their Shepherd or their new nature perfectly. Thankfully the law is a schoolmaster to bring
them to Christ; the barb-wired parameter is that law in our picture. The Lord leaves the ninety-nine and seeks the
one when he comes up missing.
Law
IS grace in that when the sheep goes astray from keeping close to Jesus and the
inner paths, he entangles himself in its barb-wired outer-limit fence and is
thereby graciously kept from falling over the cliff into a premature death. It is hoped that while thus captured no wolf
will come to eat him; Jesus is of course diligent and caring beyond any, and
never fails to hear the bleat of his fallen and rebellious sheep.
These
words of G. Campbell Morgan might help shed some more light on the subject: “We
do not believe He is the slave of His own laws.
At the same time we do not believe in a God who is lawless, but
law-abiding. His knowledge of all law
is, however, such as to enable Him in the overruling of one law by another so
to perform what to our limited vision appears to be miraculous. Our doctrine of God makes us believe that it
is possible for Him to do in answer to prayer that which appears to be contrary
to law, but which is in reality wrought by the operation of a law of which we know
nothing in relation to another law of which we know something.”
Grace
is simply the out-working of the inner-working of Law written on the heart. Grace is Law fulfilled; an attack on grace is
therefore also an attack on law, and vice versa. But a paradox to us is a panorama to God; the
junction of two ends or opposite poles is only irreconcilable to the
linear-thinking human mind. But to the
multi-dimensional mind of God, who knows and experiences all things as
possible, that which appears to us as attacks and collisions are hardly more
than the processes which are designed to lead us to deeper and more dimensional
truth. Laws, attacks and collisions are
made into grace, love-taps and reconciliations, not so much in substance or by
circumstance, as in attitude and by surrender to God’s will to do anything He
desires irrespective of our agreement with it.
An
article just posted today (1/9/14) on the Elijah List, by Bob Hartley with Michael Sullivant, said: “He
(God) told me that we presently know 1% of the 100% of the knowledge of God
that He wants to reveal to us in this life, not to even mention what the future
age will reveal about Him. It's not that the divine attributes revealed in
Scripture will be contradicted by what we learn, but it's that WE SO EASILY MISUNDERSTAND AND
MISJUDGE HIS GREAT HEART AND HIS MANIFOLD WISDOM AND THOUGHTS REGARDING THE PEOPLE
AND SITUATIONS IN OUR WORLD” (I capitalized what he bolded so it would remain
accentuated in this FB format). I agree;
we are too blind to see the entire landscape, a panoramic landscape which is
inclusive of both law fences, grace lands, and many other things of which our
imagination has yet to grasp.
We that see more
than others are always both more free and more restrained; we are like a parent
who is free to do anything he wants on one hand, but is not free to do anything
he wants on the other hand (because of children). Because of love, we must place ourselves under
law for the sake of those who cannot live without law: children. Likewise, the mature in Christ, who are free
to do anything they want (being set free for freedom’s sake), who indeed have
grace unlimited, for the sake of love, relinquish their freedom of their own
free-will to express it through the constraint of law to babes in understanding
who are not yet ready to live unencumbered by external force. Sight and maturity comes with more freedom to
make more choices, but also more responsibility for which choices we eventually
make.
Love demands that we become all things to all men,
not by arbitrary fiat, but by its humble nature. Indeed, I agree with Apostle Paul: “Although
I am free in every way from anyone’s control, I have made myself a bond servant
to everyone, so that I might gain the more [for Christ]. To the Jews I became
as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to men under the Law, [I became] as one under
the Law, though not myself being under the Law, that I might win those under
the Law. To those without (outside) law I became as one without law, not that I
am without the law of God and lawless toward Him, but that I am
[especially keeping] within and committed to the law of Christ, that I
might win those who are without law. To
the weak (wanting in discernment) I have become weak (wanting in discernment)
that I might win the weak and overscrupulous. I have [in short] become
all things to all men, that I might by all means (at all costs and in any and
every way) save some [by winning them to faith in Jesus Christ]” (1 Corinthians
9:18-22 Amp.).
