Beyond the Law
From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope,
2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith.
5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, 6 from which some have strayed and turned aside to idle talk, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.
8 But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, 9 knowing this: that the law is not made for the righteous person…
"Wherever there is ritual," warns Winfred Cordoun in Neighboring Faiths, "anxiety is not far away."
Given the subject of the book, and of Dr. Howard Owens talk on evangelism in a pluralistic world in which I heard it referenced, I suspect the ritual to which Cordoun was referring is that religious ritual far from the Christian faith. Still, I suspect that ritualistic legalism as a neighbor is near and getting nearer, even for the Christian.
Paul cautions Timothy about this possibility in 1 Timothy 1:9. The law, even God's Law, he has been emphasizing, can be misused. Zealous teachers can use it to manipulate those under their influence rather than looking to the Word of God as a perpetual prompt for their own repentance. To make his point even more clearly, Paul goes back to the purpose of the standard set by the Word the Church at Ephesus has inherited. The Law, he says clearly and forthrightly, is not for the righteous man. That is, once it has served its purpose of reminding us that we are not righteous and of drawing us nearer to Christ Who is in every respect, it becomes outmoded as a how-to.
I'm disturbed lately by the extent to which I can agree with that, and then attempt to replace the Law with my own inferior version, and apply it at least as mercilessly to my own definition of the good life. I haven't recently struggled with the temptation to boil a young goat in its mother's milk, but I have defined my own sense of inner peace all too much by how much and how frequently I have gotten to write here. If writing here a few days in a row blesses me, my legalistic mind reasons, then I am somehow robbed if I fail to do so. If I'm robbed, I've got to find the perpetrators, from my own slowness and distraction, to any bystanders who happen to ask for my energy and attention. If Spurgeon's Morning and Evening devotional has repeatedly blessed me along with Tim Keller's Songs of Jesus and God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, they become Law unto me, not useful canaries in my coal mine as one indicator of my redeemed appetites, but my actual reason for being in themselves.
Such a confession of a carping, critical spirit makes this an odd time to actually look for righteousness, but that seems to be Paul's treatment. If Christ is at work, he says, righteousness is an aftereffect, not an affect we put on to prove a point. This is true even for the likes of me, and I suspect the pattern is not proprietary. I'm reading less, I'm writing less, I'm hitting fewer of my ritualistic checkpoints because the Holy Spirit continues to guide me into encounters more three-dimensional than on paper. These are relatively time-consuming, but correspondingly more transparent in revealing the glory of God in Whose image the people I talk with are made. My anxiety when my rituals are shifted around to make room for real life shows that I have room for growth in trusting, as I have written that another introverted friend of mine confessed, that the Holy Spirit will be faithful to bring to my mind even back which I don't take time in the moment to process or write about. God has written, he says, His Law on my heart. He has staked His brand, His name on the certainty that this will impact what flows from my mouth and into my writing.
In one of Heaven's sweet, subtle ironies cut precisely to the scale of one little life, Spurgeon, yesterday evening's Spurgeon about which I was fretting about being behind, speaks precisely to today's manna. He looks at God's promise to Noah through the rainbow and rejoices, "Mark the form of the promise. God does not say, 'And when ye shall look upon the bow, and ye shall remember My covenant, then I will not destroy the earth,' but it is gloriously put, not upon our memory, which is fickle and frail, but upon God's memory, which is infinite and immutable.'" He does not need, it seems, His Law, and certainly not my "law" to ensure my adherence to His curriculum as a new creation. My days are already so ordered.
2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith.
5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, 6 from which some have strayed and turned aside to idle talk, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.
8 But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, 9 knowing this: that the law is not made for the righteous person…
"Wherever there is ritual," warns Winfred Cordoun in Neighboring Faiths, "anxiety is not far away."
Given the subject of the book, and of Dr. Howard Owens talk on evangelism in a pluralistic world in which I heard it referenced, I suspect the ritual to which Cordoun was referring is that religious ritual far from the Christian faith. Still, I suspect that ritualistic legalism as a neighbor is near and getting nearer, even for the Christian.
Paul cautions Timothy about this possibility in 1 Timothy 1:9. The law, even God's Law, he has been emphasizing, can be misused. Zealous teachers can use it to manipulate those under their influence rather than looking to the Word of God as a perpetual prompt for their own repentance. To make his point even more clearly, Paul goes back to the purpose of the standard set by the Word the Church at Ephesus has inherited. The Law, he says clearly and forthrightly, is not for the righteous man. That is, once it has served its purpose of reminding us that we are not righteous and of drawing us nearer to Christ Who is in every respect, it becomes outmoded as a how-to.
I'm disturbed lately by the extent to which I can agree with that, and then attempt to replace the Law with my own inferior version, and apply it at least as mercilessly to my own definition of the good life. I haven't recently struggled with the temptation to boil a young goat in its mother's milk, but I have defined my own sense of inner peace all too much by how much and how frequently I have gotten to write here. If writing here a few days in a row blesses me, my legalistic mind reasons, then I am somehow robbed if I fail to do so. If I'm robbed, I've got to find the perpetrators, from my own slowness and distraction, to any bystanders who happen to ask for my energy and attention. If Spurgeon's Morning and Evening devotional has repeatedly blessed me along with Tim Keller's Songs of Jesus and God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, they become Law unto me, not useful canaries in my coal mine as one indicator of my redeemed appetites, but my actual reason for being in themselves.
Such a confession of a carping, critical spirit makes this an odd time to actually look for righteousness, but that seems to be Paul's treatment. If Christ is at work, he says, righteousness is an aftereffect, not an affect we put on to prove a point. This is true even for the likes of me, and I suspect the pattern is not proprietary. I'm reading less, I'm writing less, I'm hitting fewer of my ritualistic checkpoints because the Holy Spirit continues to guide me into encounters more three-dimensional than on paper. These are relatively time-consuming, but correspondingly more transparent in revealing the glory of God in Whose image the people I talk with are made. My anxiety when my rituals are shifted around to make room for real life shows that I have room for growth in trusting, as I have written that another introverted friend of mine confessed, that the Holy Spirit will be faithful to bring to my mind even back which I don't take time in the moment to process or write about. God has written, he says, His Law on my heart. He has staked His brand, His name on the certainty that this will impact what flows from my mouth and into my writing.
In one of Heaven's sweet, subtle ironies cut precisely to the scale of one little life, Spurgeon, yesterday evening's Spurgeon about which I was fretting about being behind, speaks precisely to today's manna. He looks at God's promise to Noah through the rainbow and rejoices, "Mark the form of the promise. God does not say, 'And when ye shall look upon the bow, and ye shall remember My covenant, then I will not destroy the earth,' but it is gloriously put, not upon our memory, which is fickle and frail, but upon God's memory, which is infinite and immutable.'" He does not need, it seems, His Law, and certainly not my "law" to ensure my adherence to His curriculum as a new creation. My days are already so ordered.
Your words made me think (realize?), interactions with people can be demanding, time-consuming, and draining emotionally. So we high-minded "mature" Christians think focusing on God is a better pursuit. Certainly is but not as an excuse to avoid human entanglements. See Pharisees/temple/parental care. Let's see, Jesus did both. He interacted with people and God. Guess we should too.
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