This Is Who We Are
Almost daily when I’m in town, I walk through a certain underpass. I love it. It is so beautiful. It's just really excellently done.
But there are limitations to any underpass, tunnel or covering. I was thinking about this as I was preparing thoughts for another installment of how grace has application to everyday life. I was thinking about the reality that when I'm under there, I don't get pure light. I don't get pure sunlight. As beautiful as it is, all the properties of pure sunlight get diminished. So does the power of the electrical charge in the atmosphere. It gets blocked and stunted.
And if I spoke to you while walking through the underpass, my voice would be distorted.
Any time there is a covering put on pure voice, it gets distorted.
So I was thinking about when I first started reading scripture. I loved it. I would read it 13, 14 hours a day. December 23rd, 1979 - all through that season I couldn't stop reading. But fast-forward a few months and I started failing and I started doing wrong. I thought, “What's wrong with me?” And shame reared its head. And then I would read scripture, thinking there was something uniquely, irreparably wrong with me. And I would read that into the scriptures... the same scriptures. And no one did it to me, I did it to myself - I started to have not only a shame filter, but a moralism filter. I thought, “You should... You ought… What's wrong with you? What kind of a Christian are you? You ought to be doing more of this and more of that. Why can't you...?”
I never needed to do that.
The scriptures don't need to be read with any filter.
The beauty is that I am a new creature, and now scripture is never going to condemn me. However, it did condemn Israel. I mean, here they were, without a new heart and they thought, “I’m righteous, and I've got this.” And then God's light, His absolute pure light of righteousness, said, “Guys, you don't have it. You need a new heart. You need a Messiah.” But for me now, the moment I put my hope in Jesus, I have a new heart. I'm a brand new creature. Christ is in me. And so scripture is never meant to condemn me, not one iota!
Scripture only builds me up, encourages me, and tells me who I already am.
I remember reading John 14, “If you love Me, you'll keep My commandments.” John 14:15 (NASB) Except I was so frightened and so condemned. Because I had these filters on scripture, I read it imagining Jesus talking to me like an angry pirate, “If you love Me, you better keep My commandments. If you love Me... I know you say you do - but I don't much think so…. If you do, then KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS! And I’m not going to tell you how fast, how high, how many - just do it. And be afraid. Be very afraid!” And I actually saw it that way.
The truth is - and this is where knowing the original languages help us - that “if” is a first-class conditional, meaning only this: the “if” does not mean an “if” of uncertainty, but instead an “if” of certainty. It could just as well say, “Because you love Me, you're going to find yourself keeping My commandments. And by the way, I've fulfilled the 10 commandments, so I'm going to ask you to just love one another. And this is who you really are. This is what you most want to do.”
My friend, the fear is gone. I can come to His word, 24 hours a day, without condemnation, only to get built up. This is who we are. We can live this way.
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