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If, Then Conditional Confusion and Legalism

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If you love me, you’ll obey my commands. – John 14:15

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this from the non-legalistic point of view.

Forever people have read this – I have read this – like "If you love me, then you will do what I say so go figure out what I said so that you can do it and that will show that you love me."

I’ve messed up the cause and effect here.

If you love me => then you’ll do what I say.

The other unspoken message here is the guilt that comes daily when we fail to obey Jesus. "You must not love me, because you didn’t obey my commands." Which is of course a lie from Hell. You don’t have to go far in scripture to find folks that loved Jesus a lot, failed to follow His directions, and didn’t get the lightning bolt treatment.

But from some of the other stuff Jesus says, and because He doesn’t elaborate here or in any other place around this statement of what His rules and laws are, I think we have it backwards.

What if we looked at it like this:

"Love me, which is my command."

That might be a better way of expressing what I’m thinking. "The work of God is this, to believe in the One He sent." and to obey Christ’s commands is to love Him.

Jesus Manifesto: Works & Fruit vs. Jesus Christ

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So why do we preach rules, regulations, and laws instead of Christ? And why such an emphasis on “works”? Good works are simply fruit falling off a tree. If you will sink your roots deep in Christ, who is your life, you will not be able to stop the fruit from coming forth.

Sweet, Leonard; Viola, Frank (2010-06-01). Jesus Manifesto (p. 58). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

 

 

 

 

Commandments to Fear

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Isaiah 29:13-14

And the Lord said:
"Because this people draw near with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
while their hearts are far from me,
and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men,
therefore, behold, I will again
do wonderful things with this people,
with wonder upon wonder;
and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish,
and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden."

"Their fear of me is a commandment taught by men" really gets to me because that has been the point of religious teaching for so long.

"Fear The Lord, repent!" Was something Jesus preached sometimes, but not with as much emphasis on fear as much as He emphasized a salvation. I’m thinking of Jonathan Edwards through to modern college campus street preachers. I’m thinking of the holiness movement and legalism and people that don’t cuss around preachers.

Wisdom and discernment will leave us if we are not sincere on the inside about what we profess and teach on the outside. If our relationship with God is done by rules, He Himself will lead us away from that so that we’ll hopefully meet the real God. If our reverence, honor, piety, etc. are activities that are measurable, calculated, and choreographed, He will confound us to abandon that and follow Him. We can trust in that.

Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller

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I just finished Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller, and it is very very good. I think it messed me up more than ever though concerning Jesus and grace!

Here is the premise: In the so-called ‘parable of the prodigal son’ Jesus actually tells the story of two lost sons. One is lost because of his distance from the father in wanting to live for himself and do whatever he wants, the other is lost because he does everything the father has ever asked and now thinks the father owes him for his obedience, so he was really only always serving himself.
It challenged me to think about why I do what I do? What are my motives for loving Jesus more than life? It’s all because of Him, baby!

The bad news is that I’m wrecked for the sake of grace now more than ever. Good quote from that book, “Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people, in that it sedates and makes them powerless. If religion is an opiate, Christianity should be the smelling salts, calling people to wake up!”

I love it. it was a good quick read, and I recommend it...