Our church recently held its annual fall campout, and this year, for the first time, our family was able to go. Our kids were all finally old enough that we thought camping with the whole family sounded like a good idea, so we packed up and headed out to a state park a couple hours away.
We all had a great time. Too soon (yes, seriously) it was time to come home. We lugged everything into the house, and I began the task of unpacking and getting the kids to help me. I put a load of stuff that belonged to the girls into their room and told them to start putting it away while I took care of something else. A few minutes later, I saw Lindsey bounding by on one of those large rubber balls with a handle, where you sit on it and bounce along. “Lindsey,” I said, “you need to clean up. I told you girls that already.”
“Oh,” Lindsey said innocently. “I thought you just meant Ellie and Jessica.”
Oh, no, she didn’t. She knew what the spirit of the law was. But because I hadn’t specifically named each girl, she saw a way to claim that she believed the letter of the law didn’t apply to her.
Sounds kind of like what we adults do, doesn’t it? Oh, we might not go as far as Lindsey did, and claim God’s law doesn’t apply to us, but we often give ourselves far more grace than we give others in determining what level of compliance is necessary in order to meet His standards. We may not say, “God’s law doesn’t apply to me; I don’t have to be loving.” But we might very well say, “Yes, God’s law applies to me, and I’m doing a fine job of fulfilling it.”
We act as if God’s law says “be more loving”, and then we figure that applies to other people who really need it, not to us who are already doing a good job. Or we proceed as if it says “be more patient”, and assume that also applies only to others who aren’t doing as well as we are.
But in reality, God’s law doesn’t say, “be more loving.” It says, “be perfectly loving (or patient, or kind, etc.),” and we fall far short of perfection. We are not “good enough”. There was only one “good enough” Person Who ever walked this earth, and that was Jesus Christ. He was the only One Who perfectly fulfilled God’s law. The rest of us fall woefully short.
I’ve often heard the phrase “we’re not under law; we’re under grace”. That’s true. But it doesn’t mean that God’s standards are any less. Yes, if we’ve acknowledged Christ as the Lord of our lives and asked Him to forgive us of our sins, His perfect sacrifice stands in our stead. He took our punishment so we wouldn’t have to. But His standards are still the same. He doesn’t say, “Now that you’re a Christian, it’s okay for you to be less than loving, because you’re under grace.” Quite the contrary. In fact, the Bible declares that people will know we are Christians by the love we have for one another.
God’s moral law still applies. And it still applies to us.
We would do far better to spend our time asking God to reveal the sin in our lives and repenting of it than to spend it deciding where other people have messed up and what they should do about it. I don’t mean that we should never confront others’ sin. There is a time, a place, and a way for that. But I do mean that confronting sin should start with that which we find in our own lives.
Search me, O God, and know my heart. Help me to know it, too, and to spend more time searching it than searching the hearts of others. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
Matthew 7:3-5—Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.