Michael Kelley's Blog, page 5

How God’s Providence Fuels Your Personal Integrity

No one would ever know.

Sometimes the simplest lies are also the most effective.

Surely you’ve heard that whisper before in a moment of potential compromise. You know it’s wrong to count that deduction. You know it would be easier to take credit for more than your part in that assignment at work. You know it would propel you forward if you threw that person under the bus. And any of those choices would be easy to rationalize:

It’s just a little thing.

I’ve earned this.

When will it be my time?

And then, of course, maybe the most powerful of whispers: No one would ever know. 

The thing with all these statements is that they’re not completely invalid. We very well might have earned the credit we have been passed over for. And in the grand scheme of the universe, this small choice is really not that big. And many of us have been waiting for a long, long time for things to go rightly for us. It’s whispers like these that make us compromise our integrity.

What can help us fight in these moments? What can fuel our resolve to maintain our integrity when with just a small compromise we could move ourselves forward so greatly?

It’s confidence in God’s providence. Here’s a biblical case study to help us see how.

Genesis 27 contains the record of a massive breach of integrity. Jacob, spurred on his mother, deceived his father to steal his older brother’s blessing. Esau, as the older child, was in line to have the covenant blessing given to Abraham passed onto him. But Jacob was crafty.

He deceived his father’s taste, touch, and smell in order to get what he wanted. And he was successful:

Ah, the smell of my son
is like the smell of a field
that the Lord has blessed.
May God give to you—
from the dew of the sky
and from the richness of the land—
an abundance of grain and new wine.
May peoples serve you
and nations bow in worship to you.
Be master over your relatives;
may your mother’s sons bow in worship to you.
Those who curse you will be cursed,
and those who bless you will be blessed (Gen. 27:27-29).

The blessing was stolen. But this was also the way the Lord planned it. As these brothers were still in the womb, the Lord said it would go this way:

Two nations are in your womb;
two peoples will come from you and be separated.
One people will be stronger than the other,
and the older will serve the younger (Gen. 25:23).

Perhaps Jacob had these words in his head during his deception. Maybe he was even thinking that doing this would only speed along God’s plan and purpose for his life. But what we have here is not an example of a man working to make sure that God’s will was carried out; what we have here is a man who had so little faith in God’s ability to keep His promises that he felt he had to take matters into his own hands.

God’s providence ought to have the opposite effect.

If we truly believe in a God who not only makes promises but keeps His Word, then we should be resolved to operate with integrity in any situation no matter how much it might seem to cost us. We ought to be able to deny temporary gain, shortcuts to the top, and personal advancement if it means compromising our integrity.

Why? Because we trust that God will bring His work in us, and through us, to completion.

The Bible’s Surprising Antidote to Your Weariness

How are you feeling today? 

Did you wake up ready to go? Beat the alarm clock: Bounce out of bed with hope and optimism for the day? Or was it something different?

There are days for all of us that just feel… weary. It’s when the action items for the day are too many to count. It’s when the burdens of friends and family weigh you down. It’s when you look at all that has to be done and you feel a near-crushing sense of anxiety. On those days, you want nothing more than for the day to not start at all. Instead of bouncing out of bed, you take a deep breath and have to will your feet to swing onto the floor.

When we hit days like that, we might think the solution to our weariness is more sleep. If we only had a nap we would have a better perspective. And sometimes that might well be true. Sleeping can be, after all, a very spiritual thing. Our bodies were made to exist in a rhythm of work and rest, and when we feel a deep sense of weariness, the solution might be that our natural rhythm has been compromised.

But sometimes the solution to weariness is not rest. It’s actually very different than that according to the book of Proverbs. 

Like all the books in the Bible, Proverbs is divided into chapters and verses. But in most of the other books of the Bible, those text divisions mark shifts in content. Though Paul the apostle didn’t include chapters and verses in his letters, those have been added when we see him moving from one subject to another. They are helpful in marking these shifts of focus. But Proverbs is different.

One chapter in the book of Proverbs is not necessarily thematically consistent. That means you might have twenty-five proverbs in one chapter, and those proverbs might not necessarily relate directly to one another. Occasionally, though, you do find several proverbs within one chapter that bring out the same point of wisdom. Proverbs 11 is like that, and one of the points of wisdom we find in that chapter has to do with the remedy for weariness. Consider a couple of verse:

Those who are kind benefit themselves, but the cruel bring ruin on themselves (Prov. 11:17).

One person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty (Prov. 11:24).

Now what do these proverbs have in common? Well, they both point out the divine principle of reciprocity. Put another way, they are pointing out that when we are willing to give of ourselves we find ourselves receiving. In verse 11, the proverb tells us that when we extend kindness, the person on the other end of that kindness isn’t the only one who benefits; we receive benefit as well. Same thing in verse 24 – when we give freely, we gain even more in return.

Now it’s important to remember that this principle is not about material blessing. It’s about the kind of joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment we receive only through giving to others. These verses ought to remind us of the New Testament version of this same principle: It is more blessed to give than receive (Acts 20:35). 

That same principle relates to our weariness. In fact, we see it even more directly stated in the next proverb:

A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed (Prov. 11:25).

The word “refresh” here literally refers to water. When we are willing to water others with kindness, compassion, or a listening ear, we find ourselves watered. We might even put it oppositely: 

When we find ourselves weary, the solution is to ease the weariness of another. That’s the pathway to refreshment in the kingdom of God. Rather than turning inward in our weariness, we can turn outward and receive the unique kind of refreshment that only comes through giving.

3 Principles in Living for the Glory of God

The Westminster Shorter Catechism, in the very first lines, answers the question of the meaning of human life like this:

“Man’s chief end is to glory God and enjoy Him forever.”

The Hebrew word for glory is kavod, and it literally means “heavy.” So when we glorify someone or something, we give it weight. Recognition. Importance. Honor. And this is what life is all about. Indeed, as human beings this is why we were created:

“I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’

    and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’

Bring my sons from afar

    and my daughters from the ends of the earth—

everyone who is called by my name,

    whom I created for my glory,

    whom I formed and made” (Is. 43:6-7). 

We were created for God’s glory, and our lives are meant to be spent glorifying Him. In fact, you might argue that at least one of the roots of all sin is a failure to do just that. We fail to recognize, or give weight, to God and instead give weight to other things. We prize creation or relationships or money or ourselves – and in so doing, we are failing to live up to the very reason why we were created. 

But even if we know the reason we are here, and even if we desire to glorify God, that leaves us with another question: Just how do we do that? And here is where Paul helps us with the answer in his letter to the Corinthian church. 

Now a little context will help us here. Among the many issues in the Corinthian church was an issue over meat. Corinth was a pagan city, and as such, meat was regularly sacrificed to idols. That meat was available in the marketplace and was also often served on the tables of the Corinthians. The question at hand for these new Christians was whether or not they should eat meat that had been used for this purpose. 

In response, Paul let the Corinthians know that there was a larger issue at play here than whether or not they should eat the meat. As Christians, the Corinthians should be more concerned about their fellow Christians – if eating the meat causes one of their brothers to stumble, then they should joyfully abstain. This is the context of 1 Corinthians 10:31:

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

That leads us to three very simple principles when it comes to glorifying God in our own lives:

Principle 1: Some things can’t be done for the glory of God.

The issue in Corinth was about eating or not eating certain kinds of meat. It was not, for example, about robbing banks. Paul would not have said, “So whether you steal or not, do it all for the glory of God,” and the reason is simple – you can’t rob a bank for the glory of God.

Neither can you lie. Or cheat. Or commit adultery. Or any number of other things. So as simple as it sounds, the first principle for us is to recognize that not everything can be done to the glory of God.

Principle 2: Many things can be done for the glory of God. 

What was Paul saying in this verse? To paraphrase, you can eat the meat. Or you can not eat the meat. But whatever you do, just do it to the glory of God. The Corinthians had a great deal of freedom, as do we, about the things we do. But whatever we choose to do with our time and resources, let’s make sure we do it for God’s glory. 

Now most of these choices we make are about ordinary, everyday things. Things like eating and drinking. But the principle is that even in the most common areas of life we can do things to the glory of God. Which leads to the third principle…

Principle 3: Nothing (from our perspective) is accidentally done for the glory of God.

In these things we do, we can make the choice about the manner and means in which we do them. While it’s true that god will eventually receive glory even in those areas of life and the world in which no one is consciously aware of Him, in our own lives, we aren’t going to accidentally do something for God’s glory.

We have to choose to do so. We have to be conscious of God as the Creator and Owner of all things. We have to operate in a spirit of humility and gratitude. We have to move through life with great integrity and honesty always aware of the posture in which we are operating. 

When we do that, we are doing even the most common things to the glory of God.

2 Kinds of Pride that Crush Biblical Community

Galatians 6 is a beautiful picture of biblical community, even when it’s difficult. To refresh your memory, the church in the Galatian region was splintered. Some time after Paul had brought the gospel to the region, false teachers had followed in his footsteps, proclaiming an “almost-but-not-quite” version of the gospel message. The message of these false teachers which history knows as the Judaizers was a works + Jesus = salvation kind of thing – a mutated version of the purity of grace and faith.

And some, if not many, of the Galatian converts had abandoned the true gospel in favor of this false teaching. There was, no doubt, a significant rift in the church, and not the kind that happens when one group doesn’t like the color of the carpet or those new fangled guitars in the worship room. This division had teeth. And Paul knew that part of correcting the theology of the church meant reconnecting these errant brothers and sisters with the community of faith. So when he comes to chapter 6, after a truly angry rebuke through the rest of the book, he means to put the pieces back together. So he writes:

“Brothers, if someone is caught in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual should restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so you also won’t be tempted. Carry one another’s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone considers himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Galatians 6:1-2).

There are so many characteristics in these two short verses that paint the picture of true biblical community. There is forgiveness and gentleness; there is a genuine concern and responsibility for one another’s spiritual growth; there is the core of pushing one another toward godliness through loving accountability; there is an intentional effort toward honesty with the intent of restoration. But there is also beneath the surface a warning. We see here one of the main characteristics that would keep the Galatians, and us, from truly experiencing life in the community of faith like we are meant to:

Pride.

There are two kinds of pride that will absolutely crush biblical community:

1. I’m too good for this.

In order for the healing in this community to take place, Paul says that they must be willing to bear one another’s burdens. The etymology of the word “burden” in verse 2 implies a heavy weight or stone that someone has to carry for a long time. It refers to something so ridiculously large and cumbersome that it is absurd to think that someone could carry it alone. In Paul’s mind, the church should be a company of burden-bearers, shouldering the difficult weight of sin, restoration, pain, and grief together. But there is a kind of pride that prevents this from happening.

The faithful Galatians, the ones who stayed true to the gospel message, might very well have looked at their fallen brothers and sisters down the bridges of their noses. They might have smirked as they slunk back into their fellowship greeting them with an “I told you so” kind of attitude. Similarly, there are those people among us who, frankly, we think are beneath us. That we have attained some kind of spiritual level or financial level or social level that makes us too good to actually get underneath their boulder with them. If we think of ourselves as being too good to help lift the burden of another we will never, ever, ever truly be in biblical community with others. But there is a second type of pride that is equally as dangerous, though much more sanitized:

2. I’m too good for this.

That’s not a typo. See, there is the pride that says I’m too good to help someone else lift, but then there’s also the pride that says I’m too good to let someone else help me. This is the kind of pride that keeps us closed off, secretive, and silent. It’s the kind of pride bolstered by unspoken prayer requests and answers of “fine” when inquires are made. The truly sneaky part of this kind of pride is that it’s so easy to pass off as spirituality. Sure enough, we are willing to help everyone else carry their burdens but no one will ever get close enough to us to even know what we are carrying, much less lift a finger to help.

Whether we refuse to carry another’s burdens or whether we refuse to have ours born, the root is the same: I’m too good for this.

So long as we do not have a truly accurate picture of ourselves, as Paul says we must, then biblical community will be crushed under the weight of individual burdens.

Instead of Doubting God, Try Doubting Your Doubts

Jeremiah had every reason to doubt God. He had seen the Babylonians sack the city of God, Jerusalem, in 586 BC. The temple of God was destroyed along with the city. The people were either killed or sent into exile. The Book of Lamentations, which Jeremiah wrote in the aftermath, is a book of brief about the circumstances of God’s people.

Now to be sure, the devastation had not come out of nowhere. For centuries, God had been warning His people to turn from their idolatry. Prophet after prophet had urged the people to repent, and yet time after time the idolatry continued. Until God allowed it to continue no more.

So judgment came, and it came down hard. The markers of God’s blessing were gone – the people had no land. No temple. Nothing they had trusted in as the evidence of God’s favor. And surely they were left with many doubts:

Who are we now, as a people?Is God still with us?Can we ever come back from this?What is going to happen?

Now it’s very likely you’ve never been in a situation just like this, but perhaps you can relate to the doubts. All of us can, because when things just don’t turn out the way we think they should, when life seems overwhelming, one of the things we are most prone to do is to start to doubt. And to doubt God.

Where is God in this situation?What is He doing?Does He love me?Did I get it all wrong?

And to make matters worse, it seems like the more we dwell on our circumstances the stronger the doubts become. We get inside the echo chamber of our own heads, and the questions and fear and anxiety gets louder and louder.

But Jeremiah shows us a different way. When he looked at the devastation around him and was tempted to doubt God, he instead chose to doubt his doubts.

After two and a half chapters of lament, of acknowledging the very real human suffering all around him, Jeremiah turns a corner:

I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him” (Jer. 3:19-24).

Among other things from these verses, notice first of all that Jeremiah did not deny the reality of what was happening to him. The suffering was real. The pain was actual. He remembered it all.

Yet…

Yet he also realized that he was the loudest voice in his own mind. And he had a choice about what he would doubt. He could doubt the goodness and love and wisdom of the Lord, or he could doubt his own doubts. He chose the latter, and in choosing the latter, he took an active role in his own mind and heart. He spoke to himself and refocused his attention.

Friends, there may be all kinds of reasons for you to doubt today. But perhaps you might consider the object of your doubt. Instead of doubting the Lord and His trustworthiness, perhaps it’s your own doubt that cannot be trusted. After all – who has a better track record? The Lord or our own selves?

Don’t Short-Circuit Spiritual Understanding

We live in a world of access. With just a few keystrokes, you can virtually tour the Pyramids of Giza, search through the wisdom of Socrates, and find out who was responsible for the murder on the Orient Express. You can also know what the current weather forecast is in Ireland or discover the various theories concerning black holes. We have access to all this information and more.

And what’s the result? Many things, but at least this – our level of knowledge (or at least potential knowledge) far surpasses any generation before us. Put simply, we know more things about more things. But do we understand those things?

That’s not so simple. Because knowledge and understanding are two very different things. Knowledge deals in the realm of what is, but understanding goes beyond that. It answers the question of not only what is, but why the things are the way that they are. Here is where we fall short. Or at least shorter than on knowledge.

It’s instructive, then, to see how Paul prayed for the Christians at Colossae:

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives… (Col. 1:9). 

Here, too, we see a slight difference between knowledge and understanding. Paul wasn’t content for the Colossians to just have the knowledge of God’s will; he didn’t want them to only know what that will is. He wanted something deeper for them. Not just knowledge, but understanding. He wanted them to know God through the power of the Holy Spirit, and therefore not just know what God wanted for them, but deeply understand what God wanted for them.

But here, too, we shouldn’t stop short. Because today, we have access to all kinds of spiritual information. In the same way we can find the ending to any book or the topography of any landscape on earth, we can also find all kinds of spiritual facts and figures. And those are good things. Knowing fact, for example, help us to rightly interpret what God’s will is for as it is revealed in Scripture. It’s through knowing the context of the writer, the recipients, and the culture that we can then know what God’s Word actually means – because it can’t mean now what it didn’t’ mean then.

Those are knowledge kinds of things. And knowledge kinds of things lead to understanding kinds of things. But there is still another step to go which we see if we finish Paul’s thought:

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light (Col. 1:9-12).

Knowledge is good. Even better when that knowledge leads to understanding. But still incomplete unless that understanding leads to action. That’s the end game – it’s not just knowing what is, and it’s not even knowing why things are the way they are. It is that we then put those things into practice. Or, as Paul said, “so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way.”

So don’t short-circuit spiritual understanding. Don’t make the mistake of learning for knowledge’s sake. Put the knowledge to work.

3 Reasons for Christians to Pursue Unity

Let me take you to the night before Jesus’s death. He knew the cross was coming all too well. He had finished His last meal with His friends. He had washed their feet, setting them an example for how to serve others. He had watched His betrayer leave that meal and initiate the events that would culminate in His crucifixion. And then He was praying with great fervency because of what would happen next. It was only hours before the arrest. The sham trial. The pain. We find that prayer recorded for us in John 17. Here are a few verses of it:

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:20-23).

Unity. That’s what Jesus prayed for in these verses. Now fast forward to today when it seems like there are many words that describe Christians other than “unified.” So with so many opinions and issues that divide us, why should Christians care about unity? Here are three reasons:

1. Because it’s important to Jesus.

“Jesus is Lord.” That is the basic confession that all followers of Jesus have in common. But if Jesus is Lord, it means He is our Master. That means we adjust everything about ourselves around Him.
We want what He wants.
We do what He requires.
We oppose what He opposes.

And in this case, what Jesus wants is for us to be unified. When you think about all the things Jesus might have prayed for at this pivotal moment, it’s humbling to consider that we were on His mind, because we are “those who believe in me through their message.” And what does He want from us? Many things, to be sure, but one of those things is our unity. So the first and most basic reason we should care about and pursue unity is because it’s important to Jesus.

2. Because of what it testifies.

Not only is our unity important to Jesus, it also makes a statement to a watching world. Specifically, our unity is a testimony “that the world may know you have sent me.” To put it another way, Christian unity is an apologetic for the identity of Jesus.

In the first century, the gospel was going to be preached far and wide to Jews and Gentiles alike. And those are two very distinct groups of people – different backgrounds, different customs, different opinions – and yet the same message of reconciliation with God through Jesus. And yet we see in the New Testament these two groups, who had no love loss for one another, coming together. What is powerful enough to overcome those differences? Only the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So today, when we pursue unity, we make a statement about the power of what unites us. In so doing, we give weight to the claim that Jesus Christ really actually truly is the one and only Son of God.

3. Because of what it does in us.

If we zoom out to the rest of Jesus’ prayer, we find that unity isn’t the only thing He prayed for:

“Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17).

Jesus also prayed that we would be sanctified; that is, made holy. These two things actually work together in our lives because unity isn’t easy. It comes at a cost.

If we want to be unified, it will require sacrifice. We will have to lay down our personal preferences, opinions, and comfort for the sake of that unity. Now to be sure, it doesn’t cost us our commitment to the truth. We should never lay down what we know to be true as revealed in God’s Word, but there are many, many other things that we need to give up for the sake of unity. When we pursue unity with others under the banner of God’s truth, God is sanctifying us by helping us not cling so tightly to our own opinions.

So Christian, you will no doubt pursue many things with your day today. Perhaps one of them should be unity with other believers. Do it because it matters to Jesus. Do it for the sake of our testimony. And do it for the sake of your own soul.

The Bible Speaks in Categories… and That’s Good News

We tend to think about a lot of things on a continuum. Take food, for example.

Let’s say you want to drop a few pounds, so you resolve to start eating more salads. The problem is that you don’t particularly like salads. The idea of lettuce, kale, cucumbers, and some tomatoes for flavor just isn’t very appetizing. On the other hand, the idea of lettuce, ham, bacon, and Ranch dressing is much more palatable. So in your effort to eat more healthy, you opt for the second version of a salad.

Now is that healthy?

Well, it’s certainly more healthy than what you might have chosen. It’s more healthy than a cheeseburger, for example. But then again, it’s not as healthy as it could be if you took all the, um, accoutrements, off of it.

See? It’s a continuum between more healthy and less healthy.

But the Bible doesn’t think that way. Rather than a continuum, the Bible tends to speak in categories. There is light, and there is dark. There is good, and there is evil. There is sin, and there is righteousness. No degrees. No grey area. Just categories. And here’s another set of categories that we find in the book of Luke:

Lost and found.

One of the summary verses in the book of Luke is found at the tail end of the story of Zaccheus, the wee little tax collector who climbed a sycamore tree because he wanted to see Jesus. He did see Him, but more importantly, Jesus saw Zaccheus. And their encounter forced a radical life change. Here’s how the story closes:

But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, I’ll give half of my possessions to the poor, Lord. And if I have extorted anything from anyone, I’ll pay back four times as much.”

“Today salvation has come to this house,” Jesus told him, “because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:8-10).

This statement in verse 10 describes the identity and mission of Jesus. This is who He is – the Seeker – and what He came to do – seek and save the lost. We also find that same emphasis a few chapters earlier in Luke 15. In that chapter, Jesus told three stories about things that were lost and the subsequent celebration that happened when they were found.

The lost coin. The lost sheep. The lost son. All three objects were lost, and all three were found.

Notice again that there is no continuum. None of these objects were “sorta lost.” None of them were “almost found.” They were one way or the other. And that’s true of all humanity. Every human being is in of these two categories – we are either lost in our own sin, separated from God and without true purpose and direction and life, or we are found by Him. And in being found, we have been brought into God’s family with great celebration.

Now why is that good news?

Well, it’s good news if you know and love someone that is in the lost category. And all of us do. Someone we pray for. Someone we ask the Lord to reach. Someone we stay up late at night worrying over. Now our inclination is to assign degrees to that person’s lostness.

If, for example, that person is a child who is being raised in the faith, we might think of them as “nearly found.” And if that person is someone who has outrightly rejected the truth of Christianity, we might think of them as “really lost.” But once again, the Bible doesn’t think in those categories. A person is lost not by degrees, but by totality. On the surface, that might seem like bad news. It might mean the person we think of as “nearly found” just needs a little shove over the edge in faith. But in the Bible’s thinking, that person is just as lost as someone who has intentionally and with great hostility rejected the gospel.

But the opposite is true. The lost don’t find themselves, but Jesus is the great Seeker. And He is not intimidated by the perceived level of someone’s lostness. The only way the “nearly found” person gets found is the same way the “really lost” person gets found. It is by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.

To put it another way, the “really lost” person is just as close to being found as the “nearly found” person. And they are all within the searching of Jesus. So keep praying friends. Be encouraged. Jesus is the great Seeker, and He is still seeking and saving the lost no matter how “lost” we might perceive them to be.

For the Good News to Be Good, the Bad News Must Be Bad

If you go to your refrigerator right now, chances are you will find at least one bottle of something that has two important words on it. The words are “Shake well.” Have you ever tried to use whatever that thing is without shaking it well? What comes out is a watered down, liquidy version of the real thing. But when you shake it well, you stir up all the things that have the tendency to settle down at the bottom.

When it comes to our sin, we all have the tendency to let it settle down at the bottom of our hearts. It becomes like a layer of sediment down there. And sometimes, if left alone, it actually starts to harden at the base of our hearts. Perhaps one of the reasons why the gospel ceases to be such good news is because our hearts haven’t been shaken up in a while. Maybe the reason the good news doesn’t seem all that good is because we’ve forgotten how bad the bad news really is.

So how do you get your heart shaken up? How do you remember just how bad the bad news really is?

This is one of the reasons why it’s important for us to read the law of the Old Testament. Sometimes, as Christians, we have the mistaken notion that the New Testament is really the only part of the Bible that should matter to us. It is, after all, the part of the Bible that deals with the cross and resurrection of Jesus and the implications that has for us. Other than some interesting historical background, why even look back to the old part at all?

Lots of reasons actually, but at least one of them is to stir our hearts. That’s one of the reasons we have the law in the first place.

This is the same sort of question Paul was answering in Galatians 3. In that book, Paul was countering a group of false teachers claiming that salvation was not by grace alone through faith alone, but instead also included any number of works we do to make ourselves right with God. But if salvation only comes through grace, then why do we have the law?

The answer Paul gives in Galatians 3:19 is this: The law was given for the sake of transgressions. Now what might that mean?

Perhaps as a parent you’ve been in a situation when one of your kids does something that is clearly wrong. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that your child spraypaints stripes on the dog. Then they hide the spraypaint and do their best to wash it off. When you see the dog, you confront them about it, and with all the seriousness he can muster, he responds like this:

“You never said I couldn’t spraypaint the dog.”

When one of your children says something like that, and you think to yourself, I didn’t think I HAD to say such a thing. So the question is, was it wrong? It absolutely was. He knew in his heart if was wrong; that’s why he tried to clean up after himself.

Yes, it was wrong, but it wasn’t yet explicitly articulated as being wrong. This is why the law was given because of transgressions. It does not mean there wasn’t sin prior to the law – it does mean that once the law was given, that same sin is documented. It is explicitly stated. And consequently, there is no loophole, no claim on not understanding, no lack of clarity. It is by the law we are proven to be sinners. Sin is inescapable.

And this, then, is how the law and the grace of the gospel work together. The law forces us to our knees. It removes any delusions of self-righteousness. It stirs up the sediment of sin that so easily settles in the base of our hearts. And then we see how good the good news is again and again. We turn to Jesus with renewed awe and gratitude.

God’s Discipline is Not Only Reactive… It’s Proactive

If you’ve been a parent for more than about five minutes, you know that parenting is about discipline. It’s about seeing what your child is doing and then correcting them in a hopefully constructive fashion. But as a parent you probably also know how difficult it is to do that.

It’s hard to discipline your kids in the right way, with the right measure, and in the right spirit. So hard, in fact, that all of us fall short time and time again. We are too harsh or too lenient; we are too early or too late; we have too hard or soft a tone with our words. We mess it up no matter how many times we do it… and yet we do it.

Why?

Because we love our children.

So it is with God. We should expect the discipline of the Lord because He is our Father. And because we are His children. In fact, God’s discipline is one of the evidences we have for His enduring love for us:

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their Father? If you are not disciplined – and everyone undergoes discipline – then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all (Heb. 12:7-8).

We can be grateful for God’s discipline not only because it reminds us that we are His children whom He loves, but also because He also has none of the mistakes in discipline that we do as parents. He does it just right, all the time. Now sometimes God disciplines us reactively. This is the sort of discipline we are most familiar with as parents – we exercise discipline when we need to correct the behavior of our children. So also does God. He sees us in sin, or walking down the wrong path, or acting unwisely, and like any good father would, He steps in and disciplines us.

Leviticus 26 is a chapter in which the Lord set expectations for His people. He promised, in His covenant, that if they were faithful to obey Him, then they would see the fruits of that obedience in all kinds of ways. But He also level set their expectations for what would happen to them if they were disobedient:

“But if after these things you will not obey me, I will proceed to discipline you seven times for your sins. I will break down your strong pride. I will make your sky like iron and your land like bronze, and your strength will be used up for nothing. Your land will not yield its produce, and the trees of the land will not bear their fruit” (Lev. 26:18-20).

But here is where we come to another difference between the Lord’s discipline and what we exercise as parents – the Lord does not only discipline us reactively; He disciplines us proactively. This is more in line with the Hebrews passage above. These believers weren’t undergoing difficulty because of something they had done; in fact, it was likely the opposite reason. They were experiencing persecution and difficulty because of their faith.

But they, too, had a choice – they could take the difficulty they were undergoing as evidence of God’s absence or disapproval, or they could endure it and see it as discipline. That through these circumstances, God was shaping something in them. He was developing their character. Their perseverance. Their resolve. Their faith. This is the proactive discipline of God.

Perhaps we can have the same perspective, because surely we will also encounter all kinds of difficulties. And when we do, we can also change our perspective. We can see that God is not doing something to us; He is doing something in us. Because He loves us.