July 17th, 21

For if you listen to the word (God’s word - Jesus) and don’t obey it, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror.  You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like.

I know what I have internalized for most of my life when I have read this passage.  

I have heard, if you read the Bible and hear about your sin and rebellion and unworthiness before a holy God, and then walk away and forget it, and go about living your life however you want, you are fooling yourself.  You’re just going about thinking yourself so good when really you are bad.

Maybe some of you can relate to that.  

Lately I’ve begun to ask myself, Where is the Good News in that?  Is that really the message God wants me to take away when I look at myself in light of his Word?  Isn’t that a lot like the system of required sacrifices and holy day observances required by the law in the Old Testament.  Maybe there’s something bigger here, something more beautiful and life-giving that I’ve been missing.

-James qualifies this by saying:

But if you look carefully into the perfect law [Jesus] that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.”

Paul, in Romans 13 tells us that:

“love is the fulfilling of the law.” Rm 13:10

And God’s love, seen in the life of Jesus, fulfilled it perfectly and completely.

That doesn’t mean the Bible is not important.

Paul tells us that it’s inspired by God and is useful for Instruction, conviction, and training  in right living.

So how do we look ‘carefully’ into the ‘perfect law’?

...in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son,    

-Heb 1:2

In other words, God’s Word is not a book of rules and instructions that we di-sect and  master.  Ultimately, God’s Word is a Person, Christ 

- and y[our] real life is hidden with Christ in God. - Col 3:3

If we walk away and forget that, THEN, we are fooling ourselves.  

James calls it ‘deceiving” ourselves or reasoning falsely, misreckoning or deluded”

We are striving, trying to get to Him, not living from our real life in Christ. 

Looking into a list of rules and regulations and comparing ourselves to that, might show us our need, but it does not set us free!  Jesus sets us free

It’s when we look into the face of Jesus  and discover that we are God’s beloved - a human being who is made in his image, loved and cherished, reconciled to God through him, that we start to experience freedom.  We begin to recognize our story of Origin, our place of beginning and ending, our True Home.  

This place of freedom in Christ is what we are to walk away and not forget!  Jesus really is humanity’s beautiful and life-giving Good News!!   

Are you looking into a mirror that is setting you free?  Or are you only seeing yourself and how you don’t measure up? 

Do you see the truth of who you really are?

-a child who is in Jesus, reconciled to God.  

Now live that out in all it’s many implications.

You are a masterpiece.  You are loved.

You are loved!