The "If" bomb

 "He brought me into a broad place; He rescued me; He delighted in me".                        Psalm 18:19.

I wonder how often you have entered a church and heard the minister or the opening hymn tell you in a clear, unambiguous fashion that "Grace Rules".

To put that in a perhaps more familiar phrasing from the Apostle Paul - 

"It is for freedom that Christ has made you free. Stand firm, then, in that freedom, and do not let anyone place you again under a weight of bondage" (Galatians 5:1).

The freedom the Gospel brings is our liberation from the powers of sin and death - forces which wish to take from us the very life which God breathed into us, face to face, in giving Adam breath, but the 'bondage' that so concerned Paul here was what came after that deliverance - slavery that had arisen in the church by the forceful imposition of various rules and requirements, which, if you refused to honour and obey, would mean you were judged as unrighteous - socially and spiritually rebuke-able because you had, in effect, denied what was required in addition to Grace.

In my years in the 'renewal' realm of the church, this was encountered in all sorts of ways - you had to speak in tongues to prove you were saved, you had to submit to the "rhema" word of those deemed 'Apostles' or elders on everything - from who should lead the church to whether you should or shouldn't marry someone - because if you didn't, you were outside of the 'covering' of God's anointing, and therefore under discipline until you repented. What fascinated me was when I later joined a Pentecostal church, they didn't require any of this - the key thing to them was enjoying their faith in Jesus and sharing that joy.

At the start of his letter to the Galatians, Paul is clear about what's gone wrong. Originally, these people had known the beauty and latitude that God's grace had given them in life to be people who could use their new faith well, but it wasn't long before those who had despised such freedom sought to restrain them with all manner of 'necessary' rules, taking them away from what was genuinely good.

Religion will always seek to feed upon "your" virtue, wholeness, sanctity and the like - to establish worth in what we, in and of ourselves say and do, rather than turn us away from such silly peripherals to the sweet and ever-abundant goodness of Gods grace (that He is for us - that is why Christ came). This is because it is something which feeds itself upon our compliance and thereby makes us believe we are "good" because of such behaviour, but true freedom, true righteousness have nothing to do with this. The real totality of righteousness is found solely in Jesus Christ, and Him crucified (see Galatians 3:1).

Legalism cannot see the good in Christ making gallons of excellent wine for friends at a wedding. It cannot but agree with those chastising the disciples for indulgently picking heads of corn on the sabbath. It joins in chorus with Judas when the precious ointment, which could have fed the poor, is broken out and used to fragrance the head of Jesus, and it is horrified when a 'fallen' woman is found kissing and washing the Lord's feet.

All of these examples point us to EXACTLY the manner of sweetness and beauty that grace breaks open in the Christian - warmth, joy, genuine repentance and affection, delight in the good things of life - these are the bitter enemies of religious bondage.

So, what do we find in our churches?

Do we imbibe freedom as we step into a realm of fellow-believers, or are we met with a barrage of "if's"...

"If you want to be here with us, then you must"....

or

"If you want to belong to our fellowship, then you have to"....

Jesus says something somewhat different -

"Come to you me, all who are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest".

He GIVES freedom and life. Grace reigns.

Christianity isn't, ever, about seeking to please or gain the approval of men.

It is about sharing the amazing love of God.

That's why we need this in our churches, every week, and why we need to be given the room, the freedom, that God Himself bestows - hence, Paul's crucial words in Galatians 5.

Church is essentially the house of grace, where the family of saved sinners can come and be included amidst, as one Puritan put it, 'their prayer and play'.

In the current circumstances, we need to examine carefully what signals we're sending in respect to what fills the religious vacuum of 2020. Are we expressing some manner of virtue justification - a self or moral rightness - in our manner of showing Christianity, or  are we evidenced as those, as Robert Capon noted, who are 'intoxicated on the rare vintage of God's exuberant mercy'?

We live in a moment defined principally by strict rules and requirements, even perhaps to the point in some cases of requiring a rendering to Caesar what is actually Gods.

The lost need to see that God is wholly about something gloriously good, and this, as Paul notes in Galatians, can be evidenced when those who are truly free can express this in the way they genuinely serve each other. Humility, patience and gentleness ( the fruits of grace - Ephesians 4:2) only spring from liberty bestowed through grace - that is why Paul can end his exhortation by speaking of how standing in Christ makes us those who bear another's troubles (6:2).

The days ahead are clearly going to be arduous, so let's stand where the Apostle teaches us we must to truly express the richness of God's astounding grace.