Law versus Grace
Have you ever tried to be more righteous than another person? Off to the races, you buckle down and make goodness and even holiness top priorities in your life. After all, if you look around, it is quite obvious that you are a far better person than most people you know; with a little focus, you can become an even better person.
A few years ago, I traveled a great deal to the Balkan area in southern Europe. During one of those trips, I will never forget standing in front of a Roman Catholic Church in Croatia. The person leading us through the aftermath of the war suddenly asked us to look down at the ground. He told us that just months before, the Serbian army had descended upon this particular town, killing everyone and everything in sight, and had buried the corpses of innocent humans and animals underneath the ground on which we stood - in front of this Catholic Church. Then he asked us to look at the cement pillars to the gates of the church; we were horrified to see the symbol of the Serbian Orthodox Church painted in red by the murderers on each pillar. The clear message was that the Serbian army had done these killings in the name of their religion.
At any moment, any one of us can find ourselves on that slippery slope toward human-centered righteousness. We become intoxicated with our own abilities and often proud of our religious beliefs, foolishly believing that our traditions have actually aided us in achieving our own self-imagined greatness. In other words, we have the audacity to drag God into our own mess and ask for his blessing on our ill-conceived plans.
What attracted me to the life of Jesus was his emphasis on how lost I am as a person devoid of my faith in him. Christianity is the only religion in the world which boldly proclaims that obedience or grit alone is not what it takes to please God and live harmoniously within the universe. According to the Gospels, no matter how hard we try, we will never be able to love God with all our hearts, minds, and souls, and our neighbors as ourselves, apart from faith in Jesus.
It is faith alone in Jesus, which mysteriously and beautifully imparts an undeserved grace in our lives that enables us to rise above our natural, self-centered nature to love and forgive others. When Jesus is not the center of our lives, everything flies apart, and eventually dies. As Jesus said, those who live by the law will die by the law. But those who live by faith in him will live forever.
The key to faith is that you must try it. You cannot fake it. You must really believe, or the whole thing doesn't work.
For the past seven years, my mission organization, Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, has supported an effort in Bosnia which has successfully been bringing together people of vastly different backgrounds - Bosnian Muslims, Croatian Catholics, and Serbian Orthodox into a common fellowship of people who have elected to make Jesus their Lord and Savior. People who formerly hated each other are now worshipping and serving one another in the grace of our Lord in a small church setting in the city of Mostar. They cannot believe the difference faith has played in their lives. They can see that religious trappings alone, and human-centered attempts at pleasing God through religious law, led them nowhere. In fact it led them to hatred, fear and jealousy.
The hard part about life is that it is not easy to surrender voluntarily. Often, we wait until disaster strikes before we see our need to come before the Lord humbly asking for help and forgiveness; before we can see how feeble our efforts have been to be "right" and loving by virtue of our own abilities. That is why it is so important to take time in prayer, and to be with trusted friends in faith, in order to be quiet and honest with ourselves and God. Most of us know in our hearts that God has been speaking to us all along, telling us how much we need him and how lost and captive we are to sin without him. But, we are afraid to embrace this message because we are scared of change. We like to hold onto what is familiar even if it leads to discord in our souls.
Oh, Lord, help us in our mess. Please rescue us because we cannot rescue ourselves. Have mercy on us. By grace alone, we are yours. And, help us to keep dreaming and working toward that day when the whole world will acknowledge and hunger for the grace you have provided for us in your son, Jesus.
Rev. Daniel McNerney
Have you ever tried to be more righteous than another person? Off to the races, you buckle down and make goodness and even holiness top priorities in your life. After all, if you look around, it is quite obvious that you are a far better person than most people you know; with a little focus, you can become an even better person.
A few years ago, I traveled a great deal to the Balkan area in southern Europe. During one of those trips, I will never forget standing in front of a Roman Catholic Church in Croatia. The person leading us through the aftermath of the war suddenly asked us to look down at the ground. He told us that just months before, the Serbian army had descended upon this particular town, killing everyone and everything in sight, and had buried the corpses of innocent humans and animals underneath the ground on which we stood - in front of this Catholic Church. Then he asked us to look at the cement pillars to the gates of the church; we were horrified to see the symbol of the Serbian Orthodox Church painted in red by the murderers on each pillar. The clear message was that the Serbian army had done these killings in the name of their religion.
At any moment, any one of us can find ourselves on that slippery slope toward human-centered righteousness. We become intoxicated with our own abilities and often proud of our religious beliefs, foolishly believing that our traditions have actually aided us in achieving our own self-imagined greatness. In other words, we have the audacity to drag God into our own mess and ask for his blessing on our ill-conceived plans.
What attracted me to the life of Jesus was his emphasis on how lost I am as a person devoid of my faith in him. Christianity is the only religion in the world which boldly proclaims that obedience or grit alone is not what it takes to please God and live harmoniously within the universe. According to the Gospels, no matter how hard we try, we will never be able to love God with all our hearts, minds, and souls, and our neighbors as ourselves, apart from faith in Jesus.
It is faith alone in Jesus, which mysteriously and beautifully imparts an undeserved grace in our lives that enables us to rise above our natural, self-centered nature to love and forgive others. When Jesus is not the center of our lives, everything flies apart, and eventually dies. As Jesus said, those who live by the law will die by the law. But those who live by faith in him will live forever.
The key to faith is that you must try it. You cannot fake it. You must really believe, or the whole thing doesn't work.
For the past seven years, my mission organization, Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, has supported an effort in Bosnia which has successfully been bringing together people of vastly different backgrounds - Bosnian Muslims, Croatian Catholics, and Serbian Orthodox into a common fellowship of people who have elected to make Jesus their Lord and Savior. People who formerly hated each other are now worshipping and serving one another in the grace of our Lord in a small church setting in the city of Mostar. They cannot believe the difference faith has played in their lives. They can see that religious trappings alone, and human-centered attempts at pleasing God through religious law, led them nowhere. In fact it led them to hatred, fear and jealousy.
The hard part about life is that it is not easy to surrender voluntarily. Often, we wait until disaster strikes before we see our need to come before the Lord humbly asking for help and forgiveness; before we can see how feeble our efforts have been to be "right" and loving by virtue of our own abilities. That is why it is so important to take time in prayer, and to be with trusted friends in faith, in order to be quiet and honest with ourselves and God. Most of us know in our hearts that God has been speaking to us all along, telling us how much we need him and how lost and captive we are to sin without him. But, we are afraid to embrace this message because we are scared of change. We like to hold onto what is familiar even if it leads to discord in our souls.
Oh, Lord, help us in our mess. Please rescue us because we cannot rescue ourselves. Have mercy on us. By grace alone, we are yours. And, help us to keep dreaming and working toward that day when the whole world will acknowledge and hunger for the grace you have provided for us in your son, Jesus.
Rev. Daniel McNerney
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