My reading took me into Psalm 119 this morning, and verse 156 spawned reflection:
"Great is your mercy, O Lord; give me life according to your rules."
Yes, thankfully God is full of mercy (which is new every morninga), but He is also a God of rules. Jesus was "filled with grace and truth."
It's too easy to claim God's mercy and grace while ignoring His rules and truth.
And it is hard to balance! Alas, the only way to learn balance is to lose it, but I need to guard myself and ask the Spirit to help me be Biblically-balanced lest I slide into licentiousness or legalism...
Comment with any insights you have into this ongoing exercise of keeping balance!
4 comments:
Temperance (balance) is the grand struggle of my life.
We don’t need to find the balance between Law and grace. Law and grace aren’t on opposing sides of a scale; on the contrary, they work together in harmony. We are saved by grace, but without the law we wouldn’t be aware that we needed saving. The line between obeying the Law and legalism is so fine and blurred that we often mistake one for the other. We have to be careful not to avoid the law in an attempt to avoid legalism.
Hannah, perhaps YOU don't have to find the balance, but I do. I concur they work together, and,yeah, we are saved by grace with the purpose/product of bringing forth good works. The tension of law/grace is, in my experience, perpetual; and of course the focus has to be on the revealed law as opposed to the "laws" made up by man (i.e. rock music, facial hair, any version but King Jimmy, raising hands, etc)
I agree that it can be a struggle to find balance. What I have found is that as impossible it was to keep Gods law when I was lost is as much an impossible task even as a christian if the Holy Spirit is not the one who does the work. The work must be done from within. Legalism says that the work must be done by me while grace says that the work must be done by Christ.
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