I've been talking a lot about changes in my life since I began to truly understand grace. Another area I'd like to mention is reading the Word. Yes, in a general sense, grace has changed my attitude towards Bible reading (which I may or may not revisit in another post). More specifically, though, it's changed the way I read certain books. It's like I got a new prescription and suddenly things that were fuzzy or distorted are clear now. (Although maybe I shouldn't use that illustration, since I've never worn glasses...)
The Gospels - I'd always identified primarily with the disciples. When Jesus addressed them, I sort of saw myself sitting among them and listening. I was a follower of Jesus, too, wasn't I? But a few years ago I also found myself identifying with another group of people: the Pharisees. We like to paint them as proud hypocrites, and of course they were. But they also represented the religious establishment of the day. They represented orthodoxy. They were do-things-by-the-book people. With that in mind, it was unsettling to notice that Jesus reserved His most scathing rebukes for them. After all, I had been living well within the bounds of orthodoxy. I was a do-it-by-the-book kind of person. His rebukes were directed at people like me - people who kept the rules, made up their own rules to keep them from breaking the real rules, and all the while thought they were worshipping God when in reality they were worshipping...rules (and their supposed ability to keep them). That realization shook me up in a big way.
Romans - I vividly remember the first time I read through it after what I call "my grace awakening". Romans talks so much about Christ's righteousness being given to us, and to me it was always such a theological, theoretical kind of thing. Yes, it was real, and yes, I believed it - as a transaction that occurred when I became a child of God. As a sort of ticket. God handed it to me when I was saved, and then before I stepped through Heaven's door, I'd hand it back. "Here, God. It's because of Christ's righteousness that I can come in." What I'd never, ever seen before was that His righteousness wasn't just for salvation ("salvation" being thought of as a particular point in time), it was actually for every. single. day. For life. It was totally a light bulb moment. "You mean, Christ's righteousness is a present reality in my life at this very instant, as I'm sitting here in my pajamas and drinking coffee? It makes a difference right now?" I don't know that I can adequately express just how good that good news was to me.
Galatians - I can still remember my mom quoting the beginning of chapter 3 when I was a little girl. "Oh foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? ...Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?" I used to laugh a little, because foolish and bewitched were funny words, and because duh, Galatians! You couldn't save yourselves to begin with, so how in the world did you think you could keep yourselves saved?! But it wasn't funny when, years down the road, I saw myself reflected perfectly in those verses. I'd tossed the gift of God's grace on a dusty shelf and begun to work to stay in good standing with Him (I would have called it "trying to grow in my relationship with Him"). I'd received the Holy Spirit, but I'd waved Him to the side while I tried to figure this whole walking with God thing out by myself. Foolish? Bewitched? I hung my head. Yes. But then there was the lighthouse-beam of 5:1. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Don't go back to the old bondage! Freedom! It's what Christ had made me for. What He had died for. What He longed for me to live in.
Hebrews - This was one of the key books that helped me understand grace. The entire premise is the shadow (a system of externals) vs. the reality (Christ and a real relationship with Him). I had complete access to the reality, didn't I? Why in the world would I then choose to live in the shadows? Why would I cling to the externals when they weren't just nice little things that had no effect, but were actually getting in the way of the reality? After I began to understand that, I was encouraged by another major theme of Hebrews. Yes, there is freedom in grace, but the old structure of externals was familiar and (at times) relatively comfortable. Grace by comparison seemed bewildering and risky. So I could relate to the First Century readers of the book, who, having left Judaism to follow Christ, found themselves looking back over their shoulders. Was this really it? Was there no elaborate process necessary to approach God? Was there no need for all those rules to keep me in check? Was I getting totally off track with all this grace stuff? Like them, I needed the encouragement, the reminders to hold fast to the grace I'd been given.
How about you? Do you have any new reading glasses stories?
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