he who has eyes...

“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” [Romans 6:11]

I’ve been reading Joshua 1:6-9 a lot lately. I gave my first ever sermon during a VLI mentoring session on this passage. It was when I was just quitting grad school and starting my new job. I was basically standing on the banks of the Jordan River, knowing what God was calling me into (the Promised Land, or in my case a life in ministry, namely church planting/pastoring), but uncertain of anything else that was in front of me. Weren’t there giants ahead? Isn’t it flood season? How am I supposed to cross this water and conquer this land again?

And God continues to say “be strong and courageous.” I love that.

Moreso, in my most recent post I talked about how Christians tend to identify people by their sin, and how I think this is sin. People are alcoholics, homosexuals, liars, sinners. And yet, while they were still sinners, Christ died for them. It seems that we always think of God as this angry Disciplinarian who gives us these strict laws that we could never live up to just so we’d have to be punished. You always hear about this “angry” Old Testament God who is quite different from the “loving” New Testament God.

But, here in this passage (and now that I’m aware of it, pretty well everywhere in the Old Testament that God commands people to follow His Law), we see that there is a purpose for following God’s Law. It’s not just so God can punish us.

Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. [Joshua 1:7-8] (emphasis added)

You see, God gives us the Law for our own good. We as children under this discipline see it much like a teenager who longs for freedom — “your rules are so unfair!” But, in reality, our loving Father knows so much more of what is good for us that He gives us the Law so that we might be successful, so that we might prosper. It’s not to punish us at all. We just need to trust that God knows best what’s good for our lives and obey and follow Him.

In Romans 7, Paul gets right at the heart of what the Law was introduced for: to give knowledge to the hearer/reader of the sin to which they were held. This is such a difficult passage to understand. The Law is good. But, because of the Law, I become aware of the sin filling me and therefore am put to death. That’s good?

“For before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law” [Romans 5:13]. So, before God told us what was sin, we weren’t accountable for it. But, now we are? Again… that’s good?

To this, Paul says: “But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.” [Romans 7:13]

Ok, that’s clear… And don’t even get me started on the next passage (Romans 7:14-20). This may be the hardest passage to read in the whole Bible. Not that the content is the most difficult to grasp, necessarily; but it’s actually difficult to read, literally (har har).

Turns out, Paul is smart. The book of Romans is still considered to this day to be one of the best works of rhetorical argument ever written, not just in the Christian genre but in the entire canon of literature. That’s pretty solid. But, being so smart makes him hard to understand. Peter mentions this in 2 Peter 3:15-16.

Regardless of the difficulty in reading Paul, we see that God says the Law is good — He tells Joshua to obey it so that he might prosper, so that he might be successful. In short, the Law is designed to point out that which kills us (sin) so that we might avoid it and be free from it, thus giving us life.

God doesn’t see us as horrible people that do awful things that bring Him utter shame. No, He’s sees us as children who have chosen a different way in life (that of sin) that has been and continues to be a bad decision.

He wants to free us of those things that kill us because He loves us! He wants us to no longer be slaves of sin, but to be slaves of righteousness [Romans 6], not so that we can put on a holier-than-thou persona or so that we can be better people, but because sin damages us and He doesn’t want to see us hurt.

I love that about God.