Tag: legalism

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Community Concerns Matter

Reading Time: 3 minutes

“So you may eat any meat that is sold in the marketplace without raising questions of conscience. For “the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” If someone who isn’t a believer asks you home for dinner, accept the invitation if you want to. Eat whatever is offered to you without raising questions of conscience. (But suppose someone tells you, “This meat was offered to an idol.” Don’t eat it, out of consideration for the conscience of the one who told you. It might not be a matter of conscience for you, but it is for the other person.) For why should my freedom be limited by what someone else thinks? If I can thank God for the food and enjoy it, why should I be condemned for eating it?”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭10‬:‭25‬-‭30‬ ‭NLT‬‬

The Apostle Paul, in writing to the wildly mixed cultural community of Corinth, spends quite a bit of time discussing social, ethical, moral and even spiritual concerns of others. Paul digs deep into the those who are strict adherents to the Old Testament Law as well as those who live in the freedom of Christ and the New Testament fulfillment of those laws. Jesus himself said, he did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.

This concern about the Law was a major contention among the Jewish congregations intermingled with their Gentile brothers and sisters. Corinth was certainly the perfect city to watch the gospel work in both a Jewish tradition as well as a heathen one! Paul boldly pushes the idea that freedom, because of the grace of Christ, does not mean it should be exercised when it offends the conscience of another believer. Paul uses the “meat offering,” as an example of this dilemma. We know today there are many areas that believers may be free to participate in, but not free to offend and hurt other believers in the process.

We see a number of community issues brought to light in the Corinthian letters. Paul even used an example of abusing the sacrament of Communion to highlight the importance of guarding each other in love. Yet, in vs 29, Paul asks a seemingly contradictory question. “Why should my freedom be limited by what someone else thinks?” Great question – great dilemma! Why prefer someone’s conscience, OR exercise your freedom? Isn’t it just a question of momentary sacrifice on behalf of another’s sensitivity? Is this more about Christian maturity than it is about flaunting freedoms? Yes & yes. Although we are truly free in this example, there are also many other situations where the principle applies.

Are we willing to limit out of love?
Are we willing to pause on pushing the point when it might actually harm someone else? – Paul says, “causing them to stumble.”

I have heard several arguments about rights and freedoms, but very few arguments about humbling themselves, submitting to the love of Christ on behalf of another. Which attitude, which position, honors both Christ and a brother or sister. In those moments it is not the time to lecture, trying to help a weaker soul understand the true depth of freedom they should have in Christ. It’s a time to pause and remember how it was when we were once the young believer trying to figure out our faith under real world circumstances.

Not everything has to be argued or positioned.

When Jesus was asked about punishing the woman caught in adultery, he did not take the opportunity to lecture the Pharisees about mercy, which they sorely lacked! He simply reminded everyone watching and waiting for him to choose sides, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone.” He put each one of them on the spot to risk playing the role of God who is both just and merciful. But they would have to do so by admitting they were perfect.

As much as I write about this, I am absolutely convinced that God wants us to take our theology, our knowledge and understanding of who God is and what God wants to do in our life, and practice it on each other. And, until we do – until we learn how to apply God’s work in us to the place where it goes out in others, we will just continue to struggle with the legalistic traps of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Prayer

Dad,
The hardest and the most beautiful parts of the gospel working in me is actually the gospel working through me. That’s where real change happens. That’s where real humility happens. That’s where discipleship makes the most sense. Even though I seriously value “my time,” along with my ways, I know that it also can stunt my growth in becoming like Jesus. Thank you for your grace and long suffering in getting me to look more like Christ.

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Ignore and substitute.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

For you ignore God’s law and substitute your own tradition. Mark‬ ‭7‬:‭8‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Do you ever find yourself amazed that Jesus cuts through the complicated minutiae of religion and clarifies truth? Ah, it’s so obvious after Jesus says it, yet so painful when he says it directly to you!

As we get older, it is completely normal to establish patterns and customs of the way we like to order our day and live our life. Habits and systems are ways to control the chaos that life can bring. Most religious rituals started out as earnestly simple with all intent of purity in our heart. It’s when they become rote, rigged and mindless routine that it becomes disconnected from relationship.

Earlier in this passage, the religious leaders saw that Jesus’ disciples were eating with defiled, dirty hands. It’s important to note, it’s not that they saw filthy hands and stood aghast that anyone would eat like that. No, it’s what they did NOT see that bothered them.

They did not see the disciples do the typical ritual cleansing before eating anything or using anything that would touch their mouths. The ritual cleansing was this idea that any item that came in contact with the body had to be “washed,” but the Pharisees used an odd word for cleaning their utensils, cups, and dishes. They used the Greek word, “baptizó,” to dip or sink. This wasn’t a health code, it was a religious addendum to an Old Testament purification exercise.

Following the “letter of the Law,” and missing its intent was a favorite pastime of the Pharisees. The Law of Moses did prohibit contact with many things known to be unclean; and if any one had touched them they were seen as “unclean.” This cleansing was a health code, but had a hidden spiritual code to it as well. The command was given to the people so that a person would not approach the temple until they had cleansed themselves by the washing, prescribed in the Law. The spiritual object lesson was that by means of these ceremonial and bodily washings the Jews might be awakened to the necessity of spiritual cleansing when they came before a Holy God.

The Pharisees elevated and twisted the command to be purely an outward act of looking more holy by exceeding the simplicity of cleanliness to a legalistic practice for show! They even insulted their parents and God himself by adhering to and misquoting Ezekiel 20:18, “Do not follow the statutes of your parents or keep their laws or defile yourselves with their idols.” They made the simple spiritual lesson of “washing,” or preparing your heart to meet with God into an arrogant act of faking righteousness!

Now, as we often might do, we look at the religious practices of the Pharisees and say, yeah, “boo on organized religion,” or “deconstruct everything and cancel all the religious rules.” We would be missing Mark’s point of writing this story. Jesus was angry that God was misrepresented! And God’s Law was twisted and tweaked for human gain. Jesus said, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’ For you ignore God’s law and substitute your own tradition.”

We have the fulfillment of all the Law of God in and through Jesus himself. We complicate God and do similar as the Pharisees – even today. We have to stop adding things to the gospel! We have to quit making it difficult for people to see Jesus in us. The only people that respected the Pharisees were other religious leaders! The normal folk, despised them and feared them.

Jesus summed up God’s law – love God, love people. Jesus summed up how we should treat people, “love them LIKE I have loved you!” How has Jesus loved us, accepted us, forgiven us multiple times over? How often has God been patient with us, merciful towards us? Do not ignore God’s law and substitute our ideas of holiness, righteousness or forgiveability and pass them off as godly!

Prayer

Wow! I love Your word. I love Jesus words that cut through my religiosity, my judgmental attitudes and competitive comparisons to others. But oh how it stings when I must make decisions based on truth rather than customs. Help me, Oh God, to live to represent you well! Amen.

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Picking your own perfection.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

One Sabbath day as Jesus was walking through some grainfields, his disciples began breaking off heads of grain to eat. But the Pharisees said to Jesus, “Look, why are they breaking the law by harvesting grain on the Sabbath?” Jesus said to them, “Haven’t you ever read in the Scriptures what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He went into the house of God (during the days when Abiathar was high priest) and broke the law by eating the sacred loaves of bread that only the priests are allowed to eat. He also gave some to his companions.” Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath!” ‭‭Mark‬ ‭2‬:‭23‬-‭28‬ ‭NLT‬‬

It would be interesting to have a list of the stories where Jesus tangled with the Pharisees and religious leaders specifically over breaking the Old Testament Laws of God.

Way back before God gave Israel the Ten Commandments, God instructed Moses to appoint 70 elders. God told Moses, these guys were specifically given to “bear the burden of the people,” you know, the needs, questions and constant complaints that people bring to leaders. And, God promised to take some of the Spirit on Moses and give it to these elders, kind of a Spirit-share program (‭‭Numbers‬ ‭11‬:‭16‬-‭17‬). Fast forward all the way to the New Testament, where we find those 70 elders then made up what was called the Sanhedrin. I’m not sure the promised “Spirit-shared” part came with this group throughout history. Combine this with the fact that after Israel returned from Captivity, the spiritual leadership (elders and priests) had seriously fallen apart because of years of idolatry, abuse of kingly appointed power and a general deterioration of true spiritual living. Even the Prophets would cease to exist.

Through Ezra the Scribe, a school for scribes was established. This from Chabad.org, “Ezra was born in Babylon, like many of the other great leaders, patriots and sages which the Jewish community in exile had produced. By profession he was a scribe; he used to write scrolls of the Torah, which he knew so well. Ezra was also a priest, a member of the priestly family of Aaron.” The construct of these socio-spiritual-political leaders would form the basis of the New Testament leadership that had many confrontational episodes with Jesus.

But policing the law would be more difficult than anyone would imagine. The “law” had exponentially expanded well beyond anyone’s capacity to keep it. It went from 10 Laws to 613 rules concerning the details of how to behave towards God and others. The 613 are basically rules on what to do when things go right, but also when they go wrong – 248 Positive Commandments (do’s) and 365 Negative Commandments (do not’s). But wait, there’s MORE! To make sure they followed every possible exception to the rules, they ended up with thousands of rules to legislate the original rules. There are even hundreds of “fence laws,” called “Eruv,” all dictating how to “legally” break the Sabbath!

Suffice it to say, managing these rules upon rules took up a lot of time and resources. The sad part is that by the time of Jesus, these rules had become so complicated they clouded the original intent of God’s plan. The average person just gave up trying to figure out how to please God. In fact, there was no real way to keep all the laws, therefore, no one could make God happy!

Because Jesus had a growing number of people talking about him and following him when he and his disciples came into town, the religious police/leaders felt it was their duty to confront him on his not-so-orthodox approach to their interpretation of the law. They had people watching and waiting for him, so the religious authorities could catch him in the act.

Of course there were plenty of opportunities! The Sabbath was the lightning rod of sacred confrontations. The Sabbath would be the low-hanging fruit because it would take place weekly and it was very noticeable if individuals were not keeping the expansive interpretation of the original Exodus 20:8, “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” Modern orthodox Jews even consider switching on or off an electric light a violation of the Sabbath because it “kindles or extinguishes a fire.”

Jesus loved breaking the additional human traditions because it allowed him to speak to the nonsense of our constant, nonsensical need to add to God’s law, thus proving our holiness or worthiness. FYI, Jesus was technically NOT breaking the Sabbath law because there is a huge difference between “harvesting,” grain – ie: WORK and “picking” food for a snack.

I wonder how much “church hurt” has been caused by people extending and adding to God’s intent for good, healthy behaviors into something restrictive and legalistic? Just think about all the hat, hair, pants and tattoo conversations! As long as I have a solid list of “do’s and don’ts,” I can depend on them instead of the righteousness that can only come through believing and trusting in Christ’s perfection for me.

Prayer

Dad,
I don’t know how folks have time to observe or monitor everyone else’s “supposed” sins, when we have so many of our own! I can barely keep up with my own shortcomings and failures – let alone track someone else’s. Help us God! Help me to not just think more like Jesus, but behave like him towards others. I have no desire to be the religious police, shaking down other’s sins! Let your grace and mercy continue to push against my tendencies to judge others. And, thank you for your perfection when you see me through the righteousness of Jesus.