The Law never made anybody do legal things. The heart is what it is, and wants what it wants. The Law must somehow be written into human hearts, into our motives and passions and aspirations. We can be forced to obey the law, with the threat of legal action if we don’t. Yet, until the law is in our hearts we will fight it and resist it and maybe have disdain for it. We can keep the law so that our outer life seems to reflect it, but inwardly be fuming. At the same time, we might love the law, but know inwardly we are not living up to its standard. At the end of the day, law is a heart matter.
This is where faith comes in. God wants to get black words on white paper into our heart so that the safety and freedom provided by the law will be at work in us. Jesus is God’s Word to us here. The truth is, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (vs. 23). We all have a heart problem that black words on white paper can’t erase. We need a Savior; and we have One. We need an Advocate who can work the works of God into us so that the grace and mercy of God can find a home in us.
Jesus is the wonderful Savior of God. He comes to us all, Jew and Gentile alike, and wraps the arms of God around us, and hold us to the very heart of God. He does not write us off but includes us in, on the breathtaking and stunning love of God. God calls us to faith in Christ Jesus whereby we are called into abundant life.
In his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning writes, “My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.” Another thing Manning says is, “We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.”
Do you see the love and grace and mercy of God as Brennan Manning sees them? How would you describe God’s love and grace and mercy? In light of Romans 3:23, how would you put into words the overwhelming realization that instead of judging us beyond belief, God reaches out to us and calls home, into the place of forgiveness and justification, the place we can call home.
In our reading today, may God help us see His heart on all matters and be open to all the magnificent things He has for His people. Have you ever sung these words?
Love of Christ so freely given,
Grace of God beyond degree;
Mercy higher than the heavens,
Deeper than the deepest sea.
All that thrills my soul is Jesus;
He is more than life to me;
And the fairest of ten thousand,
In my blessed Lord I see
(Thoro Harris, 1931)
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