Root Causes

SCRIPTURE: Prov. 4-6; Rom. 8

Romans 8:1-4
With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

 The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

OBSERVATIONS: Change the heart, not the action. Change the culture, which impacts the systems, which impact the behaviors, which changes the events of our lives one by one.

APPLICATION: Joey, if you want to serve me, serve the community around you. If you want to get closer to my heart, look into the matters that are at the heart of my being. People. Even the ones you don’t like–especially the ones you don’t like, who don’t ‘deserve’ your time.

PRAYER: Thank  you, God, for entering the disordered mess of struggling humanity — me. Forgive me when I put more emphasis on Law than Grace. Grace trumps. I get it. Help me to live it. Through Christ, Amen.