Fear OR “Faith working through love”

Yesterday was not the day I planned to have–but there were many blessings anyway.

One of them was our reading to prepare for small group. As our pastor preaches through Galatians, our small groups are reading and discussing Tim Keller’s commentary–and it is profound. Convicting? Yes! But comforting, too. Not condemning–well, as long as I keep praying for the grace to look at the Cross and not fixate on myself. (Because whenever I get stuck focusing on my sins and immaturities and lack of faith? I despair!)

Toward the end of the reading, there was a list comparing the “two fundamentally different ways to live” — either as “sons” or “slaves” (Galatians 4:4-5, 7). One is full of fear (slave) and the other is full of faith working through love.

I related to (and cringed at! and rejoiced in!) many of the other comparisons too:

– Slaves view faith as an effort to love God and believe without doubting so he will accept you. Children view faith as a discipline of remembering and living as an accepted child of God.

– Slaves are driven, self-critical, and bound by unrealistic goals tied to obeying God and moral codes out of compulsion and a fear of rejection. Children obey out of joy in their Father and out of gratitude for the certainty of his love. (“How can I live so ungratefully to one who will never reject me?”)

– Slaves hide. Slaves use gossip, blame-shifting, anger, and defensiveness as strategies to hide their inner and outer failings from themselves and other people. Children are open and transparent. Children are free from having to put up a front; they are able to appreciate people who are different and hurting.

– Slaves live lives of isolation. Slaves feel that no one understands, that no one cares. Slaves are not willing to trust (or else they swing too far in the other direction and put an intense, idolatrous trust in a person (or organization) who inevitably disappoints and lets them down. Children enjoy a growing circle of friends with whom they are neither too independent or over-dependent. Children do not wallow in self-absorbed self-pity.

Eek! And that’s just a FEW of the points from the reading. I could go on and on.

But instead, I will end with this excerpt:

“On the one hand, without a knowledge of our extreme sin and idolatry, the payment of Christ on the cross seems trivial, and the message of it does not electrify or transform.

On the other hand, without a knowledge of our complete acceptance and adoption through Christ, the message of our sin would so crush us that we would deny or repress it. But the more you know of his infallible fatherly love, the more you are able to realistically face yourself, your flaws and faults. The more you see your sin, the more precious and valuable you find his saving love and grace.”

Praying that we would all know God’s infallible fatherly love this day and every day.

Yours,
Tara B.