Grace and the Law

Well, good morning, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving to you. Good morning. Good morning. Good to see you.

This is our first year ever staying and not traveling for Thanksgiving. And I think it's

habit forming. I think that we're here. We will never travel again. So somebody call my parents

and tell me, tell them the bad news. I hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving. To be totally

honest, for me, Thanksgiving is the start of a season that's always kind of hard. I don't know

why. I'm just one of these people that gets depressed around this time of year, even with

friends and family. I think that it's a hard time of year. I think it's a mixed bag for a lot of people.

It's a time of relationship focus, hopefully, spending time with friends and family. But if

I could be totally honest, I think that's part of the reason it's hard. You know, you're focusing on

trying to be with and to love people in your family, people who are your friends, and that could be kind

of a mixed bag. You know, in my family, I have people who are family members. I've known them my

whole life, and yet politically, they're completely on the opposite end of the spectrum from me. And

when they talk, I feel like there's no common ground. And it's hard to have a relationship

with people like that, even family members. You know, and then I have friends who are making

choices that I don't agree with, and it's frustrating. And it's hard when you see people

doing things that you wish they wouldn't do, that you feel like are damaging. And so it's a mixed bag

because I feel like I want to focus on loving people, and yet people are hard to love. And I find

myself thinking, you know, I would be a lot more loving if you were just a better person.

You know? By which I mean more like me. If you were more like me, I would be a much more loving

person toward you. And of course, that's not a realistic solution. But the Bible offers a better

solution for how to think about relationships, how to build relationships, what it takes to have a good,

loving relationship with people who are very different from us. We're looking at the book of

Galatians. And Galatians, you may not realize it, but it's a book all about relationships.

It's about what it means to build a good, healthy relationship with God and with other people.

And Galatia, as some of you may know, the region where this letter was originally intended to go,

Galatia was a very diverse place. You had religious and political and racial and ethnic diversity

in a major way. And so lots of division as a result. And so this letter is all about what it

takes to build relationships with God and a very diverse array of people who are sharing the same

community. So what we're going to do is we're going to look at Galatians chapter 3. And we're going to

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

start in verse 15. And John a moment ago read all the way through verse 29. I wanted to get the

overview for you so that you can see the whole passage because it's really beautiful. But we're

not going to get through the whole passage today. We're going to get through verse 22 about. And then

what we're going to do is beginning next week, we're going to take a break for the season of Advent

and Christmas. And then we're going to come back, I promise, to pick up where we left off in the

new year. So this is the last sermon on Galatians for a few weeks. But what we're going to do is

look at verses 15 to 22. And we're going to look first at what it says. I got to do a little unpacking

for you. And once we're on the same page with what it says, then we'll talk about what it means

for relationships with God and one another. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. And as we

pray every week, we know that we are here not simply because we belong to this church or we

like to attend this church or because we're a friend who was invited or a family member who's

in town. Lord, we know that we're actually here by divine appointment, that somehow in your sovereignty,

you decided that we would be here in this time, in this place, to look at these words. And so we pray

that you would do your work through these words. I need it. We all need it. So Lord, we ask that in

the name of your son, Jesus Christ, the living word. Amen. So let's look at what this says. And to get

into what it says, I want to give you an image to think about as we get into this text together.

Imagine that you're building a house. Some of you have built a house or you've renovated a house.

But imagine that you're building a house. And imagine that you have to choose your building

material. And imagine that you have a choice between two options. Building material number one

for your house is material that's cheap. It is plentiful. It is abundant. You can find it everywhere.

And so it's the cost efficient way to go. And yet the problem is it's very brittle and it's a very low

quality. And if you build a house out of this cheap, plentiful material, the house is going to

be crooked. It's going to be unstable. And the slightest gust of wind is going to knock it down.

Or you can choose to build your house out of a very rare and precious and costly material.

The problem is that material is probably going to cost everything that you have. And yet it will last

through anything. The house that comes out of that material will weather any storm. It will never

let you down. This is kind of like what's going on in Galatians. Galatians says that it's the same

when we're building relationships. Right? So we're not building a house. We're building relationships.

But Galatians essentially says when you are building your relationship, your friendships,

your marriage, your church community, you have essentially two materials you can build those

relationships out of. Up until Paul came, the Galatians had only been using one of these materials,

which we might call the way of the law. Relationships with God and other people were built on the law

and all of the assumptions that come with the law. And as a result of that, the relationships,

relationships were very brittle and fragile and society was deeply divided and these relationships

easily crumbled. And people who had built their relationship with God on the law, on law keeping,

never knew where they stood with God. The relationship was always in question. And so Paul comes to Galatia

and he says the law was never meant to be a building material for relationships. You were never meant to base

your relationship with God or anyone on the law. And he says you were always meant to build these

relationships on grace, which is a very costly, very precious, and very rare material. And yet when you

build a relationship on grace, it lasts forever. And Paul says God always intended this to be the way

we build relationships with him and other people. And now Jesus Christ has made this possible in a way

that it was never possible before. So the core disagreement when we get into this letter is

this. What is the relationship between law and grace? Are law and grace fundamentally opposed?

Opposite ways to build relationships? Or are they part of the same thing? Is there some way in which

law and grace work together? That's the question. So let's get into this. Are law and grace

diametrically opposed or not? As I think Paul says in verse 21, is the law opposed to the promises of God?

And here's what Paul says. Here's how he answers it. And this gets fairly technical. So what I want to do

is just sort of summarize in my own words what Paul says here. But Paul uses the analogy of a will,

like a legal will. So imagine that you and your spouse sit down and you make out a will. Last will

and testament. And imagine you say, you know what? If the worst happens and we pass away,

we're going to leave everything to our oldest son. That's going to be the way. That's the way it was

in the ancient Near East, right? So everything, worst happens and we die, our oldest son gets everything.

You write that will, you sign it, it's done. And imagine a few years later the worst happens and God forbid,

you pass away. And then imagine the lawyer sits down with your oldest son and gets out your will

and says, well, according to this will, now that your parents have passed away, the full inheritance

is yours. And then imagine the lawyer sets down the will and says, but only if you graduate with

honors and you get a good job and you get a good spouse and you prove that you can be a respectable

member of society, then you'll get the inheritance. Now Paul says, does the lawyer have the right to do that?

Absolutely not, right? Because once that will has been ratified, once that covenant has been ratified,

you can't add to it. You can't edit it. You can't amend it. The lawyer does not have the right to do that.

Your will says, my son gets everything. No ifs, ands, or buts, no contingencies.

And so Paul says something similar has happened with God and his people.

That long ago, God essentially made his will known. He comes to Abraham and he says,

I'm going to make you a promise and I'm going to bless you and I'm going to bless all of your family

and I'm going to make you into a great nation and I'm going to give you land and I'm going to give you honor

and then eventually

an offspring is going to be born. A seed.

Not offspring, plural.

Paul clarifies, one single individual is going to be born

and God is going to pass his full inheritance to that individual.

He's going to get everything.

He's going to get all the power, all the blessing, all the authority, all the privilege.

It's all going to go to him.

And of course, Paul says, this is Jesus Christ.

And then God says, and through him, everybody's going to be blessed.

In other words, anybody who comes to Jesus,

Jesus is going to share the inheritance with those people.

If you come to Jesus in faith and repentance, Jesus says, take your share of the inheritance.

It was promised to you long ago and now because you are in me,

it belongs to you as well.

So this is the promise.

This is the last will and testament, so to speak, that God gives to Abraham.

And so Paul says, if this is the case,

then why after another 430 years does God then give the law?

And the question is, is this like the lawyer sitting down and adding things to the will?

Right?

Is God changing and revising his will?

Is he going back on his word?

Is he second guessing his promise that he made to Abraham?

And Paul says, absolutely not.

Certainly not.

So then this begs the question, what is the point of the law?

If God said, I promise to bless you and your descendants, that's it.

Then why was the law ever added?

What role does it serve?

And this is the question that this passage answers.

Because verse 19 says this, the law was added because of transgressions.

In other words, the law was added to expose and reveal sin.

To expose and reveal sin.

So imagine that somebody comes to your house.

I don't know what your house looks like after Thanksgiving.

Our house kind of looked like a bomb went off.

But it always kind of looks like that.

But especially it looked like that this time.

And so imagine that somebody comes to your house, it's post-Thanksgiving meal.

And they say, we're going to clean your house and we're going to disinfect it for free.

Right?

That would be amazing.

Right?

But imagine that it's not post-Thanksgiving.

It's not like a bomb has gone off.

And it's your house.

Those of you who are clean people.

And imagine it's your house in its normal state.

Right?

And you look around at your house and you say, well, yeah, there are a few dirty dishes.

And they're, you know, but I don't really think we need a professional intervention here.

I think we're going to be fine.

Right?

Well, then what happens if you hold up a UV light?

Right?

I mean, at least in our house.

I don't know about your house.

You're not going to want to come over after this sermon.

But if you hold up a UV light, what?

You're going to think, you think your problem is just you had a few dirty dishes in the sink.

But you hold up that UV light and you start to realize, oh my gosh, there are all kinds of stains.

And all kinds of filth that are now glowing that I couldn't see with my eye.

And now I see them.

Right?

And Paul says that's the function of the law.

The law is like the UV light that reveals things that we couldn't see before.

Our house is a lot dirtier than we think.

Right?

Or imagine somebody comes to you and says, I'm going to give you all of the treatment, all of the surgery, everything you need to save your life.

And you say, well, thanks, but I feel fine.

And then imagine that person holds up an MRI scan and you see the tumor.

Right?

And you realize, oh, I'm not fine.

That's the law.

The law is the MRI scan that shows you the reality of what's going on in here.

Right?

So Paul says the law was given for the sake of transgressions, because of transgressions.

And so his point is this.

The law is not opposed to grace.

It's not law or grace.

The entire purpose of the law is to convince us of our desperate need for grace.

We need grace.

So, you know, legalists will use the law as a way to prove themselves righteous.

But Paul says, no, the law isn't a way to prove that you're righteous.

The law is here to prove that we're sinners.

It's here to prove that we're unrighteous.

It's here to prove that we need grace.

There's a writer named John Shore.

You may be familiar with him.

I don't agree with a lot of what he says.

But he wrote a post a few years ago that I saved because I thought it was really interesting.

Because it was about his Christian conversion.

And I think it's noteworthy because it illustrates what we're talking about here today.

It's an article, if you want to look it up, called,

I, a rabid anti-Christian, very suddenly convert.

He wrote it in the Huffington Post.

But he's a guy, he describes himself, John Shore was not religious.

He was actually pretty anti-religious.

He thought Christianity was immature and manipulative.

And for people of low intelligence, he had kind of bought into the prevailing religion of the age.

You know, he said, I believed in myself.

I loved myself.

And when necessary, I forgave myself.

It's essentially like every Disney movie ever.

And that was essentially his view.

And then one day, one day he's just sitting at work.

And he says he's sitting there and he's kind of mulling over, as he says,

a particularly immature, semi-destructive thing I'd done.

And he's mulling this over and feeling some regret.

And all of a sudden, he begins to feel this strange feeling come over him.

And he doesn't know what's going on.

But he senses that there's something spiritual or psychological happening to him.

And he immediately feels the need to stand up and to get somewhere private.

But in his kind of, you know, open floor plan workspace,

the only privacy he can find is the broom closet.

So he literally stands up, tells his co-workers he'll be right back,

runs to the broom closet, opens the door, and just shuts the door,

and just stands in the broom closet.

And he says that he stood there kind of waiting,

having this sense that something was going to happen.

So he's standing in the broom closet by himself.

And here's what he says.

All at once, the truth was before me that instead of being a good guy

who's basically always trying to do the right thing,

I was a selfish, emotional weakling

who was always doing and saying whatever best served my own needs at the time.

And he goes on to say this.

What suddenly became a fact to me

was that I'd been fooling myself for so long I'd forgotten the act.

I wasn't the great, honorable person I started out to be,

that I'd meant to become, that I actually thought I was.

And here's the key.

I was just another guy so busy thinking he's constructing the perfect home

that he doesn't realize how long ago he stopped using a level.

He essentially realizes that he's been deceiving himself.

And the level, the level that shows you whether your house is straight or crooked,

the level that is your gauge of whether or not you are in fact the great,

amazing person you think you are,

that level is the law.

That's the function of the law, right?

It's the great level of life.

It shows us just how crooked we have become.

And so Shore sort of realizes

that everything he thought was upright is actually crooked

and falling apart in his life.

And he's been deceiving himself.

And so he sees this crushing truth.

And then beyond that he says,

and that wasn't the worst part,

he says the worst part is I realized I was never going to change.

That I was never going to have the force of will

and the strength of character to ever be any different.

And then he says,

and then I saw my own death.

He says,

I realized that the day was going to come

and I was going to die

and I was going to be the exact same person that I am right now

and I was never going to be any different

or any better than I am right now.

And it says that this realization hits him and he starts to cry.

So imagine this man,

this kind of secular humanist,

anti-religious person,

standing in a broom closet by himself weeping.

You know, right?

That's an amazing moment for anybody, right?

And then he says this,

he starts crying

and then he says he hears a voice

and the voice says,

isn't this what Jesus is for?

Isn't this what Jesus is for?

And here's what he says,

and just like that I stopped crying.

And do you know what I knew at that moment?

What instantly imprinted itself upon me?

That the story of Jesus is historically true.

That it happened.

That God desiring above all else

to show the people he'd created

that he loved them,

became a human

and came to earth

and sacrificed himself

and in every way

did everything he possibly could

to show people exactly

how deeply and terribly

he loves them.

So it wasn't that he was historically convinced

of the truth of Jesus

and then tried to figure out

how that was relevant to him.

What happened to him

is that he saw the truth about his own heart.

He saw the truth about his own condition.

And at that point,

the only thing that made sense,

the only way he could possibly make sense of that

was to look to Jesus.

And everything began to fall into place.

And what we see in this story

is the very purpose of the law at work.

It's this level that comes in,

this plumb line that comes in,

this MRI scan,

this UV light that comes in

that brings us to that place

where we realize,

isn't this what Jesus is for?

That's the entire purpose.

So this is what Paul is saying.

That's the relationship between the law

and the grace of Jesus Christ.

That's right.

The law is meant to show us

that we need the grace.

So now I want to bring this back

to our original question.

How does it look different

when we build relationships

with God and one another

based on the law,

my ability to do the right thing,

to be a morally upright person,

versus on grace?

This idea that from the start,

we are the undeserving recipients

of tremendous blessing.

What does that look like

when it plays out in our relationships?

So first,

let's just talk about

our relationship with God.

What does it look like

to build your relationship with God

on your own excellence?

Which I think is human nature, right?

We assume that most people

are pretty good people,

and when you ask me about me,

I assume that I'm probably

on at least the top 50%

of most people.

Maybe top 20%.

Maybe on a good day,

you know,

when I'm like volunteering

in the holidays,

maybe like top 10%,

you know?

And relative to most people,

I'm a pretty good person, right?

And so if God is gonna decide

between good people

and bad people,

I'm probably gonna be

one of the good guys.

I'm not a murderer, right?

I'm not a serial killer.

So I'm probably

one of the good guys.

And yet we realize

that if we try to build

our relationship with God

on law keeping,

and that's the foundation,

you know what's gonna happen

to your faith?

Your faith,

your sense of your relationship

with God

is either going to be

associated with guilt

and discouragement

because you're never gonna feel

like you're doing enough,

or it's gonna be associated

with a kind of mild sense

of superiority.

You know,

and there are people like this

in the church

with kind of a vague sense

of superiority,

you know?

Your prayer life

is gonna be primarily

about getting God

to do his part.

You know,

I've done my part for you, God.

I've been involved at church.

I've volunteered.

I've done these things.

And now I expect you

to uphold your end of the bargain.

That's a law-based relationship

with God.

You're gonna assume

most of the time

you're gonna assume

that God is kind of

disappointed in you.

We talk about this

a lot in the church

because it's very common

for people to feel

that God is disappointed in them.

I have this vague sense

that I should probably

be doing more than I am.

You know,

in church

when a preacher brings up

praying,

your first thought is,

oh,

I should be praying more.

You know?

And there's this vague sense

that I'm never quite doing enough.

This nagging sense

of spiritual inadequacy.

That's a good diagnostic indicator

that your relationship

with God

is connected

to your own

moral excellence.

There's a very different

kind of relationship

that happens

when we base

our relationship

with God

on grace.

And this is what

Christians do.

Christians build

their relationship

on the grace of God.

God.

Which means,

going back to what we said,

you see

the blessing

and the presence

of God

in your life

as your inheritance.

I mean,

that's an amazing idea,

right?

That before you were ever born,

way back in ancient history,

God came to a man

that we can only imagine,

this guy named Abraham,

and said,

I'm going to leave

an inheritance

with you.

I'm going to pass

this inheritance

down through your family line.

And eventually

this inheritance

is going to be given

to Jesus.

And eventually

everyone who comes

to Jesus

is going to share

in that inheritance.

And when God said that,

he had you in mind.

That when you came

to Jesus,

you had an inheritance

waiting for you.

And you didn't do anything

to earn it.

You weren't even alive.

But God said,

it's yours.

And when you come,

you can have it.

That's it.

That's the promise.

And when you realize

my relationship with God

is based on that,

on God's promise

to me

through all of these people

I don't know.

Through all of this history

that I'm only learning about.

When you realize that,

it sort of fills you

with this sense of gratitude

and surprise

and joy.

Your faith becomes

this place of freedom

and joy.

When you realize

that it's a gift,

you begin to pray to God,

not because you want

to get something from God,

but just to spend time

with God,

to be closer to God.

You're going to assume

that God's love

and delight is yours.

And that's going to motivate you

to want to become

more the person

that God is turning you into.

Because you're going to know.

His love and approval

is not up for debate.

So this is the difference

that grace can make, right?

So churches can be built

on the law

or on grace as well.

I don't know

if you've ever been

to a church

that was built squarely

on the law,

but there are plenty

of them around.

And you can tell,

and often churches

are not one or the other.

You know,

I've had conversations

in our church,

and I've had encounters

where I think,

wow,

there's a lot of law

going on here.

And I'll tell you

what I mean.

In church cultures

that are defined

by law rather than grace,

everybody seems

to have it together.

That's how you tell.

You walk into the room,

everybody looks good,

everybody's manicured,

you know,

they're as put together

as their online profile

would indicate.

You know,

everything is great.

And you ask them

how life is,

and how is it

having young kids,

and how's your first

year of marriage?

Oh, it's great.

Everything's great.

It's fine.

It's perfect, right?

And that's how

you begin to sense,

ah, this might be

a law culture, right?

Because people are

really good at hiding sin

in a law culture.

Because there's nothing

to do with,

you can't deal with

your sin in a law culture.

There's nothing

to do with it.

And so the best thing

that you can do

is hide it.

Right?

And along with that,

there tends to be

an over-focus

on certain visible sins.

Right?

So you'll over-focus

on sexual sin

because that's

a visible sin.

You know if people

walk in together,

they have their arms

around each other.

If they're living together,

they're sleeping together.

Right?

And so there's

an over-focus

on those sins,

but an under-focus

or altogether omission

of other kinds of sin,

like gossip,

or greed.

Right?

Things that actually

can be just as destructive

to a church community.

Right?

But there's

a selective focus

because there are

certain sins

that it's just easier

to hide.

And certain ways

that we can be

more demonstrative

of our righteousness.

This is what you see

in a law-based

church culture.

Right?

Also in a law-based

church culture,

people tend to

compartmentalize

their spiritual life.

Because man,

I just can't,

I can't uphold

this facade

all the time.

It's exhausting.

And so you sort of

have your church persona

and then you go to work

and you sort of like

let down the church persona

and you can just be

the other person.

Right?

You're compartmentalized.

In a law-based church culture,

there are clear insiders

and outsiders.

So a great indicator

of a law-based church culture

is cliques.

Lots of cliques.

Because there's a high focus

on external factors,

on appearance,

on markers of belonging,

on status.

And so there are

insiders and outsiders.

This is a great way to tell.

And churches that are built

around a culture

of gospel and grace

are completely

the opposite from this.

In a church like this,

people are free

and willing to share

their brokenness.

You know,

people,

you know,

if you've ever been

to an AA meeting

or any kind of recovery meeting,

most times,

the first time you go

into a meeting like that,

it'll blow your mind

because of how candid

and honest people are.

I mean,

it'll absolutely blow your mind

if you've never experienced it.

You should just go sometime,

find an open meeting.

Some of them are not open.

Some of them are open.

Go and just sit in the back row

and just listen to people.

You will be amazed

at the candid culture

that exists there.

It's because people

have no illusions

about their righteousness.

They have no illusions

about the power

that they have over sin

in their lives.

They are fully willing

to admit

their powerlessness

over sin.

And so they're candid.

Right?

And the same thing,

to some degree,

exists in a grace-based

church culture.

People are not sharing

gratuitously,

sharing to get attention,

but they are open

because they realize

that they're one sinner

in a community of sinners

and nobody has it together.

You know,

so you walk in

and you see all the pretty faces

and all the nice clothes

and you're not fooled by that.

You realize that these people

are a raging mess.

You know,

they just look good.

Right?

So,

so,

beyond that,

there's a deep desire

to deal with all sin,

not just certain visible sins.

And so,

paradoxically,

or maybe counterintuitively,

in a grace-based church culture,

people actually take sin

more seriously.

And they're more willing

to confront sin.

And it is not the person

who says,

I think that this is an area

of sin in your life.

I think that you need

to seek the Lord on that.

That's not a legalistic response

to sin.

I'll tell you what

a legalistic response is.

Legalism is the other person

who says,

I thought this was

a grace-based church.

Why are you focusing

on my sin?

I thought you guys

were all about grace.

You're being so judgmental.

Right?

You know why that's legalism?

Because what that person

is really saying is,

please leave me alone

to hide my sin.

That's the only thing

I know to do with it,

so just leave me alone

so I can hide it

and minimize it

because that's what

I want to do.

That's a legalist.

Right?

A grace-based person says,

we take sin seriously

and we take repentance seriously

because we realize

that every time

I'm confronted with sin,

that's another opportunity

to go to the throne of grace

and to drink deeply

from the well of mercy.

That's why I want

to know about my sin.

That's why I want

to be confronted

in my sin

so that I can draw

more deeply

from that well of mercy.

Right?

So grace-based churches

take sin very seriously

because we know

that repentance leads

to deeper life

and love in God.

In a grace-based church culture,

people decompartmentalize

their lives

because their new identity

in Christ

supersedes everything else.

And grace-filled communities

are radically inclusive

because every single person

in a grace-based community

knows that

they used to be an outsider.

And,

but for the grace of God,

they would still be an outsider.

But because Jesus

became an outsider,

because he was cast out,

we were welcomed in.

And so in a grace-based

church community,

there are very few,

if any, strangers.

Because the minute

you see somebody

walk in the door

that you don't know,

and the minute you realize

that they may feel left out

or excluded,

you will immediately

beeline over to that person

and say,

hey, how are you doing?

Welcome.

My name's Tommy.

I'm so glad that you're here.

Can I help you find a place to sit?

Why?

Because you don't want that person

to feel like an outsider

because you know what it's like.

And you know that

unless somebody showed you grace,

you would still be in that state.

So that's how

a grace-based community operates.

Now,

I know we're almost out of time

and if we had time,

we could apply this

and I encourage you to apply this

in your own life

to think about your friendships,

to think about your roommates,

to think about your family,

to think about what this looks like

in parenting,

to continue to ask these questions.

Am I parenting

with a framework of the law

or am I parenting

with a framework of grace?

Am I loving my friends?

Am I loving my spouse?

Right?

I'll just say this last thing.

When it comes to my marriage,

the only reason that Laura and I

have a healthy,

thriving marriage

is because of grace.

That's the only way it's possible.

Grace is the only reason

we can have healthy marriages

because most people,

I think,

you know,

after,

I don't know,

12 years of counseling couples,

I mean,

I can tell you,

most people

default unconsciously

into an approach to marriage

that's defined by law.

In other words,

you think of marriage

like a contract.

You know,

I'm going to agree

to meet your needs

in all these ways

and you agree

to meet my needs

and as long as we're both

happy and fulfilled,

then we'll stay married

but if all of a sudden

you stop upholding

your end of the bargain

or I just no longer feel

happy or fulfilled,

the marriage is nullified.

We go and find happiness

and fulfillment elsewhere.

Right?

And that's a very contractual

view of marriage

that's a very legal view

of marriage.

It's marriage defined

by the law.

But what we see in Scripture

is that true marriage,

true marriage is not a contract

but a covenant.

Right?

So that means committing

yourself wholly

to another person

no matter what.

And I'll tell you right now,

have you ever committed

yourself wholly

no matter what

to another person?

I mean,

even those of you

who are married,

do you actually think

about your marriage

in that way?

Because if you have,

you realize that immediately

what you're going to need

is grace.

It's grace!

Because immediately

you're going to realize

that that person

is going to hurt you

and let you down

and say and do mean things

and they're going to

act out toward you

in ways that you

didn't anticipate

and that's why

you need grace.

That's why you continually

need to forgive.

You continually need to repent.

You continually need to

restore the relationship.

This is grace.

And you know,

I constantly experience

the tension between law

and grace

in my own heart.

You know,

when Laura,

as this has happened

once or twice

in our marriage,

where Laura will come to me,

I think there was one time

a few years ago

where Laura came to me

and I had hurt her.

I had said something hurtful,

right?

And it was like

back in the early 2000s

that I had hurt her

and she confronted me

about this

and you know the first thing

I do in a situation

like that?

The first thing

that happens to me

is there's a law response

and by that I literally mean

it's like a lawyer,

a little lawyer

pops out on my shoulder

and this little lawyer

starts saying

all this crazy stuff.

You know,

the lawyer takes all the,

you know,

the lawyer starts

to justify me

and the lawyer starts

to, you know,

bring up all the evidence

of why it wasn't in fact

wrong for me to say

or do that.

In fact,

I was actually right

and the lawyer starts

to discredit the witness,

right?

It's a great lawyer tactic

is to discredit the witness,

right?

And the lawyer starts

to minimize it

and the lawyer starts to say,

well,

what about all the things

that you did?

What about all the ways

that you actually,

the reason that I said

that hurtful thing

was actually because of you.

I mean,

if you hadn't done this

then I wouldn't have done that,

right?

And the lawyer is brilliant.

The lawyer is brilliant

and I'm sort of hiding

behind the lawyer

like,

get her,

you know?

And then I hear

this little voice

and the voice says,

isn't this what Jesus is for?

And the lawyer goes away

and the defense has come down

and this little trickle

of empathy

starts to flow in my heart,

you know,

like a melting glacier

and this little stream

starts to flow

and I stop justifying myself

and I start to become

more open to the fact

that I might have sinned

and maybe I need to ask

for forgiveness.

And this happens again

and again and again

and I think maybe

this is the greatest litmus test

to know whether or not

we are people of grace,

whether or not we're Christians.

When somebody confronts you,

when somebody holds

your sin up into your face,

does the lawyer come out

and say,

hey,

I'll take it from here?

Or at some point,

do you hear a voice

in your heart

that asks you,

isn't this what Jesus is for?

Let's pray.

Let's pray.