Higher Than Law

Ron Block is a musician with Alison Krauss and Union Station. He wrote the following about how grace is higher than law:

". . . in the Matt 5-7 passages . . . Jesus sets a higher standard than had ever been seen. The Pharisees were good at outer righteousness, but who could stand against this idea of having an inner righteousness even in our thought life? Who could live up to this standard?

"The answer is 'No one.' Of course, many try. But all fail. And some of the worst failures are believers.

"And then we come across Romans 7, and other passages where Paul says things like 'Christ is the end of the Law to everyone that believes.' 'You are become dead to the Law through the body of Christ . . .' and 'Sin shall not have power over you, for you are not under the Law but under grace.'

"Many believers ignore these passages, or at best put a great big BUT to append their own interpretation onto Paul. Instead, as we mature, we are to put Paul together with Jesus, Romans with Exodus, etc. In order to do so we have to continually be able to let go of 'what I think about this' and see what the synthesis of Jesus’ or Moses’ thought and Paul’s thought does in our hearts.

"Jesus preached that if we hate someone in our heart, or sexually desire someone, we are sinning--breaking God’s Law. And at the same time Paul says we are dead to the Law. What most people do is put Law and Grace together--we’re saved by grace, and now we try to keep God’s Law because we’re grateful for what Jesus did.

"But Paul had no tolerance for mixing grace and Law--it’s all based on grace, whether initial salvation, or the daily walk, it’s all based on God sending His Son, first to die for us, and for us to die in Him, and then for us to live in Him, and for Him to live in us.

"That resident Power in us is the reason we are no longer under the Law, under 'Do this and don’t do that and you’ll be holy.' We’re already holy in Christ, and all we need to do is rely on His power in us. In that reliance we rise, as George MacDonald said, to a region which is higher than Law, because it made the Law. That region is God’s power within us, God living in and through these human cups.

"It’s a life beyond 'trying to be good' and 'trying to keep the Law,' becoming a life of simple, resting, trusting reliance on Christ inside us as our love, our peace, our patience, our purity--or as the O.T. [Old Testament] says it, 'The LORD our righteousness.' 'Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,' as though it all depends on us, and then 'for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good pleasure . . .' showing where the real Power to be and do resides.

"To clarify, we need a Scripture framework. Memorization, study, devotional reading. But our understanding of Scripture must be malleable, changeable, according to the new insights we gain through study. The Scripture framework--the unchangeable Word of God--is built up in our minds. That’s good. But hanging onto 'what my pastor said' or 'my notes from 1983' about Scripture--that’s what I’m talking about. The hanging on. Pride. 'I know what this means.' That’s the 'theological superstructure' I’m talking about. We’ve got to have the humility to know we don’t have all the answers--and neither does Calvin, Luther, or any other extra-biblical writer. They can be wrong as well--and are, at times. It doesn’t mean we don’t read them, or can’t learn from them. That’s part of humility.

"Because we’re studying transcribed eternal realities, which can only be illuminated by the power of the Holy Spirit, we’ve got to maintain the childlike attitude of the Bereans, and be willing to let go where necessary.

"Apollos, in Acts, had 'the way of God' explained to him 'more perfectly.' That means he had to let go of some of his old thinking.

"For me, in the mid 1990s, that meant nearly the whole theological 'what-I-know-about-Reality' superstructure had to come tumbling down. I still retained, of course, a total respect for the Bible as God’s Word, Christ as the Son of God, the Trinity, and every other foundational aspect. But in that crashing down, the whole, practical 'how do I live the Christian life' question has been turned on its ear forever.

"If God’s reality is often backwards from the world’s thinking, then we are going to experience reversals in our thinking as we get deeper and deeper into the written Word and the living Word. As we 'renew our minds' (or 'renovate our thinking') by the Word of God, it’s going to shake up our theological frameworks. If it doesn’t ever do that we’re just using Scripture to justify our own thought-systems."