The Little Bastard

02.13.13

Acts 20.24 24 “But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” – Paul the Apostle (ESV)

To those who believe, the mission is simply this: to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. God, who laid down such extensive and rigid laws in the Old Testament (I’ve been reading in Leviticus) was only doing so to help His people understand that to live a holy life they must come out and be separate from the godless peoples around them. God, who demanded such holiness from His people only did so because of the godlessness of the peoples around them. Nations need laws and God laid down His for His people. The command was simply: Obey!

But we are not all Jews. The Levitical law wasn’t laid down for non-Jews, and we have no national prophet proclaiming obedience to archaic regulations. The history of Israel is there so we can know that if one wishes to live by the rules, he must be careful to keep all of the rules; for if he fails in only one area, he has broken the whole law. That was the social contract God had with His people then. But God only ever wanted their love and for them to understand how much He loved them. Keeping the law was never intended to be keeping score. Keeping score in life is a miserable way to live.

What we do have is grace. What we do have is a God who totally accepts us at our dazzling worst. What we do have is a God who cries out we don’t have to live the way we do if we will only accept Him and accept His favor. The cure for who we are and what we are is love. And we each have a part of us that refuses to be loved like that and insists we are not ever going to be good enough. It is the cosmic hold-back: I will hold back from Someone who says that even at my wretched worst, there is hope for me. There is a part of me that just can’t believe that.

But there is another part of me that does. When I count the innumerable mistakes I have made, the cruel words I have spoken, the dastardly deeds I’ve done – yes, there is a part of me that cries out for something different: a chance to make it all better and live a different kind of life free from me. That life is grace, and the miracle of grace is that I don’t have to work for it to gain it: it’s free! That was Paul’s mission: to testify to that kind of life. A life that is already full and I don’t have to (and really can’t) add anything to it.

So my job, my mission, my calling is to live that life despite the little bastard in me that rejects it; and allow the goodness and greatness of God to lead me out of the dirty back alleys of my mind where accepting His grace is deemed too good to be true. And my mission is to testify to that truth to others who cannot believe there is such a God as Him, who will accept such a wretch as them.

It really is a naked, self-loathing shame that we abhor. But God doesn’t seem bothered by it in the least. And if God isn’t bothered by it, then neither should I be. And neither should I live as if by my own performance that I can get God to love me more. He already loves me completely…just as I am right now. The only thing I can do is learn to ignore the little bastard… A holy life isn’t a life lived by rules – it’s a life lived by love.