The Corporate Nature of the Law
We really do need each other.
Let me go a different direction for this morning. I imagine that virtually all who are reading this are doing so alone. We all want to know Jesus and to follow his way. So we open up scripture, read reflections and devotionals on it, and pray to follow it. This is not bad. But it is still a rather new phenomenon in the history of the Christian faith. There is nothing wrong with our individual effort to read scripture and apply it. Yet it is certainly not complete.
The the Law (the Torah) was given to the Israelite community. This is not a one-on-one conversation. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is teaching the group of disciples (Matthew is the first in scripture to call this “the Church.”) Later in Matthew, we’ll see how he instructs the disciples to work out the things of sin together. And even just tomorrow, we’ll read his instructions that place relational righteousness ahead of worship. In the book of Acts, we see again and again how working out God’s Law requires the collective conclusion of the community.
No individual is meant to figure out what God wants alone.
This really rubs hard against modern individualism.
So if what Jesus says about the Law confuses or challenges you—as it does many of us—consider this an invitation to open scripture not just alone, but with others. The Church has always discerned God's will together.
Matthew 5:17-20
Don’t even begin to think that I have come to do away with the Law and the Prophets. I haven’t come to do away with them but to fulfill them. I say to you very seriously that as long as heaven and earth exist, neither the smallest letter nor even the smallest stroke of a pen will be erased from the Law until everything there becomes a reality. Therefore, whoever ignores one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do the same will be called the lowest in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever keeps these commands and teaches people to keep them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. I say to you that unless your righteousness is greater than the righteousness of the legal experts and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Psalm 1:1-3
The truly happy person doesn’t follow wicked advice, doesn’t stand on the road of sinners, and doesn’t sit with the disrespectful. Instead of doing those things, these persons love the Lord’s Instruction, and they recite God’s Instruction day and night! They are like a tree replanted by streams of water, which bears fruit at just the right time and whose leaves don’t fade. Whatever they do succeeds.
Prayer
God -
We humans love the law. Better said, perhaps, we love hating the things of laws even whilst believing that everyone else should follow them. Deep down, we know we need boundaries. Not so deep down, we’re pretty sure that everyone else needs them.
Why do we need laws, God? Between religion and the government, there’s no shortage of things by which to abide. It can be paralyzing. We’re certain that you have called us to love, God. Can you legislate love? It seems to be against love’s very definition.
I don’t know nearly as much about the efficacy of laws as I do my desire to be like Jesus. So as I live, God…as I make choices, as I deal with people, as I deal with myself…help me to lead with love. Where I am unsure or wrong, give me wisdom. I do not want to overstep the lines of love, so help me, God.
By your Spirit & in Christ,
Amen.