New Morning Mercies #213

Grace not only forgives you, but enables you to live for something hugely bigger than yourself. Why go back to your little kingdom of one?

Your spiritual life is all about inertia. It’s all about inner motivations. It’s all about kingdoms. It’s all about warfare. It’s way bigger than the surface Christianity to which it is often reduced. You could read your Bible every day and the entire Bible each year and still live for yourself. You could be faithful in your attendance at all your church’s scheduled gatherings and still live for your little kingdom. You could regularly place your hard-earned money in the plate and still not live with God’s kingdom in view. You could be expert in the theology of the Word of God and still shrink your life down to what you want and what you tell yourself that you need. You could participate in ministries to the poor and needy and still not live for the big kingdom. You could do all of these things, and the trajectory of your life could still be more toward the kingdom of self than the kingdom of God.

The only exhibit that is needed to demonstrate that true spirituality is about something more than public and formal acts of religion is the Pharisees. Jesus said something striking about the religion of the Pharisees: “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20). There was something deeply defective, something tragically missing in the religion of the Pharisees that caused Jesus to speak so strongly. What was wrong is captured by the following indictment:

But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. . . .

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. (Matt. 23:13, 23–26)

The public religious acts of the Pharisees were not the result of deep devotion in their hearts toward God and the work of his kingdom that caused them to live the way they did. No, they did these things in the absence of that devotion. That means they did not do them for God and His kingdom at all. They did them in allegiance to the kingdom of self, for the purpose of personal power and public acclaim. They were acts of righteousness that were not righteous because they did not come from hearts of worship. True Christianity is always a matter of the submission of the heart to God, something that only rescuing grace can produce.

For further study and encouragement: Matthew 25:31–46