Tuesday, March 3rd

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Tuesday, March 3rd

When the Rules become God

It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.

—Acts 15:19

As a kid, I played a card game with a ridiculous name I can no longer remember whose entire premise was to see how many meaningless rules the participant could keep track of. With each hand that was dealt, more rules were added and more players got disqualified for breaking the ever-growing litany of dos and don’ts. The winner was the person who managed to remember and follow the rules for the longest period of time.

As ludicrous as the game was, it provides something of a commentary on our rather complicated relationship with rules when it comes to life in general. On a societal level, we need clear boundaries to keep our communities and interactions safe and respectful. And on a spiritual level, God has given us instructions about how we should honor him and live in harmony with others. But we have a tendency as humans to make rules into an idol—something that becomes more important to us than God himself.

In the early church, the major point of division and disunity was over the Jewish rules and customs. Did converts have to follow the requirements of Judaism (in particular, circumcision) to be a Christian?

In the church today, we don’t face division about circumcision, but there are certainly ways we tend to add on rules to what Christ has already accomplished to save us. In his book Jesus Plus Nothing Equals Everything, Tullian Tchividjian talks about our tendency to think that the gospel is not enough. So we add on rules—things we believe we must do to earn God’s favor. But this, he claims, is not the true gospel. “Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us.”

After Paul and Barnabas finished making their case to the church leaders about God’s work among the Gentiles, James addressed them, encouraging them not to make it difficult for the Gentiles to come to Christ.

His message to the early church was the same one we need today: Jesus’ blood is sufficient to forgive us and save us. There are no additional rules we need to create, no extra hoops we have to jump through to be made right with him. Jesus has done everything—there is nothing we need to add. Tullian offers this life-giving reminder about the gospel: “The gospel doesn’t make bad people good; it makes dead people alive.”

Question: What rules do you tend to add on to the gospel? What do you fill in the blank in this equation: Jesus + _____ = Everything? How might adding on human rules to the gospel create division in the church?

—Stephanie Rische