Will You Knock or Will You Tow?

There are signs for a reason! If they'd obeyed them, they wouldn't have to worry about being towed, a friend ranted.

You know overnight parking around here can be tough. Have you tried knocking on the neighbor's door? his wife countered.

I'm not doing all that! The signs say, 'No parking after 7:30 AM.' It's 8:30 now, and there's plenty of parking. They had a right to get up and move them!

Are you trying to spend the morning punishing people or are you trying to get the street cleared for the contractor's vehicles?

Would the Apostle Paul have been just as disheartened by this exchange as he was with the church in Galatia? The believers, a blend of Messianic Jews and Gentiles had come to know the saving grace of Jesus. Somewhere along the line, they had, however, fallen prey to the preaching of a different message, one that declared Gentile believers had to first become Jews and observe Jewish law to be true followers of the Messiah. In fact, it had gotten so bad, Paul wrote:

For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another! (v. 13-15)

When Jesus came and lived among humanity, He spoke a message of love, forgiveness, grace, and salvation from the judgment we are due outside of God's mercy. In fact, His message earned Him a lot of grief from those who insisted there was more to it than that. No one can be made righteous before God without jumping through a whole lot of hoops. They were wrong; and when Jesus gave His life in our place on Calvary, He not only demonstrated His willingness to practice what He preached, He proved He was the One sufficient to surpass every expectation. Jesus fulfilled the Law. The Galatians aren't the only ones who have lost sight of that over the course of history; we sometimes do as well. Of course, we must continue to keep God's commandments despite their inability to fully restore our relationship with God. Obedience demonstrates love for our Savior (John 14:15). But there is only One Mediator between us and our Creator (1 Timothy 2:5, 6); there is only One Way to approach God (John 14:6). And being a good person isn't it, upholding the Law isn't it. Because of God's love for us and the Son's love for the Father (demonstrated through His obedience), we are redeemed (Romans 5:1, 2, 8). The Law is great, but only love leads to that measure of selflessness, sacrifice, and obedience to the Law. 

So, back to the Galatians (and my friends with the parking problem). Obedience to the Law, to the utmost letter of it, for the purpose of "being" righteous or demanding others be righteous is legalism. When legalism shows up, love leaves. But when the perfect love of God presides by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, the Law is made perfect and humanity thrives. People surrendered to the Holy Spirit are vessels, conduits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control overflowing to others (Galatians 5:22, 23). As I said before, to obey the commands of Jesus is to demonstrate love, so there must be boundaries and rules; but the Law is applied in love and for the purposes of loving rightly. Take for example, the parking problem. If my friends had positioned themselves at the curb anxiously awaiting the wrecker, their neighbor's response would surely have been negative; but a knock on the door at 7:30 AM, while unpleasant, would probably have been more welcome than a bill for towing. And it just might have created an opportunity to talk or discover some way my friends could have poured out the light of Christ upon their neighbor's lives. 

Let me be clear, pouring out Sonlight on another's life is neither reckless indulgence nor ruthless judgment. Help and kindness when delivered with the message of the Gospel is exactly what Jesus modeled; there is structure, purpose, an explicit pointing to God as the Giver all predicated upon love. Sharing the message of Christ's coming to reconcile and restore sinners is by no means delivered with a pointed finger but is, again, predicated upon love, our love for God and our love for our neighbor. A missionary friend once offered her guideline: When we seek to share Jesus with our neighbor, on our first visit we take food. On our second visit, we take clothing. On our third visit, we take our Bibles. Again, not looking to be legalistic; this is not some hard and fast rule. The point being made, however, was a balance: tending to the spiritual needs of our neighbors in tandem with recognizing and addressing their physical needs. 

As much as our nation and our world needs law and order, the laws of men will only ever be imperfect, and men will only respond to them imperfectly. The Law of God is perfect, but it is a law of liberty, given to humanity in love and sealed with the very blood of the Son of God. The Law of God creates doers, lovers of God who go forth in love toward their neighbor and share the joy of obedience to God's Law.

But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. ~ James 1:25 

Love does what the Law cannot. Love makes permanent changes to unrighteous behavior. It is love that will draw our neighbors to the Lover of our souls; a knock at the door, not a tow truck.