Tuesday, September 29, 2015
By Spirit or By Rules
I took a moment today to have a quick quiet time on a break at work.
I read John 4.
It's easy to live by rules - the standards are clear, you follow them and know that you are in the right. You break them and know what the consequences are. It's tidy. It's clear, and there are no questions - except for perhaps deciding who gets to set the rules.
Or you can live by spirit which is messy and requires contemplation, evaluation, and examination. Living by the spirit means implementing forgiveness, mercy, grace and an having an expectation that there will always be exceptions.
The rules are easy.
There spirit is free.
In John 4 Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well that the man she's living with isn't her husband... in fact he kind of calls her out on the kind of life she's lived. And she goes and tells the whole village about Jesus and they all come out to see him and he changes their lives.
But he never instructs that woman to leave the man, marry the man, or anything.
He simply tells her that he is the living well.
That's it. And her action essentially pours that living well out on all the people in her village.
Her penance, her judgement, her condemnation - never recorded.
I find that really powerful.
I read John 4.
It's easy to live by rules - the standards are clear, you follow them and know that you are in the right. You break them and know what the consequences are. It's tidy. It's clear, and there are no questions - except for perhaps deciding who gets to set the rules.
Or you can live by spirit which is messy and requires contemplation, evaluation, and examination. Living by the spirit means implementing forgiveness, mercy, grace and an having an expectation that there will always be exceptions.
The rules are easy.
There spirit is free.
In John 4 Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well that the man she's living with isn't her husband... in fact he kind of calls her out on the kind of life she's lived. And she goes and tells the whole village about Jesus and they all come out to see him and he changes their lives.
But he never instructs that woman to leave the man, marry the man, or anything.
He simply tells her that he is the living well.
That's it. And her action essentially pours that living well out on all the people in her village.
Her penance, her judgement, her condemnation - never recorded.
I find that really powerful.
