Week 4—Friday Galatians 2:16-19
Week 4—FRIDAY
“WE HAVE A LAW”
We continue to look at our passage: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). Here the essential difference between the Hebrew system and the Christian is shown in one brief sentence. When we speak of the Hebrew-Christian system and hyphenate these two words as if they were a continuation—the Christian growing out of the Hebrew, its prolongation—we err. They are not continuous—they are discontinuous. There is a break—a radical break. This verse puts that break in the implied “but”: “The law was given through Moses; but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” While the Jewish faith was a preparation for Christianity, the Christian faith is also a reversal. It stands in contrast in basic conception. “The law was given through Moses,” that is the Word become word; “[but] grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” that is the Word become flesh. One is built around an abstract law, the other around a concrete Person. This is not a difference in degree—it is a difference in kind. The end product is different—one produced the Pharisee—correct, legal, proud, separate; the other produced the Christian—humble, receptive, loving, self-giving.
The Jews said: “We have a Law”; we can say, “We have a Person.” They add: “We have a law and by that law he ought to die.” And we may add: “We have a Person, and by being the Person he is, he will willingly die for us.” One ends in retribution—“He ought to die”; the other in redemption—“I lay down my life for them.”
The Jews of Jerusalem had a saying, according to one of them, “The Messiah will never come, and Ben Gurion will never go.” They are right. The kind of messiah they are looking for—one who will conquer their foes and make Israel supreme by physical arms—will never come.
The Jews, I’m told, never read the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, for there the suffering, self-giving Messiah is shown. He is here—alive.
O Jesus, you are “grace and truth.” You are what we seek in the Godhead and find there. You are all I want—and more. For in you I seek and find my Heavenly Father, and finding God I want naught beside. For I’m not a subject asking for a Law, but a child asking for a Father. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My Law is a Life, my Code is a Character, my obedience is an enabling.