Grace And Law Quotes

Grace and Law.

About a year ago I read a Piper quote about how when you need assurance of God's immense love, you must look to the Cross. My immediate reaction was, "What? Why would I look to the Cross to see love? I don't see love when I look at the Cross, all I see is how much I cost. All I see is my overwhelming guilt." I knew immediately how wrong that thought was, and prayed for God to teach me rightly about the love displayed on the Cross. I already knew the sacrifice was for me and I could give you lots of right answers, I just didn't feel love when I meditated on it. I felt shame. I would run to promises of how God was going to make me better if I wanted to feel hope that one day I wouldnt be so shamed at the Cross. I knew this ought not be.

Here's where I am on that now. I think I'm getting closer.

The Law is meant to crush me, to grind my self-sufficiency to dust and ashes and send me running, aware of my inability to keep my heart from sin, in desperate need of a Rescuer, to the Cross of mercy and grace.

"See how you can't keep yourself from sin no matter how hard you want to? You're right. It's that bad. Now look to the Cross, where perfect obedience was purchased and paid for by perfect Love and see how loved you already are. See how he provided himself for your depravity. You cant do it. He can. He already did. It is finished. Show your belief by pointing others to what he's done, and loving him above all else. This will transform your whole life but it isn't about you. It's about

Him."
Conversely, I have lived for many years like it was the Cross that was meant to crush me under the greusome weight of how much my depravity cost, and continued to cost my Savior. Like it was meant to crush me under guilt and send me running, with desperate determination back to Law, so that I could will myself by devotion or effort, to some point where I would cost less. "This is how bad you are, its what you deserve. You love this Jesus for what he's done for you, yes? Then act like it and try harder. Prove you believe by changing, by sacrifice, by devotion and service. Show the world you you believe by what you do, by your changed life."
THESE ARE NOT THE SAME.
I didn't know I lived this way until I was asked to see assurance and love at the Cross. I was missing key parts of the gospel in my life, even if they were present in my speech or choices. I had believed the cultural lie that the Cross was only negative and ugly, that it was not the thing to focus on, that Christian living was more about Sunday than Friday. I'm certain I'm not the only one. I'm convinced now, of how beautiful it is, and that this beauty should, and will, transform every area of my life. How could it not? There is nothing the Cross does not change, and it will take the rest of my life to learn how to live more fully inside its reality. God is faithful to answer, to not leave us where we are, to privide the beauty of the church to teach and correct and connect, and I am so grateful.