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Hello GBC!
 

Fall is falling, but your face need not.

 

Midweek Meditation: Destroying the Comfort Zone of the Law

I vividly remember driving Everlie hospital after her birth. I was ready to be home. My wife was ready to stay in the hospital for another week. We were both exploding with love. And we were both grappling with fear. The comfort zone of home was about to be disrupted in the best way. This beautiful little life was a threat to life as we knew it.

We could no longer trust our robotic life-routines. We would live a less free life. No more spontaneous late-night trips to a restaurant or the movie theater. There was no winging parenting and hoping it worked out. There was no sticking to the status quo. We learned how much we needed to learn. What we knew now felt alarmingly limited. Our life was now stretched, flexible, and even seemingly insecure. This little grace changed everything. It was a threat from the heart of Christ which, in changing everything, changed us.

So it is with the grace of Christ. It’s a beauty from the heart of Christ which fundamentally cannot allow us to remain the same. It affirms our insufficiency. It rebukes our self-reliance. It softens our stubbornness. It proves our ignorance. It disrupts our superficial securities. When the grace of the gospel kicks down the door of your heart, it pushes against the comfort zones within. I’m going to start a little series here over the next few weeks. Today, let’s observe how grace destroys the false comfort zone of legalism. Grace threatens legalist with the law’s insufficiency.

 

              Legalism is a hard-wired comfort zone of the soul. A list of rules seems easier than a yielded life. When I say “legalism” I don’t mean merely stricter standards or harder lines on holiness. Most of us, if we’re honest, probably need harder lines on holiness. I mean true legalism which suggests that I can leverage myself into greater favor with God through better performance of his law. To use David’s confessional terminology from Psalm 51:17, legalists believe that the “sacrifices of the Lord…” are pleasing when they’re offered professionally, perfectly, and performatively. David means that true devotion is proven not in devotion-less performance of the law, but desperate repentance before the Lord. To the self-righteous, a Christianity of performance always seems less vulnerable than a Christianity of repentance.

              The law is a comfort-zone for the law-keeper. The obvious problem here, though, is that none of us are truly law-keepers. My only consistency in relation to the law is my tendency to fall short of it. Thus, attempting to cling to the law as a security is grasping at smoke. It’s a comfort zone with walls too high to scale. We end up ever climbing and never reaching a safety within, because safety does not exist there. There is safety in the grace of Christ. Run to him.

 

Ministry Prayer Requests

  • Pray that God would continue to bless our GFF’s. They’re off to a great start!
  • Pray for God to guard the church and its members against whispering and slander.
  • Pray for a spirit of restoration to gospel motivations and mission.

 

Ministry Reminders

  • Grace Bible Institute starts Sunday pm. Remember anyone can come, but if you want to register for a course you’ll be able to go more deeply into it.
  • Our preaching and ministerial conference is also happening at the end of this month. If you know of a man who would benefit from it please let us know.
  • Always be checking your bulletins!

 

Book Recommendations

  • Nine Marks of a Healthy Church- Mark Dever. This is not just a book for pastors. Hopefully you know I don’t often use overstated language, so I mean this when I say it. This book is one of the most important books written about the church of our century. Pick it up!
  • Let the Nations be Glad- John Piper. Since it’s missions emphasis month and we just learned a modern hymn with this title, we might as well add this volume to the suggestions. This is an excellent book on missions and Piper is always worth reading.

 

In Christ,

Pastor Kyle