“What’s With the Rules?”

As many of you know my family was on vacation last week at the beach.  The place we where we were staying requires that you wear a colored wristband at all times while on the property and there are security guards that walk around the property hourly checking.  If they catch you without a wristband, either you go back to your room and get it and show it to them or leave the property.  This is the rule!  Not a bad rule either.

So during our stay there I noticed one particular family, a large family of 8, that never had on a wristband.  At the pool each day, walking around the property, etc. none of them ever had on a wristband.  Now I know they were not trespassing because the room balcony overlooked one of the pools where we would often swim and family members would often yell back and forth to one another from the pool area.  I thought, why don’t they have to follow the rules?  Why aren’t the security guards catching them, I’ve seen them question others.   That’s not fair!  Do I turn them in or ignore it?  Do they have special privilege?  

Then something a friend from my High School days said to me came to mind, “We don’t have to follow God’s ‘rules’ because we are under grace not His law.”  He was drawing off Romans 6:14 “For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.”  I can tell you that my friend saw that verse as a sure way of not following God’s ways, God’s law, God’s “rules” for living.  “Why not enjoy life?” he would say, “Isn’t God’s grace sufficient?” he would ask me.  “Yes” I would say, but then I would remind him that the Apostle Paul did not only write one verse of scripture.  In fact, if you continue on to the next verse, Romans 6:15, you read, “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace?  May it never be!”  Paul’s answer was an absolute NO!!!  Just because our sins are forgiven as believers in Jesus Christ, it does NOT give us the authority to keep sinning, doing whatever we want, ignoring God’s way of life He has called us to live.

If we sin, and we will, God’s grace is sufficient.  But because we belong to Him, because of His grace and mercy shown to us by His Son’s life, death, and resurrection, by His indwelling Spirit, we should never want to continue to live a sin filled life.  In giving our life to Him, we die to our old self, and rise to a new life.  And while we are not under the law, but grace, our inward desire should be to be more like Christ.  Paul writes in Ephesians 5:1-2 “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a flagrant aroma.”  I would encourage you to take your Bibles off the shelf or table and continue reading that chapter through verse 21 and see what it means to be imitators of God.

You see, you cannot just pull one verse of scripture out to justify your way of life.  Many do that as my friend does.  To know God, you have to read His Word, otherwise you would be ignorant of His Word.  Questioning my friend, I found out He was told that verse by his pastor.  He never read it for himself, but lived his life by way of this verse.

When I was a cop in the Air Force, I would stop people for a traffic violation and they would often say, “But officer, I didn’t know the speed limit was 35.”  Ignorance of the law does not change the fact that the law exist and for a good reason.

The family during our vacation never followed the rules.  Maybe because they didn’t want to.  Maybe because they forgot.  Even maybe because they thought, we don’t have to.  But any of those reasons never changed the rule.

We are under God’s GRACE - Thanks be to God!!!  But don’t be ignorant of God’s desired way of life for you!  He has set these “rules” for life in place for our good.  And you can know these rules by reading His Word, attending Worship, attending Bible Studies, Sunday School, and prayer time.  By doing these things your faith will grow and your desire to follow Him (even His rules for life) will grow and that desire to sin will wane.  He is SO good!

Blessings, Pastor Marty 

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