Good Friday Grace

"Think but how vile a spectacle it were

To view thy present trespass in another,

Men's faults do seldom to themselves appear;

Their own transgressions practically they smother."

                                                                               ~ Wm. Shakespeare


Like millions of other Christians around the world, today we celebrated Good Friday; it is the day on which Christ died.
While millions attend church services, millions more do not; those of us who do not usually spend the day at work talking about why we should have the day off.

But Good Friday is called 'good' for a reason; it is much more than a holiday or a church service commemoration or even a day off.

Jesus is what makes Good Friday, 'good;' for it was in Him that heaven and earth met together on a Cross suspended between humanity and God.
His sacrifice allowed any person to come to Him by faith and receive His grace and eternal life.
In Him, all things were able to be reconciled once and for all.

Which makes me wonder, 'if it truly is that easy to be reconciled, why do we make it so hard?'

We, as Christian and even as human beings, have a very hard time remembering that Jesus Christ is not the 'God of Gotcha!' 
Though He liberated us from such, over and over, we try to make Him be something He is not and His faith something it is not; it is that which Paul called "legalism."

Quite possibly, every church has a form of legalism; for it breeds in the heart of many seekers of God without noticing its effects.
There was a legalistic bent in my home church, the church in which I grew up; there was even a hint of it in the church where I served as pastor.

For example, in the church where I grew up, people who drank alcohol or found themselves in divorce court definitely had the aromatic stench of sulfuric hell-fire on them, while other sins went unmentioned, such as arrogance.
Other churches form a battle line around hymnals being the only proper place to find a 'Godly' song to sing for the Lord; still others, draw the sword against certain Bible translations.

All these things muddy the water and lessen the power of grace and the Gospel.

Interestingly enough, Jesus' life resembled the laws and rules of the Pharisees; yet, He reserved his fiercest attacks and strongest words for them.

In today's terms, His Pharisees would be our 'Bible-Belt Fundamentalists.'
And Jesus viewed them much more of a threat than any other faction in His society; yet, on the outside, they seemed like model citizens.

But remember, Jesus was killed by the common folks; no, He was murdered by the religious crowd. 
As a minister, I never forget this fact because the dangers of the Pharisees are still relevant today.

You see, whether it was the Pharisees of two millennium ago or modern day legalists; the Grace of God is ignored while the external action of the individual rises to the status of most important instead of their heart and the condition of their soul.
The great danger is the fact that nobody believes that they are a legalist, nobody.
Every individual believes that their rules are OK, but every one else who has rules make them too strict to follow.

We would do well to remember that Good Friday is good for a reason; it is good because of the blood atonement of Christ which ushered to us the opportunity for His wonderful grace in our lives.

In the words of the church father Augustine: "Love God and do as you please."
For, if one truly loves God, what they are pleased to do, will be honorable to Him.

In this regard within our lives, it boils down to what is trivial verses what is really important.

When Jesus healed on the Sabbath, His opponents were more concerned about religious protocol than they were about those who were no longer sick.
Today, some are too preoccupied with the length of a man's hair and the height of a woman's skirt rather than being willing to confront the modern issues of the homeless man on the street corner they passed on the way to church or the beggar standing next to the interstate off-ramp.
But this is not an new problem.

German Christians in the 1930's ignored what was blatantly happening to European Jews.
In the 1950's & 60's, Southern Christians ignored the lynching and institutional racism of their region.
In the 1970's & 80's, South Africans did much the same thing as our Southerns; only they were far more vicious.
One thing is for sure, each of the above scenarios had one thing at the center; it was a heart issue at the core.

Sometimes, I wonder how our generation will be judged when it comes to the social issues of our time because we Christians have a knack for pointing out the speck in the eyes of others without noticing the log in our own.

Christianity without the grace won on the first Good Friday (and the last valid Passover) encourages hypocrisy on various levels; the truth is that nobody, no person can ever live to the standard set by mortal men.
If humanity could not live by and according to the Holy Standard of God, then no man on earth can improve on the system to make it work.
Our rules simply cloak what is actually taking place in the heart.

In Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira are struck dead after giving some of the money they had acquired from selling land to the Body.
What was really happening in their hearts was that they were overcome by greed and lied to God over the matter - they attempted to appear more spiritual than what was actually true - that's why they were judged and stricken dead.

Now, you and I probably know more than our fair share of people who attempt to appear more spiritual than what they actually are; sometimes they run off a preacher, sometimes they fool their own families, sometimes the deceive everyone.
Not once have I ever seen one stricken dead inside a church; if God did that every time, I fear our churches would be filled with corpses rather than worshipers.

Indeed, some do fool nearly everyone. 
Everyone, that is, except God.

The only alternative to attempting to appear more spiritual is utter and complete honesty.
And once we are honest, this honesty will ultimately lead to repentance.
You see, hypocrisy disguises the need for grace; it is an elaborate mask but it is still just a

mask.
But the Holy Spirit can destroy all masks and deceptions through honesty, repentance and the grace of Christ.

There is a very real reason Good Friday is good.

In whatever form it takes, legalism fosters a personal pride in 'what I can do', instead of relying solely on what God can do within us and through us.
It also leads to the practice of deeming what is an 'acceptable' sin and which sins are 'unacceptable.'
The problem with judging our own sins against the sins of others, is of course, our list of 'acceptable sins' keeps changing for the worse.

Legalism instead of grace....it fails miserably before God.
If this was not true, Israel would have been in perfect obedience before God, but they were not.
Instead, strict laws only put 'what can I get away with?' into our minds.

For example, research has shown that children raised in tee-totaling faiths are three times more likely to become alcoholics.
I can actually understand this 'disobedient/rebellious' streak; when my home state enacted a law stating all people must wear a seat belt while in a car, all it did was make me want to NOT wear a seat belt. 

For some reason, we think we must have a set of rules or requirements filled before we can come to God. 
It isn't true and it stifles us; we tend to want to keep the rules or try to get around them as opposed to accomplishing the work of the Gospel.
Trying to circumvent imaginary rules will leave us with needles guilt and permanent scars which should have never been made by wounds that shouldn't exist.

Legalistic rules to our faith will cause us to play songs without ever hearing the music; it is missing the melody of the Gospel of Grace.
It causes us to miss the purpose of Grace altogether.

Yes, my friend, there is a reason it is called Good Friday.