The Rule of Law

The Rule of Law

Laws have the power to force people to behave against their own will. But they have no power to transform the will itself. That requires love.

The 5th century Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. But no Roman, Greek or Jew became a Christian in truth because they had to.  They were loved into our faith, or they were simply forced to kneel when Christians were looking.

For a century and more, beginning in 1478, Spaniards forced the Jews and Moors of the Iberian Peninsula, and the indigenous peoples of every geography their armies conquered, to recant their traditional faiths and accept Christ as Lord through the Spanish Inquisition. But even they knew that those who were made to change churches were not believers in their hearts.

Many Christians today spend alot of their finite energy trying to force all Americans to obey, or at least recognize, their life laws: the Ten Commandments, the Holy Bible, even their clothing rules. Yet I've never heard of one soul saved from the 'wrath to come' because they were forced to do anything.

It was Jesus Himself who told us that there is only one way to come to the Father, and that is through only believing in Him... as Lord, God, Friend for eternity. And by our true belief, our love which is our only right response to His love first offered us,  we are instantly saved to eternal life with Him, which begins NOW.

As we pray with our families at meal time today; as we discuss and study in our small groups, practice praise music with the worship team, or sit amongst our friends in worship this week, let's look around us and thank God for those we have come to know who have come to Christ as we have, drawn by His love which was first shown to us by the love of others.  

And then let us look beyond the cluster of friends we recognize sitting near us to those we do not know; whose names we do not recognize, and indeed farther, toward those homes and communities beyond our chairs and church buildings.  Do we see or imagine people there who might come to Jesus if only some law were changed or my kids could pray in school? Or do we see people who need the same thing the people needed who Jesus saw 2,000 years ago on those dirt roads and rolling hills of Galilee. His love.

Don't waste time trying to make public laws do your work for you; somehow force others to be more like you.  Nothing will replace the need for you and I to simply love others into Heaven along with us. Especially those we have not met yet.

Time to meet some new people!  Time to go.

-Pastor Ken

Beware what you legalize. You may get it.