Is Jesus Legalistic or Grace?

I don't speed.

I just don't do it. I keep my cruise set at whatever the speed limit is posted at and don't rise above or below it. I don't do it because I'm a good person, I do it because I hate spending money on things I don't want. Like tickets.

I guess if I'm honest, I follow most rules simply because I don't like the consequences of not following them. I don't love laws- in fact I think we have too many. (I don't like the government telling me how long I have to keep my kid in a car seat- which since my kids are tiny will be until they get their license.) But I keep them because I don't want to pay a fine or hear the harsh clang of steel bars. To be fair, some laws I follow because I feel morally obligated- like the whole not killing or stealing or committing adultery (which is most definitely a spiritual law, not a judicial one in our society).

It could be said we have laws for lots of reasons like safety and civility. I think we also have laws to make us feel in control. If we obey the rules, we know we are good people and good people control their own destiny. We like rules because they tell us just what we need to do.

God knew this about us, which is why He gave us the Commandments. He knew we'd never figure it out on our own, and we felt we needed to control our own lives, so He gave us Laws. With Laws came consequences and punishments. With consequences and punishment came judgment. With judgment came Pharisees. With Pharisees came Jesus. And with Jesus came fulfilment.

The Law is not the problem, even if that is what much of the world would have you believe. They say the problem with God is that He has too many rules, and thus He is no fun. Jesus walked into the world and said, very clearly, that the rules were not going away just because He came. No, they were in fact going to be fulfilled. This was what we call a 'bummer' to the Jews, a society oppressed with countless laws on top of the Law. See, they were burden by laws that men made to make God's Law more difficult to live by. Laws that took away freedom. Laws that bound the keeper- not to God, but to the laws. In simplistic terms, they no longer refused to murder because the loved God, they refused to murder because they loved the law.

Jesus came on and said that the law stands, but what needs to change is our reasoning for keeping it. We don't keep it for fear of consequence, or for respect for the man-made institutions that keep the law: we are to keep the Law out of Love for God. And Jesus set out to keep the Law. That is, the Law of God, not the Pharisaical law. See, he came to expose the control-minded laws of man by living out the Laws of God. Law Lovers say it is more important to pass the injured man by if it is the Sabbath (day of rest), lest we help him and sin by breaking the Sabbath. God Lovers say it is more important that the man be rescued so that he can enjoy the restful day of Sabbath and those that follow. Jesus healed on the Sabbath, Pharisees let you rot. The Law had been allowed to make us selfish- legalism was about making sure we were right to the exclusion of concern for others.

Jesus fulfilled the Law by completing the "don't" laws as well as the "do" laws. Not only did He abstain from murder, theft, adultery and the lot, He fully engaged in caring for His fellow humans and worshiping God. More than that, He fulfilled the Law of God by taking the punishment the Law owed to all who fell short. His death was fulfilment in that the punishment for all sin was given to the one man who didn't deserve it. He became the scapegoat ( a Jewish tradition of sending a goat covered with the sins of the people out in the wilderness to die, thus taking the people's sin with it) for all of mankind. Our sins died with Him, even though He didn't deserve to die and we didn't deserve to live.

So, the age old question of whether Jesus was about the Law or about Grace is answered in true, God-like fashion: He's both. On this side of the Cross, we have the Grace covering our screw-ups, but there is still this expectation that we would seek to live to please God. And that's just it- we should follow God's Laws not for the sake of following the rules, or being a good person, but for the love we have for our God. The kind of Law following Jesus shows us is the kind that puts the focus on God- never on us. We would fall forever short of the scrutiny and intricacies of the Law.

But Jesus can take it. And He did.

For us.