On a street that serves as a common cut-through between two main drags in our neighborhood, the cops often set up one of those "this is your speed" displays. You know, one of those contraptions with the speed limit sign and a neon display telling you how fast you're actually going.
The one they set up down the street is pretty sweet. If you're speeding a little bit, it flashes your speed back at you. If you're more than five over the limit, lights flash and pop and sparkle.
It's probably an indicator of how broken I am, but I sincerely delight in making that thing light up like a Christmas tree every time I blow past it. There's something about having the law right in front of me that makes me want to break it even more.
This is something of what Paul is trying to argue as one part of his master symphony that is the New Testament book of Romans. The law (i.e. the Ten Commandments and all that accompanies) is a good thing, but when it meets with messed up people, it arouses rebellion rather than compliance.
So throughout the Old Testament, the Jewish people who have the law are both blessed by it and struggle to actually walk in it...just like any of us would have done.
That leaves us with a good law, people who are still completely messed up, and an extremely significant need for some other way for all that's gone wrong to be made right again.
Enter Jesus. Enter the Holy Spirit who not only speaks the law back to us but actually softens our hearts so that rather than push-back against the law, we can walk in it, delight in it.
Certainly this is a process. God's still teaching me what it means to delight in his law rather than live in my natural state and reject it.
And I probably need to work through my issues with the Durham P.D. and their speed-informing device down the road...but I love celebrating Christmas in September.
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