postlaestadianrevival

Rules rules, rules….It seems like there were an excessive amount of them in the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church. In my parents' generation, photos were preached to be a sin for a few years and some people destroyed all of their photos. Later they regretted it when it was decided that they were not a sin after all. How was one to make sense of it? At one point I decided that if a rule could not be deduced from one of the ten commandments I was not going to worry about it. So if someone said it was a sin to whistle, I was not going to accept it as being true because the ten commandments have nothing to say about whistling. This helped me keep sane.

Rules were a problem back in Jesus’ time as well. How many times does the bible tell about the Pharisees trying to catch him in breaking a rule? My favorite incident is when Jesus heals a crippled man on the Sabbath. The man gets up, starts to carry his bed (which he had been confined to for years) and some Pharisees come along and berate him for it. I can just hear them “Don’t you know it is a sin to carry your mat on Sunday?” They were so absorbed in the rules that they missed the miracle entirely!

But if you notice, my little "rule" would have made me no wiser than the pharisees because there is a commandment about keeping the sabbath holy.

Judaism and Islam are religions of law. Christianity is a religion of relationship. It is living in the grace of a restored relationship with God. It is not a case of "do this" and "don't do that" Rather, it is living in worshipful connection with the Creator. If you are living in submission to God you don't need rules.

Our pastor said something today that seems to put the rule thing in perspective.

He was talking about repentance. Now we usually think of repenting as being remorseful. Then he pointed to the example of Judas Iscariot. Was he remorsefull after betraying Jesus Yes. He threw the money back saying he had betrayed innocent blood. Did he repent? No. He hanged himself.

Then he took the example of Peter. He denied the savior three times. Was he remorseful? Yes. Did he repent?YES! He stopped what he was doing (denying his relationship with Jesus) and he turned back and renewed his relationship with Jesus.

Being a Christian is having a relationship. We do not do things that would damage the relationship just as we do not do things to damage our relationships with our valued friends and family members.

This made sense to me.

The scriptures testify God will write his law in our hearts. So true believers will walk accordingly without a long list of what to do or not. Do not the scriptures also say faith is the fulfillment of the law? And of course the fruits of the spirit. Jesus said you'll know them by this. I suppose you could see faith as good soil into which a fruitful tree is planted. And when this "soil"(faith) is nourished with God's word, more fruit is bound to come forth! My view of it anyway.