Do you ever feel insecure? For me, that’s the worst. I would rather feel sick than insecure. I’d rather be sick indoors than be perfectly healthy out in an open field while baseball-size hail comes hurtling down. Feeling secure is something we all crave. And, let’s face it, our heavenly Father made us this way. And He wants us to feel secure at all times, especially in our relationship with Him as we move ever closer to the center of His Kingdom. We drift from walking straight toward our goal because of insecurity about our “correctness”. And there are plenty of people who are more than happy to share their beliefs that their ways are better than our ways. “You have to walk this way or eat these things”. “You need to wear certain clothes or abstain from dancing”. These lists go on.
I don’t know how all these traditions got their start, but I know other people who can’t cite tradition origins either, but cling to them like their salvation depends on it. Most likely, these things can be loosely traced back to the law in one way or another. The problem when focusing on these duties, is making one huge oversight as we fail to focus on Jesus and his complete work of redemption. Don’t get me wrong, the law is good and had a very good purpose, greatly benefiting mankind. But the law was simply a foreshadowing of our relationship with the Christ, not an actual relationship with Christ. With the coming of Jesus, the purpose for the law has been fulfilled. Simply illustrated, the line for a concert, while good and necessary, is a foreshadowing of the event to come, not the event. Once we’re seated in the arena, the purpose for the line has been fulfilled. It would be foolish to stop focusing on the show and let others mislead us into drifting backward, thus placing us back in the line.
We can’t let others tell us that we have to eat certain foods or that we have to live a life of pain and misery in order to appreciate the awesomeness of heaven. Heaven will be more awesome than any of us can imagine–no matter what we do or don’t do. We have been redeemed from the law and the thing we have to do to be “right” is to love. Living in thankfulness and love with our God and all of our brothers and sisters is all we need to feel totally secure in the knowledge we’re living life right.
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