365 Days with God - Day 111: The Perfect Combination

I'm giving myself a challenge. Read the Bible each day for a whole year, following the ESV Study Guide 1-year plan. Each day, I will post whatever God has revealed to me in His Word, and how it is changing me. A friend of mine once said that nothing has changed her life as much as reading the bible each day - and I'm excited for how this will change me. Join me on an adventure into the heart of God - and day by day, we can learn more about who He is and what that means to us!

- Andy Catts

Day 111, April 10, 2014

Readings: Psalm 110, Leviticus 17, Isaiah 22, Galatians 2

The mysteries of God are vast. His divine nature, his abilities, mercy and perfect judgment are beyond comprehension. But we desire to know. We want the perfect answer, the one that eliminates all question and gives us the knowledge we seek.

It doesn't exist.

God is not able to be fully known, fully understood. He is so big, so amazing that we are powerless to decipher all that He is. And would we really want a God that we understood fully? What would be left? If we understood all that He is and all of why He does, would we not be gods? Would we not be equal to him?

But yet, we continue to try. And this is nothing new. For generations people have been attempting to peg God into one of two categories: freedom (grace) and law (truth.) So we end up with entire denominations devoted to championing one or the other - as if salvation can be understood and contained in one of these two terms.

But it always falls short. With all grace and no truth, we are left with a God who does not know righteous judgement. Who forgives but never holds accountable. Who isn't to be respected because he asks nothing. With all truth and no grace, we face a tyrant who demands strict adherence to the law. We are merely measurements to be weighed on a scale, either reaching a sufficient saturation of righteousness or falling shot and being unworthy.

Grace sounds nice. Truth sounds logical. The good thing is, when we are willing to put both together, we learn more about who God really is. And how we respond to that truth.

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! for if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.  (Galatians 2:15-21)