Book Preview #3: James 2:8-13 - The Stain Glass Law
Merry Christmas, everyone! As many of you know, I will be publishing James, a book on the letter of James, in early 2016. In anticipation of that, I will be posting snippets of the book for all of you to enjoy. Here is another sneak preview:
The Stained Glass Law
In his commentary on James in his ESV Study Bible, James MacArthur describes God’s law as being a single piece of glass. When I imagine what that piece of glass would look like, I see it as a beautiful, stained glass portrait of God in all of his blazing righteousness. I know that a stained glass window does not behave in the same way as a single pane of glass, but please indulge my imagination. I then envision that my selfishness in one instance is like a spiritual sledgehammer that has been hurled at the section of the portrait representing God’s requirement to be unselfish. What do you see happening next? In my mind, the window is rocked by the force of the blow in that one section. The entire masterpiece then splinters into countless fragments that come crashing down on the floor. That single blow to one part of the portrait reverberated throughout the stained glass. MacArthur uses the analogy of the sheet of glass to represent God’s law because, he says, by breaking a part of the law you have broken the integrity of the whole law. It is not that my one sin caused me to commit every other sin under the law, but that my selfishness obliterated the flawlessness of the law that I am required to keep. For me, it is no longer structurally sound and does not carry the perfection that God righteously demands. Unfortunately, from when we were young children, we have been continually smashing the glass of the law, often repeating the same sin over and over.
But doesn’t this analogy make it seem as though all sins are equally devastating, from lying to murder? How is it fair to compare two sins that seem so vastly different to us? Where this question goes wrong is that it assumes that God lives on the same moral plane as us. Culturally or mentally, we have learned that certain social behaviors may not be deemed so “bad” or at least not as bad as some other sins we have heard about. Unfortunately for our human nature, there are not certain tiers of sins that are seen as less evil than others. For example, the sin of homosexuality somehow has been deemed, by many Christians, to be the most extreme sin, while fornication (sex outside of marriage) doesn’t elicit the nearly the same outrage from Christian communities. I am not trying to argue to what extent particular sins have damaged our society and culture. I simply desire to urgently point our attention to God’s opinion and show that all sins, no matter how frowned upon or celebrated by our society, are equally disruptive to our perfection in Christ. When we take a sledgehammer of lust, greed or anger to one part of the law, its entire purity is violated. Like Humpty Dumpty, we cannot simply glue back all of the pieces and expect the glass to do what it was meant to do. All of your “goodness” and all of your mending cannot put the law back together again. Once it is broken even once, there is nothing on earth that can repair it.
Do not think that I am speaking evil against the law. We see in Romans that the law is not at fault by any means: “What should we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin if it were not for the law. For example, I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, Do not covet” (Romans 7:7 HCSB). So we see that the law is all goodness, but to us who were born in spiritual poverty its nourishment lies beneath a barrier that cannot be penetrated by our imperfection. As MacArthur put it, “The law diagnoses the problem but does nothing to treat it.” It was designed to be acted out by and fulfilled by one perfect person. We cannot ever be truly good before God, even if we think we're blameless: "If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind? Why have you made me your mark? Why have I become a burden to you? Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be” (Job 7:20-21). If we are trying to become satisfied by the law alone, we are like hungry children standing empty-handed in front of a vending machine, hoping that bags of chips and cookies will start automatically dispensing to us. We don't have the currency to reach the nourishment. That is where God’s complete forgiveness comes into play. Thank God that anyone who believes in Christ can see that glass completely restored through forgiveness and receive, through the currency of faith, the satisfaction and life that is hidden in it. Jesus was the perfect person who fulfilled the law and is now living inside of those who believe to enable us to walk blamelessly, no matter how much we previously obliterated the law.
Of course, in talking about complete forgiveness for all sin, I must mention the sin that has been called the “eternal sin”. This sin, committed against the law, is mentioned in Mark 3:22-30 and Matthew 12:31-32 where Jesus declared that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit would never be forgiven. On the surface, this seems to be a contradiction to Jesus’ previous statements on the power and universality of forgiveness for those who seek it. This statement has been interpreted in various ways, but Jesus was talking about the sin of definitive rejection of the Holy Spirit’s work of salvation through Jesus. When restated in that way, it becomes easier to understand in light of all of Jesus’ teachings. To summarize, all who seek forgiveness will find it. The only ones who will not receive forgiveness are those who will entirely reject the one who offers the only forgiveness available. I do not believe that the eternal sin can ever apply to those of us who believe in Jesus and desire God in our lives. God has an entirely seamless, perfect track record to bestow upon anyone who receives Jesus as Lord, so let us run to Jesus for forgiveness!
For more information on James, click here.