No Credit For Time Served?

Good morning on a cloudy day. I have some news to report: The sabertooth sneer is no more. Yes, sometime Tuesday night the infamous long canine of Capt. Kidd vanished. I looked around the house, but it seems to be gone forever. Last night, I also thought of what was. Let us say that like the rich young man who came to Jesus, you have lived your entire life as a paragon of virtue. What some of us might call a good person, you have done for years. No breaking of the civil law, no breaking of the moral law of the Old Testament, you are just spot on good. Then, you smack your pinky finger with a 4-pound dead blow hammer while placing a landscaping stone in your yard and there it was, the Lord's name called out in vain and in pain. Sinner!

You see there is no credit under the law for time served. We see it in legal cases in the news, but never in cases of God's law. You sinned yesterday in your yard and just like that you are a sinner, just like the rest of us. The rich young man had kept the commandments all of his life, then Jesus gave him one more assignment and he fell down flat. Sinner! You didn't keep the law, I can't keep the law, even the pastor doesn't keep the law all the time in every thought and deed. If your pastor or my pastor, who seems like a pretty good fellow in his behavior, cannot keep the law, how will you and I keep it? If we cannot keep the law and get no credit under the law for our good behavior, for as Jesus said we are but humble servants simply doing our duty under the law, then who can make it into Heaven?

We have been over grace before. We have no other hope but to live by grace through faith in the saving power of Christ Jesus. Under grace, we can store up treasure in Heaven. Under grace, every small sin committed in the quiet of our hearts where only God sees it does not condemn us to that awful label. Sinner is what we were and sinner is where we came from, but under grace we live as children of the King. All my good deeds done to save myself count for nothing, but all my good deeds done under grace store up a treasure safe from the thieves and rust. If you consider yourself to be good as the Pharisees did, you probably need the Good Shepherd more than those sheep you consider as the worst of lawbreakers. Grace gives the poor sinning sheep a new coat of righteousness, bought and paid for by the Son of God. We live by grace. Baaahh!

Bucky