The Spirit of the Letter
WRITTEN BY DREW MATZ
One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. And he said to them, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” And they could not reply to these things.
Luke 14: 1-5
As human beings, we naturally default to our man-made religion. It is in our nature to believe that it following written rules is our expression of spirituality. To be right with God is to follow all the right precepts and commands. If we aren’t breaking God’s law, we must automatically be right with him! And so the scribes and Pharisees also believed. For them, it was never about the heart, but about externals. Their status. Their money. Their prestige. Their power. They would, as Jesus said, “strain out a knat, yet swallow a camel.”
When we understand how this is spiritually backward, we can discern why Jesus speaks so harshly to the religious elites of his day. The “law resolves all” mentality misses the point of the law in its entirety. The law was not given to Moses is as an arbitrary rule to follow, but that in following it we begin to understand the heart of the God the law describes. It is a road to travel, knowing that we can find ourselves in danger if we step off of the path. When we lose sight of the heart of God, we begin to treat the law as a rigid rulebook as opposed to guidelines for our own protection. Viewing the law in this way very convenient for many of us. After all, we humans are great lawyers. We can do legal gymnastics like there is no tomorrow. We especially love it when we can impose the law on others while we ourselves find ways around it. Jesus notices this too, “woe to you lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers” (Luke 11:46).
With the heart of God as our focal point, we can begin to understand the “spirit” of the scriptural teaching. Ultimately, we have to view Jesus’ words in light of the Gospel which makes all things new, and not in light of the letter of the law. This is what Paul was alluding to when he says that “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6). My friends, God ensures us that love is the fulfillment of the law. It is in the light of love that Jesus affirms the original intent of the law when he states that the two greatest commandments are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22:37). If you’re struggling in your marriage, your family, or a friendship, take shelter in the righteousness of the resurrected Christ. In him, we are no longer slaves to our sin. We are set free. And with this freedom comes the freedom to pursue what is good before God, and before our neighbor.