How does grace impact everyday life? Today I want to offer some thought by Paul Zahl in his book Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life. I have found this book rich but dense. While I do not agree with everything he says, I would strongly encourage the reading and reflection upon this book.
Zahl argues that the Law of God and the Law of human interactions behave in the same way. I believe he is correctly interpreting Paul's thought in Romans 2. This is a great point, so I will quote it at length and leave it for you to think about!
The commandment of God that we honor our father and mother is no different in impact, for example, than the commandment of fashion that a woman be beautiful or the commandment of culture that a man be boldly decisive and at the same time utterly tender.
Take the idea that a man should be decisive as well as outwardly expressive of his feelings, or that he should lead and be the passive sidekick for a strong woman. You may be thinking that this trivializes law by equating it with ever-changing, culturally conditioned "laws." But I am saying that they are the same thing.
How is this possible? How can Sinai law, with its ennobling demand for personal and social rectitude, be equated with the world of fashion or the world of psycho-sexual politics? But that is my point: they function exactly the same way in human experience. Men become bowed down and paralyzed in fact by demands from the other half of the human race, and women are utterly freighted by the conflicting demands to be a perfect professional and the mother of dazzling children. The weight of these laws is the same as the weight of the sublime moral law. Law, whether biblical and universally stated or contextual and contemporarily phrased, operates in one way. Law reduces its object, the human person, to despair.
This theology of everyday life makes no distinction between the law of God and the laws of human interaction individually felt and socially expressed. Law and laws constitute a unity in their effect!
Why is this idea resisted? It is resisted because it brings the faith of Christians too close to home. If the demand of God has to do directly with the subduing and depressing demands of one's faith or mother, or the guilt one feels in relation to one's siblings, or the high pressures of a job or a boss, then this Christianity might actually touch somebody. It might actually relate to people. Someone near me commented about a devout evangelical Christian in her family: "She is wholly sold out to the gospel just so long as it doesn't come anywhere near her real life."
Grace in Practice, 29
So what is the answer to this great problem? Jesus Christ the substitutionary atonement for sinners like us. He came to fulfill the Law and law (Matthew 5:17), and He did so perfectly. In the process, by His grace, we have fulfilled the Law and laws! "Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law." (Romans 3:31)
If believers in Christ could just believe this truth! Our feelings of guilt are real because we are law breakers everyday. How should we handle these feelings? Repent and believe! Cling all the more to Jesus. Our "trying harder" or living in guilt leaves us disconnected from the power source of the Christian life- the Holy Spirit who comes in response to our repentance and faith.
May the Lord bless us with joy as you reflect upon Christ's love for us and His work for us in fulfilling the Law. May despair, guilt, and self-effort/self-righteousness fall away as the Lord leads us to repentance and faith.
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