The other day I was sitting in our break room eating lunch and my boss commented on how I ate my hummus. He noticed that no matter how many times I'd dipped a veggie into it it stayed smooth on the top. We chuckled about how that fit my personality. A place for everything and everything in its place. I am a very black and white person. Right is right and wrong is wrong. I am an operations person in my work so that serves me well in making sure we abide by the guidelines, but that same trait applied to relationships and serving God can get me all out of whack.
In this chapter in the Bible, the author Paul talks about his people group and how they lived so wholly by the law in a legalistic way, but were forgetting how we are justified (I love the definition of justified "just as if I'd" never sinned). They had been raised in the church, so to speak, so they knew the rules, but the truth of the gospel is that nothing we do will give us eternity with God. They had been living in the freedom that comes through Christ apart from the law, then putting their religious piety back on when others were around so they looked good.
Paul called them on the carpet. He reminded them that even they (the religious leaders) couldn't live by the law. The law simply points out where our error is. The truth of the gospel is that our works, our good deeds, our obedience do nothing to justify us. It is only by faith in Christ that we are cleansed from our wrong. When we try to live just according to the "rules" we're no longer living by faith. We have to die to the rules so we can live for God.
Back to that black is black and white is white personality thing. Others around us might see some things a bit differently than we do, but God made us in wondrous variety. Let's learn to look for the differences in a positive way--let the different color lenses with which we view the world be that which brings us together into a beautiful bouquet. A bouquet of red roses is beautiful, but so is a bouquet that has all the different varieties, shapes, and colors of flowers.
I am going to be a vibrant deep pink peony and I am going to search out some roses and daisies and hydrangeas to fill out the bouquet of my life. And you know that little packet of stuff we put in flowers to help them stay fresh longer? That is the grace of Christ and I will use it liberally.
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