There’s a worship song that was big in the 90’s called “Take my Life.” The song didn’t have these words in it, it was just the title, but the verses themselves were simple.
“Faithfulness/Righteousness/Holiness is what I long for, … is what I need, …is what you want from me” In my own church, often a verse was added to say “Brokenness.”
Theologically speaking, I don’t think God requires brokenness of us, but I think that we all do need to be made aware of our own fragility, which I suppose you could read into this song.
Something that I’ve been seeing more and more the last few days as I wade through the thoughts of other people on the internet is that we are all really broken, and many of us don’t realize it at all, or don’t know to call it that.
Legalism is a wildfire that threatens to destroy the church, but I’ve noticed that the people who buy into legalistic teachings most easily are those who are really in need of freedom and peace in their lives. They think that the law will bring freedom, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Paul tells us that those who live under the law will be judged by the law (Romans 2:12).
But later in the same letter, he says this:
“Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” (3:19-22, emphasis mine)
So what Paul is saying here is that no law can make you righteous in the eyes of God. In fact, law does the exact opposite, it condemns everyone. The only way to be righteous is through faith, not law.
Of course, the law Paul is speaking of specifically is the Law (capital L) of Moses. He’s not talking about Roman law, although the greater (Law of Moses) can encompass the lesser (law of government), and also any conditions that we put on ourselves that are not necessarily laws that God asks us to put on ourselves (certain clothing, hairstyles, etc.).
But here’s the deal breaker. God doesn’t put these laws on us to follow. WE do. We are the ones saying to ourselves “if I want to please God I must do such and such.” While certain things do please God and others do not, I’m quite certain that he is more concerned with the condition of our hearts than whether or not we wear dresses or a shirt and tie every day.
There are many other ways to be legalistic besides our dress, there are those who feel that we should not “hang out” with non-believers in a social setting, restricting our gatherings to “Christians only,” but these people break their own rules when they have parties and invite family members who aren’t believers (you know you do it, just admit it!). There are people who believe that they go to the “Only church that will be saved in the end” because they are the only ones “doing it right.” Which is really sad, because some of them will be on the wrong side of the court when the day comes, and I’m not trying to make light of the situation, it is really gravely serious.
But back to brokenness. I think that it’s important to admit to God and to ourselves that we don’t have it all together. That we haven’t figured out every bit of theology yet (especially you youngsters…hehe) because we don’t really know what we’re talking about. Even the best theologians don’t have all the answers, and a 20 year old kid who arrogantly tells everyone “this is how it is” is cruisin’ for a bruisin’.
We are broken vessels. We came into this world having not sinned yet, but having the nature of sin already in our genes. Once we realized our free will as small children and began to lie, the process of breaking had begun. Sometimes others cracked us even more, sometimes we did most of the shattering ourselves. It doesn’t really matter how we were broken, we are humpty-dumpty, but understand this. God CAN put us back together again, but we have to be willing to let him. The only way to do this is to understand our freedom to be broken and clueless in the meantime. It’s not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick. If we can admit we’re sick, the Doctor will see us.
