Rules for the Road

By Cheri Cowell –

Have you ever spent time with someone who criticizes and finds fault with everything and everyone around them? It is tiring being with these people.

Perhaps I should say it is tiring if we are working hard to not join them. It is easy if we just chime in, for all of us have a critical spirit by nature.

While walking by someone who is dressed inappropriately, a comment can be made about dressing to attract the wrong kind of attention, then the conversation quickly moves to how the morals of society are going down the drain, and how your mother never would have let you out of the house dressed that way. How easily we use our superior yardstick to judge others. I have often heard it said that we should be careful when pointing a finger at someone because when we do, there are four pointing back at us. Though we may not dress that way, we do many other things that in God’s eyes are just as wrong.

When studying Romans 8:1, it dawned on me I had heard this verse referred to when people were feeling guilt-ridden and needed relief, but I hadn’t really looked at what preceded the ‘therefore.’

Paul has just written his famous words, “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” He explains that his body is still a slave to the human desires he was born with (including a critical nature), yet he is now a member of a new kingdom with different rules. Jesus came along and said He knew we couldn’t keep all the rules, and that keeping rules was not the point. The new rule is to love others as yourself and love Him with all our hearts, minds, and souls.

When we do this, we desire to do what is right, and we have the power within us in the form of the Holy Spirit to do it – most of the time.

PRAYER: Thank You, God, for Your new kingdom with the new way of seeing the old rules. Help keep my heart, mind, and soul focused on You so I may give others the grace that has been freely given to me.

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2 NIV).