PODCAST
Relationships, Not Laws
June 7th, 2011
Romans 7:1-6
Fidel and his two brothers decided to skip choir rehearsal at church and instead go swimming in Lake Kivu, a beautiful lake within the Rift Valley in their home country of Rwanda. They knew well the family law forbidding them to swim in the dangerous lake where too many children had drowned. With their disciplinarian father out of the country though, they thought they could ignore the rule and avoid facing punishment. When they returned home however, their mother quickly noticed their water-wrinkled skin and immediately served justice to them all.
Their parents’ law forbidding them from swimming in Lake Kivu was not an abstract tool meant to make their lives miserable; it was a relationship-based guideline to keep them safe. God’s law is meant to provide protection and create harmony with him and within the human family. When we understand the loving grace God has for us, we are more likely to serve him with a new spirit of freedom and gratitude, rather than grudgingly out of for fear of punishment.
