Scripture Readings: Deuteronomy 7.6-11 and John 1.29-34
For you are a people holy to the Lord your
God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the
peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession. It was not because you were more
numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you—for
you were the fewest of all peoples. It
was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he
swore to your ancestors, that the Lord has brought
you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from
the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know
therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who
maintains covenant loyalty with those who love him and keep his commandments,
to a thousand generations, and
who repays in their own person those who reject him. He does not delay but
repays in their own person those who reject him. Therefore, observe diligently the
commandment—the statutes, and the ordinances—that I am commanding you today.
Grace and response. That is the foundational understanding
behind the Jewish law laid out in Deuteronomy (and elsewhere). God did something absolutely amazing. God delivered the Jewish people from bondage,
and guided them to a land of their own. This wasn’t something they earned; God did it because God is full of
grace and love. God made a promise, and
God keeps promises.
So how was Israel to respond? What did God ask of them in return? God gave the people guidelines for how to
live, and expected them to follow. It was how God asked Israel to respond to the
grace they had been shown.
The exact same principle applies to us today. God has done something absolutely amazing for
us through Jesus Christ. Forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, and a multitude
of other gifts. We didn’t earn this. God
did it because God is full of grace and love. And in response, God calls us to
live our lives in a certain way. God
calls us to live our lives as reflections of the grace and love that we have
been shown.
I pray that we use this season of Lent to remind
ourselves of the amazing grace that God has shown us. And to remind and dedicate ourselves that the
only fitting response to what God has done for us is to devote every aspect of
our lives to reflecting the grace and love we have been shown.
Allen Zugelter, Director of Evangelism & UrbanLife
