I'm learning that the more I see of the gospel, the more I see how
little I see it. For every inch gained in gospel understanding, I gain a
foot in seeing how little I grasp it. I peer over the ledge of grace
and see a new hundred-foot drop, which enables me to see also that the
cliff extends another mile beyond that.
There is an entire psychological substructure that, due to the Fall,
is a near-constant emission of relational leveraging, fear-stuffing,
nervousness, score-keeping, neurotic controlling, anxiety-festering
silliness that is not something I say or even think so much as something
I breathe. You can smell this on people, though some of us are good at
hiding it. And I'm seeing more and more, bit by bit, that if you trace
this fountain of scurrying haste, in all its various manifestations,
down to the root, you don't find childhood difficulties or a
Myers-Briggs diagnosis or Freudian impulses. You find gospel deficit.
All the worry and dysfunction and resentment is the natural fruit of
living in a mental universe of Law. The gospel really is what brings
rest, wholeness, flourishing, shalom---that existential calm that for
brief, gospel-sane moments settles over you and lets you see for a
moment that in Christ you truly are invincible. The verdict really is
in; nothing can touch you.
From another angle: Living by law, which we all believe we're not
really doing (those silly Galatians!) is deep and subtle and pervasive.
More pervasive than the occasional moments of self-conscious
works-righteousness would indicate. Those moments of self-knowledge are
indeed gifts of grace and not to be ignored. But they are only the
visible tip of an invisible iceberg. They are surface symptoms.
Law-ish-ness (in Gal 3:10 Paul uses the phrase, literally, "those who are of works of law") is by its very nature undetectable because it's natural, not unnatural, to us. Feels normal. Continue at Dane Ortlund
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