It’s often called Maundy Thursday. The Thursday before Easter Sunday, Christ followers recognize the night Jesus had supper with his disciples for the last time before His death. After supper, He did something totally unexpected. He took the position of a servant and washed their feet. By this, He was demonstrating what He had said to them and lived before them.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
What a perfect day to share my thoughts about the law, its relationship to God’s grace, and how that looks in loving others.
What a perfect day to let Jesus wash our feet … and our hearts.
What a perfect day to reflect on His coming to us … that we might live forever with Him. Dying for us … that we might live forever with Him. And rising again … that we might live forever with Him.
As I said in an earlier post, Jesus said that His reason for coming was not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. Apart from the law, we would never recognize how sinful we really are. We would never know how much the cross cost God. We couldn’t understand fully the depth of what was happening the night Jesus washed the feet of the disciples. Apart from the law, we would never understand the love of God. We would never be thankful enough to God for the resurrection kind of victory we have. Apart from the law, we would never recognize our own inability or capability to love each other wholly and fully (with grace and truth).
“But sin, so that it would be shown to be sin, produced death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual—but I am unspiritual, sold into slavery to sin. For I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want—instead, I do what I hate. But if I do what I don’t want, I agree that the law is good. But now it is no longer me doing it, but sin that lives in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I want to do the good, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil I do not want! Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me.
So, I find the law that when I want to do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being. But I see a different law in my members waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
Although the resurrection guarantees our ultimate victory, our fight with the law won’t end until Jesus returns. We will wobble from legalism to liberalism day after day. We will misunderstand our freedom. We will misuse the law. We will judge what we shouldn’t and not judge what we should.
Oh to grace how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be!
And on this Maundy Thursday evening, I am a grateful leper on my knees – humbly thanking God for saving a wretch like me and asking Him to help me to love and serve others as Christ has loved me.
Christ alone; cornerstone.
Weak made strong in the Savior’s love.
Through the storm, He is Lord!
Lord of all!
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Unchained Melodye 