Lent day 14 - laws

Yesterday the boys and I flew home from England where we had been visiting Mum.  Iv’e flown a gazillion times in my life but I never cease to have that small thrill of wonder every time a plane takes off.  That feeling of the revs on the runway and then the smooth transition from ground to air and the soft thunk of the wheels coming up underneath me.   And almost every time I fly I recall a sermon I once heard decades ago by Alan Vincent about the law of sin and death.

Alan explained that God makes laws which are irrefutable, immutable, eternal.  These are not only the physical laws which govern the way the world actually holds together ( gravity , electromagentism etc) but the spiritual laws which underpin the physical ones.   Like the fact that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.  There won’t be any choice about that.  God has decreed it.

There are however laws which can be superseded by other laws.   For example the law of sin and death, which says that all men are held accountable for their attitudes and actions towards God and will be judged and condemned accordingly, is superseded by the law of grace.  Which says that God, in Jesus can pardon our sins and set us free from them.    Alan Vincent explained it using the example of an aircraft and I always remember the penny-dropping moment when I really clearly understood two things .  One about how flying works and one about how Jesus works.

So here it is.  The law of gravity says that things with a large mass stay on the ground and don’t float away.  So therefore it should be impossible for a plane to fly right?  BUT the law of aerodynamics states that if the air pressure above a wing is lower than the air pressure below it then ‘lift’ is created and this counteracts and supersedes the law of gravity allowing, in certain instances, things to fly.  Things which shouldn’t, under the normal laws of physics, be able to fly.

In the same way, the law of sin condemns us all to a Godless eternity.  It states that regardless of how closely we try to keep all the laws God has ordained , we all fall short and therefore cannot be embraced by the pure blinding holiness of a righteous God.  But Jesus institutes a greater law.  He doesn’t abolish the law of sin, just as the law of aerodynamics doesn’t abolish the law of gravity.  But His grace, forgiveness, substitution, on the cross is SO much more powerful than the law of sin and death that it lifts us right out of the domain of that law and takes us, on wings like eagles, into a whole new realm.  

Cool eh?

Hope you never get on a plane again without remembering that.