TCP Primer #8 The Flexibility of Grace
Maintaining flexibility is one of the great secrets of a healthy existence. I remember when the children were young man they could bend, fall, twist and not break anything. When I was playing football or before I exercise and engage in an activity that may test my flexibility, it was and still is crucial to stretch. Why? because if you don’t maintain a flexible state of being, you are going to break something. Something is going to give and then someone is usually going to end up with you on a ‘stretcher’…a bit of irony…those who do not stretch will end up on a stretcher.
Mark chapter two reveals Jesus and his disciples being accused by the Pharisees as to why he and his disciples were not taking part in the ritualistic and religious fast. Jesus gave them two parables: (Mar 2:21-22 ESV) No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins–and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” Jesus was ushering in a New Kingdom…His kingdom…Not a kingdom of rules and regulations, that was Judaism, that was the law and it was already in place, and was founded on absolutes. Jesus was here to usher in the dispensation of Grace. To remove the handwriting of requirements against us, (Col. 2:14) and like the garment and the wine skin, there must be some flexibility. Grace does that!
When the grapes are crushed the natural process of fermentation begins to take place and that bacterial begins to feast on the sugar. The by product is gas as the bacterial sucrets alcohol which in turn preserves the juice turning it to wine. This gas causes expansion and something’s gotta give…you may be saying why not just leave it open and let the gas escape? Leaving the wine skin open, yes will let the gas out but it also lets fruit flies in and the interaction of the fruit flies turns the juice to vinegar and not wine. It’s about keeping contamination out, so the skin must be flexible and expandable while keeping it airtight. This is why so many christians are bitter and broken…the new wine of salvation is placed into the rigid wineskin of the law and boom!…everything goes bad. Jesus was saying that the new wine of the kingdom cannot be placed into the old and rigid wineskins of the law. They would burst and the old skin would be destroyed and the new wine would be spilled and wasted.
Listen, this Christian life can be a little gassy at times, and the rigidity of religion calls for absolutes and no room for error. The result is busted lives and wasted wine. The “working out of your salvation” is the process of preservation. You and I are in a process, a transformation is happening in our lives….we are moving from delicate, corruptible grapes and being transformed into a timeless preserved, fine wine, and that means there must be a flexible container. Grace does that! We have ups and downs ins and outs, life gets a little gassy and we need the flexibility grace gives. There must be some bend in order to keep from breaking. (Rom 5:20 ESV) Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, Thank you Jesus…for your great love and the flexibility of your grace that keeps my life from busting out when things start blowing up. Let’s stay limber. That requires daily stretching in the gospel of grace. Take some, Give some.
In Christ Jesus
David
