Becoming Dependent on Training Wheels

An article by Matt    No Comments

This morning I was thinking about the law…

My Tuesday morning bible study has been walking through Galatians these last few weeks and it has been good.  I have greatly enjoyed seeing the example that Paul puts forth when it comes to dealing with conflict in the church and being gracious.  This morning was a little different as Paul started to walk through how the law does not make us righteous, but serves as a guide as we walk in a faithful relationship with our God.  From the time that Moses received the law to the time that Christ walked the earth it would seem that the law changed from guiding people in their faith and relationship with God to become that which defined the faith of a God-follower.

While we were discussing the passage the idea of the law as training wheels came to mind.  I remember when I was learning to ride a bike that the training wheels that I used didn’t keep the bike perfectly balanced, but were set a little higher off the ground so that I could learn to balance the bike on my own.  If I lost balance the bike would tilt, and be a little cock-eyed, but it would guide me back to balance.  This is how I envision the law acting initially… as a guide to help learn balance.  The important thing was faith in God, and a desire to serve him.  He gave us the law in order to guide us in that pursuit (and to help us understand that we can never earn our own salvation).  As you fast forward to the time of Jesus it would seem that someone slowly lowered the training wheels until they kept the bike from leaning at all… and learning to balance was no longer needed.  Christ’s biggest issue with the religious leadership of the time was that they cleaned the outside of the cup while the inside was filthy.

It is easy at first to look at the political leadership of the time and get our noses out of joint and say “what were they thinking!?”  But in a way I understand how the gentle shift took place over the years.  It is far easier to teach the law than it is to teach relationship with God.  It is far easier to say “this is how to be righteous” than it is how to walk closely with God in the way that Abraham, Isaac, and Moses did.  As humans we seem to yearn for someone to tell us what we must do, to spell out the steps we must take.  We embrace the concrete and are intimidated by the abstract.

I look at all this and I wonder where have we in today’s church lowered the training wheels?  Where have we gone and made something that was intended to be a guide into that which defines our faith?  What things have we made into core parts of our faith that were never intended to be so?

I am still trying to wrap my head around this fully and would love your thoughts in the comments section.