A Balancing Act

Both the Law and the Gospel must be kept in balance for us to be spiritually healthy.

Remember when playgrounds still had teeter-totters? You know, when you had one big board that sat on a center pivot point, and you’d get on one side and your best friend would get on the other? You’d push up and they’d go down. They’d hit bottom and then push up, and you’d go down. Up, down, up down. Lot of fun, right?
But what was the most fun on a teeter-totter? When you got down to the bottom and stayed there, right? And your friend is there, hanging in mid-air, little legs kicking. And you’d look right at them and their eyes would get all big and round, because they knew what you were about to do . . . and they’d say, “Don’t you do it!” and you’d say, “Oh, I’m gonna do it!” And they’d say, “Don’t do it!” and you’d say, “Oh, I’m gonna do it!” And then suddenly you’d jump off and they’d rocket to the ground, crashing their rear end down on that board when it hit. Probably breaking their tailbone . . . oh yeah, good times . . . goooood times. Teeter-totters were fun!
Well, I take that back. Teeter-totters need balance to work properly. And while it was fun as long as you were the one causing the imbalance, it wasn’t fun at all when someone else did it to you! Then it wasn’t fair!
See, I never thought that it would be possible to learn an important spiritual lesson from a teeter-totter, but I did. And the lesson is this: if you don’t want to get hurt, balance is important.
We meet people all the time whose lives seem out of balance. It’s pretty easy to tell. I met a guy once who bought his dream car: a tricked-out Corvette. Wouldn’t even park normally; the car was so valuable that he was one of those guys who always ate up four parking spots just so no one else could park near his precious Corvette and scratch it all up. He had this great car, but he couldn’t afford anything else. Not rent. Not heat. Not food. His life was out of balance.
Or maybe you know someone who spends all their time on one particular passion of theirs. Could be a hobby or maybe even a worthwhile cause. But they spend so much time on that one thing that they don’t have time for relationships anymore. No friends, no family . . . just that one, all-consuming passion of theirs. Their lives are out of balance.
Now that’s sad to see, isn’t it? We just want to grab them and tell them, “Look, I understand where you’re coming from and all . . . but you’ve got to get some balance back in your life!” It’s hard to see a person with their life out of balance.
But as sad as it is when a person’s physical life is out of balance, it’s especially bad when a person’s spiritual life is out of balance. As Lutherans we often talk about two spiritual concepts that are equally important; two concepts that need to be kept in balance. Those concepts are called Law and Gospel, and they need to be kept in balance. If we get too far to one side or the other we’re missing something. We’ve upset the balance, and we’re going to be spiritually hurt.
This is what the Apostle Paul is trying to tell Timothy in the opening verses in our reading from I Timothy. Timothy is pastoring a church in the city of Ephesus, and there were apparently some supposed teachers there who were getting the message out of balance. From the reading, it sounds like what they were doing was preaching all Gospel and no Law.
We use the words “the Law” as a spiritual shorthand that basically means, “God’s commands.” The Law is what He has set down as being His requirements upon people. It’s His will for mankind. If you think of the Ten Commandments you’re pretty much on track. The Law of God are those things in which God looks to us and says, “This is what I expect of you.”
Now a lot of times we might be tempted to think of the Law in a negative fashion; a bunch of “thou shalt not” rules. Lines that we’re not supposed to cross. Things about which God says, “Do not do this!” But Paul says that the Law is good, if it’s used properly. How is this so?
The Scriptures show that the Law has three uses: three ways in which God uses His rules and expectations in our lives. The first is general: the Law restrains sin in the world. Now that’s good, isn’t it? I often like to say that a world in which everybody understands “Thou shalt not kill” is a pretty good place. That’s good, but it’s not what Paul’s talking about. He’s talking about the second use of the Law.
The second use of the Law is like this: it’s a mirror. This particular mirror was left in the church after Dale and Erin’s wedding. I’ve been wondering why that was . . . but now I understand! It was left here so that I can use it in a sermon illustration!
A little over a week ago a young bride used this mirror to make sure that she was beautiful for her wedding day. Every imperfection was looked at closely in this mirror, and it was covered up or fixed.
But what if the imperfections that show up in this mirror are so deep . . . so horrifying . . . that they can’t be fixed? What if this was like the magic mirror from Snow White? The wicked queen looks into the mirror and says, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall . . . who is the most beautiful of all?” She expects the mirror to say, “You are, of course.” But the mirror tells her the truth: she’s not the most beautiful. She’s flawed. She’s imperfect. There’s a new standard by which the queen is now being judged . . . and she doesn’t measure up.
In the second use of the Law God holds up a mirror to our lives. Here God shows His demands for us and the Law clearly reveals that we don’t live up to it. We haven’t kept the Law completely, and so we’re lawbreakers. We’re sinners. We can look in this mirror and feel pretty good about ourselves . . . but when we look in the mirror of the Law we can only come to the conclusion that the only thing we are worthy of is God’s condemnation.
The mirror of the Law is a mirror of death. It shows us for what we truly are, and we can’t escape its awful truth. It’s hard to look at a mirror like that . . . but it is necessary.
It’s necessary because until you take a long, hard look into that mirror you can never realize—and thus never believe in—the wondrous beauty of the Gospel. What the Law kills, the Gospel makes alive. What the Law condemns, the Gospel forgives. When the Law says, “Guilty!” . . . the Gospel pronounces “Forgiven.”
See, that’s what the Gospel of Jesus Christ does. Through His death on the cross, Jesus Christ won forgiveness and redemption for any who would believe and trust in that Gospel. It is beautiful not because it denies the claims of the Law—the claims that says, “sinner!”—but because it affirms that claim. Jesus Christ looks at each of us, knowing the full extent of our sin, and yet He says, “I give my life for you.” He does not love us because we are beautiful, but instead we are beautiful because He loves us.
This is the beautiful truth that the so-called teachers in Ephesus were trying to subvert! They were trying to do away with the Law, saying that the believer had no use for the Law, because the grace of Jesus Christ had been applied to them! But if you take away the Law . . . if you take away the mirror . . . then you can no longer see the cross. The old rugged cross loses its beauty . . . it’s majesty . . . and it becomes just another tragic death of a good teacher instead of the final triumph of the Son of God over sin, death, and the devil.
How does this play out for you in your life? Have you been shying away from calling a sin what it clearly is: a sin? You can say anything you like . . . you might say, “Well, this is just the way I am.” Or maybe, “You just don’t understand what I’ve been through . . . if you’d understand that, then you’d understand why I act the way I do.” Or even—and this is my favorite—“I believe God understands.” You can say any of that, and it still won’t change the fact that the mirror of God’s Law shows sin in your life. You’re not fooling God . . . you’re probably not even fooling any of the rest of us . . . the only one you’re fooling is yourself. And that’s tragic . . . because by saying you have no sin is saying that God—and His Law—is a liar. By hiding from God’s mirror you’ve also hidden from His cross, and the cross is the only place where you can really get rid of your sin.
When I was little there was one time when I spilled a glass of milk on the kitchen floor. No one saw me do it, so I tried to cover it up. I grabbed a rug that was in the kitchen and threw it over the spilled milk and walked away, secure in my knowledge that my spill was hidden away.
But after some time went by, do you know what began to happen? The milk soaked into the rug and stained it. The milk went sour. It stank up the kitchen. And when someone finally pulled the rug up, peeling it up off of the floor that it had gotten stuck to, they got a big whiff of the sour stink of what I thought had been hidden away.
Hiding from the mirror of the Law doesn’t remove your sin . . . it just lets it fester and rot until the stink of it permeates everything else in your life. There is no balance of Law and Gospel in your life, because you have cast away the Law . . . but in the process you’ve also hidden away the Gospel . . . and you’re going to be spiritually hurt.
Instead of letting that happen, why not just learn to look honestly into the mirror? But not in an imbalanced way; looking only at the Law. Instead, learn to look at it this way: through the cross. Look at the mirror: do you still see yourself? Is your sin still there? Yes, of course . . . but what stands in front of it? The cross.
This is where we find balance between Law and Gospel: the cross. It’s where we can humbly say “I am a poor miserable sinner” in the very same breath that we say, “I am a forgiven and redeemed child of God.” Nothing taken away from the demands of the Law, and nothing hiding the beautiful Gospel. Just the cross, holding both Law and Gospel in perfect balance. That’s spiritually healthy.