Spiritual Soup for the Hungry Soul: Spiritual Soup

By Greg Albrecht

A collection of 48 carefully selected messages. In each of these 48 messages, Greg will pique your spiritual appetite with a rich and satisfying Christ-centered meal, offering plenty of food for thought, with a special emphasis on God’s love and grace (and according to letters we receive, people hunger to learn more about God’s mercy, love and grace!). Organized seasonally, with a message designated for each week of the year, Spiritual Soup for the Hungry Soul makes a great devotional or a companion to other studies and resources.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CWR Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781889973098

Greg Albrecht

Greg Albrecht is president of Plain Truth Ministries, teaching via the weekly Christianity Without the Religion (CWRa), and serves as an editor of our two magazines. Greg was born in Kansas and grew up in Texas and California. He received his BA in theology and pastored churches in England, later serving as a college professor and administrator in California. Greg holds an MA in biblical studies from Azusa Pacific University. He is author of nine books:  Bad New Religion, Revelation Revolution, Between Religious Rocks & Life’s Hard Places, Unplugging from Religion…Connecting with God, Spiritual Soup for the Hungry Soul (volumes 1, 2 and 3), Rejecting Religion…Embracing Grace and A Taste of Grace.    

Book preview

First week of January

The Ministry of Death OR the Ministry of Life

Keynote Passage:

He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? —2 Corinthians 3:6-8

He looked at me and said, "It happened while I was in

church. It was the end of the service, everyone was standing, and so

was I. I was doing the same religious thing that everybody else was

doing, the same reli­gious thing I had done for over 25 years. My

family was there. My mother was there. It was the same place we

always went. We did the things they told us we should. The ser­mons

usually either scolded us or berated us.

"That week the sermon had been another ‘you’re not good enough’ sermon. After the sermon, during the final prayer, the thought hit me, ‘You know. This is ludicrous. I am never going to be good enough. I’ve been trying to do all this stuff for 25 years. I have been trying to get better. I’ve been trying to do more and more and more, but something is just not working.’

"I realized that I had sat there in church hundreds of times, filled with guilt and shame as a result of the sermon, and every time I resolved that I would do better. Each time I determined to do a bunch of stuff that I really believed would make God happier. For all those years I really thought I could influence how God thought about me. All those years I thought it was all about me and what I did or did not do.

"But that day in church it suddenly hit me. Based on an honest evaluation of my progress in twenty-five years, I had-n’t changed that much. Twenty-five years of beating my head against a wall. Twenty-five years in the same church, sever­al different pastors, but it had been the same old beat-’em up message. Twenty-five years of the same old spiritual mug­gings. Twenty-five years of the same old ‘you’ve got to do more’ diatribes.

So I was standing there and I realized this was all an illusion. We were praying, and my eyes should have been closed, but I just had to look around the church. People seemed comfortable, they seemed secure and so self-assured. But it seemed to me like we were all standing there like so many little religious clones, something like the Stepford Wives. I wanted to start screaming. I wanted to say ‘Don’t you see!? This is nothing but dead religion. This is dead reli­gion—dead, I’m telling you—it’s dead. God is not here. I don’t think he ever was.’

I had to think about this conversation as I was study­ing our passage in 2 Corinthians. Our passage today talks about a new covenant—a new relationship—a new way of relating to God. The Apostle Paul claims that the old covenant, the former way of relating to God, brings death, whereas the new covenant brings life.

The man who was describing his 25 years in religion sud­denly woke up while he was in the very heart of the control center of religion. There he was, in formal, structured services, a time when he was told when to sit down, stand up, kneel and how many religious hoops he needed to jump through.

And it was there, during a time when he was enduring his weekly browbeating that he realized it was all a sham. What he was experiencing was nothing but dead religion.

I will always remember that conversation and so many others like it. This man was so excited telling me about his new awareness of God (something the book of Galatians calls freedom in Christ) that I could hardly get a word in. But I didn’t want to say much. I just wanted him to explode in all of his excitement and let all of this pent up frustration about 25 years of religious bondage come out. He needed to vent, so I listened.

It wasn’t as if I had no idea about what he was talking about. In fact, had I wanted to, I could have played the game of one-up-manship. I could have told him that I had not only experienced 25 years, but my time inside exceeded his by at least ten more years. In all, if it’s anything to brag about, I served somewhere between 35-40 years of religious hard time. I often talk about it, with a little dash of humor, as the time I served (laughing about painful experiences can be good medicine).

The man talked for at least 30 minutes, and then later, I did tell him a little of my own story. I told him that his term dead religion was unnecessary, because Christ-less reli­gion, by its very nature, is dead. Religion, the idea that human performance of religious dogmas and rituals will gain us a higher standing with God than we would have otherwise enjoyed, lacks authentic spiritual vitality or life.

The de facto goal of religion is to strangle and choke any­one who enjoys authentic Christ-centered life, until they too are dead. Spiritual life is a threat to religion and all of its grim and haggard captives.

That’s what Paul is talking about in our passage today. He’s talking about the difference between rules and rituals, between ceremonies and creeds, between prescriptions and potions, which are, in his terminology, the old covenant and the new covenant.

In this passage Paul is saying that he doesn’t need any letter of recommendation, in terms of his ministry. The Corinthian church itself was his letter of recommendation. What was happening in the lives of the Corinthian church was Paul’s recommendation as a pastor. They were walk­ing in a new life, they were a letter that had been written by Christ, by the very hand of our Lord, and, as a result, they were ministers of the new covenant.

By contrast, Paul says, the literal letter of the law kills, it is a ministry of death which was chiseled in stone on the tablets of the law. The law brought condemnation, but the new covenant brings life.

In our keynote passage Paul is contrasting spiritual death with new life, the dynamic and exuberant relational life in Christ we are offered by God’s grace. Paul is talking about intimacy with God. Religion never produces inti­macy with God. Religion produces intimacy with obliga­tions. Religion will keep you chained, in close proximity, to all of your religious debts.

Religious legalism and authoritarianism will never want you to get close to God. Thanks to the efforts of perform­ance-based religion, the only god many know is the lower case g god of religion, the god of condemnation, the god who must be appeased, the insatiable god, the god who demands, threats, intimidates and demands vengeance. The god of overbearing, oppressive religion is a god of fear. 

We’re going to explore the contrast between the dynam­ic life we can have in Christ with the spiritual death we experience at the hands of Christ-less religion. The choice of The Ministry of Death OR the Ministry of Life gets to the heart of the difference between religion and authen­tic Christianity.

Our keynote passage is but one of many New Testa­ment passages that clearly tells Christians that the old covenant is dead—it’s, as Hebrews 8:13 says, obsolete. Remember 8-track tape players? You may have an old 8­track player in your garage or attic, and you might even have some old 8-track tapes, but you don’t use them anymore. This is the age of CDs.

There is no way, from a Christian perspective, that the old covenant, or any part of it, can be viewed as still in force or applicable. It’s a bucket with a hole in it. It doesn’t work. It’s bankrupt. It’s kaput. Our passage says that the Old Tes­tament, its old covenant, its covenant of law, which includ­ed the Ten Commandments as given at Sinai, is the min­istry of death.

This passage says that the New Testament, the new covenant we are given in and through the blood of Christ, is the ministry of life. There are four phrases that spring out of this passage—these four phrases are coupled, giving us two comparisons:

Comparison #1:

1) The letter kills

2) The Spirit gives life

Comparison # 2:

3) The ministry of death

4) The ministry of the Spirit

A law-based, rules-focused ministry or church will even­tually turn you into a hypocrite, because in a religious envi­ronment where the emphasis is on human perfection and human performance, you can never admit to being who you really are. In such a religious environment you must pretend that everything in your life is near-perfect, because if you give any hint that you are less than perfect you will be regard­ed as and probably treated as a failure. So, in order to sur­vive and thrive within religious legalism, you must pretend to be someone (a near-perfect person) whom you are not.

In such an atmosphere people are forced to wear a mask, to put on their game face when they show up for reli­gious activities, services and performances.

You see, if you actually attempt to live by the law, if you attempt to relate to God on the basis of your deeds and your performance, you are living under condemnation. You will have to hide who you really are. You will be forced to become a hypocrite.

Religious laws demand that you live according to a per­fect standard, and within the world of religious legalism, mistakes are not tolerated. Christ-less religion does not suf­fer fools gladly.

A legalistic, authoritarian, rules-based church, ministry or pastor will inevitably produce judge-mentalism, self-right­eousness, shame, guilt and spiritual arrogance. Captives and slaves of a ministry of death are obsessed with perform­ance and perfection. They are always chided to produce more, more, more. They are urged, by spiritual taskmas­ters, to go faster, faster, faster. Wretched souls who are addicted to Christ-less religion suffer a never-ending spiri­tual diet of fear, shame and guilt.

On the other hand, a grace-based, Christ centered min­istry, church or pastor will be focused on Jesus Christ. A Christ-centered church, ministry or pastor will ensure that Jesus is at the center of all teaching, all outreach, all mis­sions and all goals and purposes. God, through a grace-oriented ministry of life, produces love, acceptance and peace. In such a Christ-centered environment you will find true humility on the one hand, and confidence and trust in God on the other. You will experience real people who don’t need to pretend or hide. They have no fear, for Jesus lives in them.

In Christ you will not have to pretend you are perfect, because you will know that your relationship with God does not depend on what you have done or what you will do. If Christ is in you and you are in him, you will know that your relationship with God is based on what Christ has done.

When you live your life by the ministry of life, as Paul tells us, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). In Christ you are in a min­istry of life, and you don’t live under condemnation.

When you live by the ministry of life, you discover that you are alive—alive with hope, with mercy, with compassion and with grace. When you live in a ministry of life, then Christ lives within you. In Jesus’ ministry of life, you are actually in union with Christ. You are one with him, he is in you and you are in him. In Jesus’ ministry of life, you are free in Christ. You are now free to do what was impossible before. Now you can love unconditionally and live unselfishly.

If you are in a ministry of death—if fear, superstition, guilt and shame overshadow your life, then you are in the midst of a spiritual cemetery. There is no spiritual life in such a setting, only death. If a ministry of death has a choke hold on you—it may well characterize God’s grace as per­missiveness, as immorality and self-centered indulgence.

But that’s all that the ministry of death can do when confronted with the ministry of life. Death can only attempt to bring down life to its level. A ministry of death will often accuse those who speak of God’s grace, those who experi­ence genuine freedom in Christ, as being immoral and per­missive, as taking advantage of God and making a mockery of his laws.

Jesus took spiritual and religious captivity and put it in prison (Ephesians 4:7-8). The effect of Jesus’ Cross and his victorious resurrection out of his tomb was to conquer death and the grave, conquering both physical death and spiritual death, the spiritual death of religious bondage. Let’s conclude with another passage from Paul:

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nail­ing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authori­ties, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross (Colossians 2:13-15).

Originally given January 13, 2008

Second week of January

Son of a Preacher Man

Keynote Passage:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoev­er wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? —Matthew 16:24-26

The passage in Matthew that forms the basis of our message talks about losing your life so that you might gain it. At first it may seem to you that Jesus’ asser­tion amounts to little more than theological double-talk.

But this teaching begins to make profound spiritual sense when we realize that Jesus is talking about the divine new birth. He is talking about our willingness to allow God to do in us what we cannot do ourselves. Jesus is talking about a new life, a new kind of relationship. Jesus is talking, as we read in John 5:24, of crossing over from death to life.

Here’s the bottom line. The Bible insists that human life, as we know it, apart from God, is not life at all, but it is death. How do we lose our lives? We accept the invitation of God. We accept his gracious offer to join his family. This means that we must renounce and deny all fleshly pursuits as being less important than our relationship with God.

The invitation to follow Jesus is not an invitation to a life of prosperity, fame, fortune and endless physical delights. The invitation to follow Jesus is far from the seductions of feel-good religion and from pie-in-in-the-sky promises of the health and wealth/prosperity gospel. Jesus does not offer hot-tub religion to his followers.

Losing your life that you might find it is not theolog­ical hot air, it isn’t a laundry list of ceremonies, rituals, reg­ulations and deeds that some god of religion claims, after you do and do and do, will qualify you for some special gift, anointing, breakthrough or outpouring.

When Jesus talks about losing your life that you might find it, he is talking about being spiritually re-born, from a non-physical source. Losing our life that we might find it has to do with meeting God, or rather, him meeting us. Some­times God interrupts our comfortable lives to inform us that he has plans for us, and invites us to take him up on his offer. He doesn’t coerce or threaten or beg. The choice is always ours. The invitation to lose your life is an offer from God to re-birth you and me.

We have nothing to do with spiritual re-birth, other than either accepting or rejecting it. Our acceptance or rejection of the divine invitation draws a sharp distinction between spiritual re-birth and physical birth. In physical birth we have no choice about when and where we are born, or who our parents are. That is all decided for us.

But then, in both physical and spiritual re-births, there are similarities.

We do not earn our spiritual re-birth. We do not ensure that we are transformed by something we do.

We don’t impress God with our religious juggling, our spiritual dances, our religious hand-jive, ballet or soft-shoe. He doesn’t award us spiritual points based on our gymnastic religious performances. He intervenes in our lives, lavishing us with his grace, based on his goodness, not ours.

Think of the wise men from the East who came to vis­it the newborn Jesus. One day they were leading a normal life, doing their astronomical calculations, consulting their star charts, putting in a 9-5 day, washing their camels and eating dinner with the family at night. They were doing what­ever it is that wise men do.

Then, there they were, the very next day, chasing a sign

from heaven. Their lives were beginning to be transformed. God was rocking their world.

There was Moses, in the desert, minding his business, tending his flocks. Then he saw it, a bush that burned and burned and burned, but never burned up. When Moses came near, God had a message for him. If Moses accepted, which of course he did, God would change Moses’ life.

When God changes our lives, he does it by his power, by his grace and according to his plan. When we draw near, as the wise men did, we see, as did the shepherds in the fields, the brilliant, celestial glory to which God has called us.

The lusts, envies and vanities of this life are over­whelmed by the blazing light of God’s love. The blazing light of the star over Bethlehem leads us to Jesus. Law is over­whelmed by grace as we are drawn by the heavenly hosts who sing praise to God.

By God’s grace, we are enabled to move from darkness to light, from death to life, from the temporal to the eternal.

Consider the story of Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK Jr.). He went into the family business and became a minister. He once said, I grew up in the church. I’m the son of a preach­er.... My grandfather was a preacher, my great grandfather was a preacher, my only brother is a preacher, my daddy’s brother is a preacher. I grew up in the church and it was kind of inherited religion and I had never felt an experience with God in the way that you must if you’re going to walk the lonely paths of life.

In Montgomery, Alabama, where MLK Jr. first pastored, a woman named Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a city bus. At that time, in the culture of the American South, the back of the bus was considered to be that part of the bus where blacks had to sit. Rosa Parks’ refusal to be dehu­manized ignited a storm of protest. MLK Jr. was one of the leaders of that protest.

It was in the midst of standing for the just cause of civ­il rights that MLK Jr. started to understand what it is like to lose your life that you might find it.

He started to receive hateful phone calls. He received threats to his person and to that of his family, including his beautiful little baby daughter who had just been born.

MLK Jr. wrote that it was in the midst of this strife that, in his

words, I discovered that I had to know God for myself. I was at my kitchen table, and I bowed my head in prayer, I will never forget it. And it seemed at that moment that God told me, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world.’ I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on.

MLK Jr. discovered that each of us will find a personal relationship with God that often follows the blood, sweat and tears of our lives. God offers us his outstretched hand. We do not receive guarantees of having a special relationship with God because our family always went to the right church. We do not receive guarantees that we have an intimate rela­tionship with God because we belong to the right religious club. God does not relate to us on the basis of the corporate religious memberships and certificates we hold. God relates to each of us personally.

By the same token, God does not write off any of us either, on the basis of who we are or what we have done or not done. No matter what our station or status, no matter what our past, no matter what evil deeds we may have done or in which we have participated, we are all equal before God.

God loves us all. That’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it? Many people (most, perhaps) don’t fathom how God can love us all. There are, after all, some people who are horrible peo­ple. How can God love them?

The answer is simple, but profound, and one at which we can only arrive in and through Jesus. God does not love any one of us on the basis of the good we do or the bad we don’t do. God loves each of us equally based on his goodness.

His love for us does not change based on our perform­ance. Of course he is happier when we do a good deed— when we kiss our wife, mow the neighbor’s yard, help some­one paint their house or read a book to a young child than when we curse or swear, have too much to drink or when we become moody and shrink into our own self-centered world.

But while God is pleased to see us do good things, there is no way in heaven or on earth that we will ever be able to do enough good things to make God love us. God loves us because of who he is, not because of the person we are.

January is a time when we honor men and women like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. for courageously stand­ing up against the status quo in pursuit of justice and truth.

Of course, such bold and brave actions flow out of Chris­tians because of the courage of Jesus Christ who lives his life in us. We don’t have the ability to do all the right things all of the time. That kind of courage—that ability, that moral­ity, that commitment—comes from only one Source.

Faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone is the way Christ followers often refer to the Source of faith and grace, the Source of authentic Christianity.

One of the great movies of all time was based on one of the great novels of all time—To Kill a Mockingbird. The movie was first released in 1962 during the same time when Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. and tens of thou­sands of lesser-knowns were making their stand for truth and justice.

The novel was completed only two years before, in 1960. It’s a semi-autobiographical account by Harper Lee of life growing up in a small town in Alabama in the 1930s. It was Lee’s first and only novel and it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1960. This was a novel and movie that reflected the deep racial prejudice and hatred that existed in the American South, and for that matter, anywhere in the world where human beings live.

The story is about a tomboyish six-year-old girl named Scout, her ten year-old brother Jem, and their widower-attorney-father Atticus Finch, played in the movie by Gregory Peck. This movie helps us realize how we all rely on stereotypes and tradition to come to our judgments and conclusions.

This story can help us discover that God is above all of the earthly corruption that so easily perverts our relation­ship with him. Sadly, it is within the institutions that attempt to represent God to humans that some of the most diaboli­cal perversions of his nature occurs. It is when religious men and women attempt to speak for God, but instead lead us far away from him that incalculable damage is done to our relationship with God.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch defends a black man who is falsely accused of raping a white woman. The respected Atticus, courageously attempting to defend his innocent black client, becomes embroiled in a world of racial hatred and prejudice.

Even though Atticus proves his client innocent, the jury determines otherwise, so Atticus Finch loses the trial, but it is in losing the trial that Atticus finds his life. It is in los­ing what many might feel is his own reputation, it is in stand­ing against what most of his white neighbors and peers feel is right, that Atticus Finch finds his own life.

This lesson is not lost on his two children. One night, after his six-year-old daughter Scout has endured a partic­ularly hard time at school, Atticus finds his daughter sitting on the slatted front porch swing and sits down next to her.

He listens to her feelings, her pain and embarrassment, all of which have to do with not getting along with people. In one of the great lines from this movie Atticus says,

If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

He is, of course, teaching his young daughter one of the first lessons about finding her life through losing it. He is teaching Scout to look at situations through the eyes of another. You never really understand a person until you con­sider things from their point of view, until you get inside their skin and walk around in it. It’s a lesson MLK, Jr. learned and helped tens of millions in the United States, and for that matter, the world, start to learn.

If the basis of our relationship with God and other human beings is our own goodness, our own religion and our own ideas of right and wrong we don’t know the one true God and experience an intimate relationship with him.

In order to find God we must surrender our cherished religious notions and traditions. We must repent of the ideas we have accepted that assure us that our religious actions make us better than others. We must surrender the stereo­types we have of God—many of which are religious mis­representations—so that we might know God as he is, not the way we want him to be, but the way he is. We must accept the reality that we don’t control our relationship with him—we don’t set down the rules, we don’t govern the rela­tionship. We don’t manipulate God into doing what we think he should or what we want him to do.

Our relationship with God is all about his goodness, our relationship with God is all about his grace. He doesn’t love us because of all of the good things we have done, are doing, or that we promise to do for him. God loves us because he is good. It’s all about Him.

So when we lose our lives, spiritually, and when we gain them; when we are given eternal life, God transforms us from what we were to what he wants us to be.

God will transform us from self-centered, hateful, spite­ful, vindictive, malicious, jealous and pride-filled human beings into his very own children. We become, by a divine act, by a miracle, by the will of God, his very own children. The Bible calls this change or conversion a new life, a new birth. The Bible speaks of this change as being born again spiritually, being transformed from what we were to what God creates and produces within us.

When our divine transformation happens we lose our present lives, which are temporary mortal lives we experience until we die either of disease, accident or natural causes. When we willingly surrender our lives (which amounts to the death of life the way we have lived it) we exchange that life, because of God’s grace, for new life, for the life of our risen Lord who lives his life within us.

Some have called it the great exchange. It is a great deal, isn’t it? Death for life. Physical existence in this mor­tal body for eternal life in God’s presence. Such a deal!

That’s what losing our life to gain it is all about.

Originally given January 20, 2008

Third week of January

The Law Was Given Through Moses – Grace and Truth Came Through Jesus Christ

Keynote Passages:

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. —John 1:17

Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil cov­ers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend our­selves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

—2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

Here’s a news flash! Religion is

confrontational and hostile to anyone that dares to differ with it. Religion is, at best, irrelevant to our relationship with God. Christ-less religion actually leads people away from God!

Grace-less religion advances its agenda, which is all about the relationship it offers (or inflicts upon) its fol­lowers. The relationship religion offers usually includes a relationship with a building, with real estate, with icons, with treasures (real or imagined) and with rituals and per­formances and traditions which are themselves reputed to be of heavenly value. In many cases religion promises spir­itual rewards based on an individual’s relationship with a multi-national religious corporation. Your relationship with that legal, religious entity, says religion, is based on law— a law which is, when all is said and done, its laws, its rules, its regulations.

But when we carefully look at the gospel of Jesus Christ, we see a dramatically different picture emerging. We see Jesus proclaiming a personal relationship with God, given to us by the boundless riches of his grace. The gospel of Jesus Christ offers us close, personal relationship with God, not mediated by human power structures and authoritarian dogma, but mediated solely by Jesus, God in the flesh. Your relationship with God, says your Bible, is based on his amaz­ing grace.

I believe that authentic Christianity is all about freedom in Christ—often at the expense of, and in spite of, corporate/ denominational membership. The Law Was Given Though Moses—Grace and Truth Came Through Jesus Christ will further explore and discover how God makes himself known in our lives. We will do this by studying John 1:17 in conjunction with 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2.

In these two passages, Moses and Jesus (or Christ, or the Lord) are contrasted. Moses is mentioned three times, Jesus Christ our Lord is mentioned seven times.

In these two passages we read the words veiled and unveiled in reference to our relationship with God three times. Truth is mentioned twice, with other key words and terms being law, grace, mercy, old covenant and freedom.

Consider first of all the single verse in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, the verse that gives our sermon its title, The Law Was Given Though Moses—Grace and Truth Came Through Jesus Christ.

Here are two distinct ways of relating to God, both of which were given to humans by God.

The first one, the old covenant, was given to a select group of people, the Jews, and no one else. The first way of relating to God was given on the basis of the rule of law. This first covenant, this first agreement, was given to the Jews by Moses, an imperfect human leader.

But when God gave the new covenant, when he gave us grace and truth as a way of relating to himself, he gave it to all humanity. There are no new covenant stipulations as to race, creed, color or gender. All have equal access to God in the new covenant.

And when God gave the new covenant of grace and truth, contrasted to the old of the law, he did not delegate its delivery to a human messenger. He didn’t write the new covenant on two tablets of stone. God brought the new covenant to us with his own hands, in the person of Jesus, God in the flesh.

The contrast offered in John 1:17 could not be more striking. Jesus is the new Moses, the transcendent Moses, the One who leads his people through a different kind of exodus. We must remember that the original audience to whom John wrote was composed primarily of Jews in whose minds Moses loomed as a super-hero.

John told this audience (and all of us, of course) that Jesus, not Moses, is the true liberator. The freedom Jesus offers is not liberation from the physical nation of Egypt, not from physical bondage, but from religious entities that enslave us. He came to set spiritual captives free!

Then we come to 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2. This passage clearly articulates that the old covenant was temporary and that it is now, as Hebrews 8:13 tells us, obsolete. In our pas­sage in 2 Corinthians Moses, the lawgiver, came down from Sinai after being in the presence of God.

Paul likens the face of Moses, at the time he came down from the mountain, as a face that was shining so brightly that the people had to hide from him, because of the law God gave Moses. The radiance and the glory of the law Moses brought down the mountain and the brightness reflected in his face was short-lived. God didn’t intend for the law of Sinai to be eternal. Human religious innovations and traditions have taken the old covenant and attempted to enforce it beyond the Cross of Christ.

Paul says that Moses had to veil his face. Why? So that the people would not notice that the glory that originally radiated from Moses (due to the fact that Moses had just been in the presence of God) was fast fading away.

Moses had to hide because the glory was fading, and Paul, perhaps stretching the metaphor but certainly not stretching the truth, says that to this day when people read Moses, when their focus and concentration is on the law, their spiritual vision is impaired—they have a veil over their faces!

Paul says the law hardens people, it covers their hearts. Making the law one’s priority, Paul says, obscures the true nature of the relationship God offers to us.

But Paul says, in 2 Corinthians 3:16, whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

There is no freedom in the law. Paul is, of course, not saying the specific law to which he has reference was wrong, for it was given by God. As he says in the book of Romans the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good (Romans 7:12).

But just because something is holy, righteous and good doesn’t mean that it should be the focus of our worship. The fact that God has deemed something to be holy, right­eous and good doesn’t mean that the entity to which he has imparted holiness has any power to forgive sin, to redeem us and spiritually transform us into having an intimate rela­tionship with God.

The law served Jesus—the law is not on the throne— Jesus is. Paul is saying that the old covenant of relating to God on the basis of the law is gone, that God never intend­ed for it to last, and that anyone who attempts to relate to God on the basis of human ability to measure up to any code of laws is, in effect, riding a dead horse.

Christ-less religion is dead, because it is based on relat­ing to God on the basis of law, rather than on the basis of grace. When and if the New Testament, the new covenant given to us in the blood of Christ, is preached, taught and understood in a legalistic way, giving priority to laws and performance, then our minds and hearts will be veiled and spiritual vision will be impaired. If legalism is our perspec­tive, then we will eventually start worshipping the created instead of the Creator.

Many of you know exactly what I’m talking about. You have your own stories and your own experiences with a religious mindset that puts law on the throne. In many cas­es you endlessly heard about the Ten Commandments and how you had to obey them or else. You may have also heard, in a law-based religious mindset, that it is not just the Ten Commandments but there are other parts of the old covenant we are required to keep and observe, and if we don’t, God will not be happy with us.

In your past, you may have heard, from one version of religion or another, that God would not be happy with you if you did not conform to certain religious traditions and dogmas. You may have been threatened with what was called the law