WHO MAKES THE RULES?
When I started ‘big’ school, there were two things that we were given on the first day. The first was a homework diary and the second was a copy of the ‘School Rules’.
Rules are a fact of life.
There are rules of grammar and rules of the road. If you like to play games – you’ll have to abide by the rules. Rules are there to keep things running smoothly.
Nowadays it seems that fewer people pay attention to rules. There seems to be a spirit of ‘nobody tells me what to do’!
Yet … there are rules that we can’t break!
They are the natural laws – the rules of the universe: the laws of motion, the law of gravity. I must conform. I mightn’t like it but that’s too bad. They are the only natural laws we have!
The Bible tells us that the rules of the universe include what we call ‘spiritual laws’. Facts of the matter – the way it is in God’s universe – He is ‘the Creator‘ (Isaiah 40: 28) and He sets the rules.
The first spiritual law is ‘the law of sin and death‘ (Romans 8: 2b): ‘sin, when it is finished, brings forth death‘ (James 1:15). At Creation, God set Adam a test of obedience. Disobedience (i.e. sin) meant death: ‘in the day that you eat (of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) you shall surely die‘ (Genesis 2: 17). It was because of human disobedience that death and all its ghastly consequences came into human experience: ‘by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin‘ (Romans 5: 12). The world as it is today is the result of human sin – and day by day we all add to that problem.
The second spiritual law is ‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus‘ (Romans 8: 2a). The remedy for sin is not found in ourselves – it is found in Christ Jesus! All the religions in the world – separately or together – will do nothing to deal with the problem of sin and death! Life is found only in God’s Son: ‘in Him was life‘ (John 1: 4); ‘I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly‘ (John 10: 10). Like a kind of spiritual gravity, only Christ can bring us back to God.
It was a well known atheist who declared that he wouldn’t want to get into heaven on God’s terms.
Those are the only terms there are!