There seem to be those who hold to the notion that grace is a kind of “get out of jail free card”. They seem to think that God’s grace shakes clean the Etch-o-Sketch of their life, removing any remembrance of past sin without considering what that divine act means for the future. Does it mean you can now start over, recreating the list of sins from which you were just absolved? No, God’s grace is an opportunity. Specifically, it is the opportunity God provides for us to make things right so that we never again accumulate a list of sins needing to be undeservedly removed.
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Leading the return of the second remnant from Persia to Israel, Ezra finds that the first remnant living in the land has returned to the original sins which got them all into trouble in the first place. There were specific people groups which God commanded to remain apart from, groups which God judged for destruction because they did not simply reject Him, but actively led everyone with whom they came into contact to follow false gods. Ezra is overwhelmed that these Believers have allowed the practices of the world to live side-by-side with what they claim is obedience to God’s ways. So is Ezra simply being polite — or perhaps empathetic — in his prayer by using the pronouns “we” instead of “they”?
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It has been my experience that even the most naturally “gifted” person possessing exceptional expertise in a given field does not forgo study and commitment to that field, but that it merely comes much easier to them. Because of their heightened interest and seeming natural comfort with the topic, it may appear to the rest of us that is comes very easily, but a careful audit reveals that they actually spend quite a bit of time developing that predisposition into the formidable skill we so admire. So when an abundant desire is present for a deeper spiritual experience, why is it that so many pursue a supernatural kind of short-cut through signs, wonders, or even the gifts of the Spirit than directing it to the proven fertility of God’s Word?
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The manner in which they responded and the way they ordered the response is actually quite fascinating. They could have just said, “Hey, buddy, it’s none of your bees wax ’cause we’re protected under the law!” But instead of invoking the protection of an earthly institution, they provided the context in which both it and the activity taking place were subject to an even higher authority. They deferred to making everyone involved at every earthly level evaluate the quality of their own obedience to God’s Word and ways. They took what we might today call a “civil rights” issue and turned it into an opportunity for every party to determine to what degree their involvement transcended the civil to embrace the spiritual.
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Well, isn’t that just plain RUDE? Isn’t this elitism and discrimination on a pedestal? These people wanting to join in God’s work — whom we’ll come to call “Samaritans” — were distant blood relations, had a belief in God at least to the degree that they sacrificed to Him, and had an enthusiasm for seeing the temple rebuilt. And yet there is no room for interpretation of the meaning of their response: “You have nothing in common with us”. The returning exiles had a very clear understanding of what defined someone as a true believer.
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Once upon a time it was the practice of Christians to so intensely study Scripture in order to provide the guidelines of how to build and operate a church that it became an entire field of study called “ecclesiology”. In fact, when a scholar pursued their own personal study to formerly document Christian faiths and beliefs in what came to be commonly termed “Systematic Theology”, it was quite rare if a chapter exclusively devoted to ecclesiology was not present. And yet it seems that Christian bookstores and websites are dominated far more by works extolling methodologies and programs developed from disciplines outside those strictly derived from biblical models.
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