OUR FEARS CAN BECOME DEBILITATING if we stare at them too long. Anxiety can take on a spellbinding power, one that generates an altered mind and produces an altered reality. Trepidation transfixes not just our gaze but our perception of facts; we reorganize them so that knowledge cannot be guided by wisdom. Instead, driven by a foreboding sense of failure, even doom, we are overtaken by self-fulfilling prophecies of peril, and lose our true path.
This is the way of men, mankind, and even whole civilizations. History does not lie in this respect. The rise and fall of civilizations through their many recorded cycles all tell the same story. Each new beginning has the same ending, and all of this, Solomon wearily says, “is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” (Ecc. 4:16c) And from this outlook, he can ultimately only conclude, “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.” (Ecc. 12:13) The world-wise and weary king has become oppressed by the weight of the Law, and even as his physical vision becomes distorted— “the windows grow dim” (Ecc. 12:3d)—his internal worldview has stranded him on the sandy shore of cynicism, left behind as the tides of hope recede into the distance.
If we were to spend too much time with Solomon, we might also find ourselves jaded and weary over the vicissitudes of life events. The weight of the Law is always thus; it was meant to crush us. The Apostle Paul begins a dialogue with this issue, and with us, in his letter to the Roman church. “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.” (Rom. 3:19)
This statement is in line with Solomon’s worldview, but, as we shall see, is in place only as a stepping stone in the pathway from the O.T. Covenant of the Law to the N.T. Covenant of Grace. For Paul immediately says, “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” (Rom. 3:21-22) He then quotes another great O.T. king, David, the father of Solomon. “Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them.” (Rom. 4:8, c.f. Psa. 32:1-2) In so doing, he brings us to the central cause of anxiety from a biblical perspective: Sin separates us from God, and separation from God leaves us open to the torments of the world below.
Paul’s trajectory of thought in the context of God’s grace in Christ Jesus is carefully constructed in the course of several more chapters. His moves from the cosmological and the historical into personal effects and benefits: “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.” (Rom. 6:11-12) He adds, “Thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance.” (Rom 6:17) The outcome of such an intentional focus for us now, he says, is that “The benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.” (Rom. 6:22)
Paul continues to refer to the disquieting struggle common to all mankind. He points to our inner conflict at the flawed spot where our imperfect acceptance of grace leads to a personal sense of shame. “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” (Rom. 7:22-23) He admits his own powerlessness over sin, and yet is able to triumphantly state, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:25)
Many of us who quest for an authentic Christian life have suffered through the ongoing pilgrimage past our idealized view of self to the shocking reality of the stunning fact and consequences of the sin nature that resides within us. We know of the shame of missing the mark of the high calling of God on our lives—and yet we strive upward, spiritually dichotomized in a tension that cries out in agony for resolution. If we have painstakingly walked with Paul on the journey from Law to Grace thus far, his next statement may well, if we but allow it, strip away a veil of deceit from before our spiritual eyes. “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” (Rom. 8:1-2) This is a truth we have been blind to heretofore.
No other religion, no secular philosophy, no psychological self-help talk therapy, no monotonous repetition of vaguely positive affirmations, has prepared us for this gospel truth. Our previous positive experiences in this world, and, sadly, even in our Christian practices, have not been able to sufficiently allay our general disquiet. Nor have they or will they protect us in our hour of need until this cardinal covenantal truth moves from our intellect to its rightful position as cornerstone in our foundation of faith: ‘There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.’ Hold this truth above you, above the lower realm of anxious thought; place it on the altar of obedient sacrifice offered up to God. And receive in faith the greatest promise of God. In Jesus, God has liberated us from a walking death characterized by fear, and set us free to an intentional walk guided by the Spirit of life.
If we accept Paul’s theological premises about grace and its outcomes, we then not only receive but welcome the thoroughly soul-satisfying assurance of a life “hidden in Christ in God.” (Col. 3:3) Paul describes this comfort and protection in Romans in this way: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Rom. 8:28)
Paul bookends this portion of his extended discussion with two rhetorical questions: “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31-32) The question we must ask of ourselves is this: Are Paul’s questions literally rhetorical in our personal circumstances, or must we seek a deeper personal revelation that leads to application? If we have not satisfactorily resolved these in response to our daily trials, then we will remain prone to anxiety, and must exist without remedy between the highs and lows of life in the lower realm. If, instead, we have resolved such tensions in the light of eternal hope, then we have at our disposal “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,” and which “will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:6-7)
Q. Do I know that I know that I know that “God is for me?”
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