A Year in Luke/ActsSample

The chapter ends with a warning to those who, as NT Wright puts it in Luke for Everyone “load heavy burdens on to people’s backs but don’t themselves lift a finger to shift them?” The Pharisees were often more concerned about outward acts of goodness than what was within, which was most important to Jesus.

NT Wright summarizes it saying, “It wasn’t a matter of either following millions of petty rules or of a pure, uncluttered religion of love and grace. It was a matter of an agenda which focused on the law as the charter of Israel’s national life, on the one hand, and an agenda which demanded repentance, turning away from Israel’s headlong flight into national rebellion, politically against Rome and theologically against God. There could be no compromise.”

How can we live in a way that doesn’t abandon the law, but also carries God’s love and grace in our accountability to it?