it Welcome to Welling: for your spiritual well-being and your ministry overflowing. We are at the end, cautiously optimistic, of a coronavirus season, which has overtaken the whole world. Right now, with the provision of vaccines and some what of herd immunity, there’s a lot of discussion and debate, though some parts of the world are seriously experiencing the worst numbers of infections, severely under-reported, and yet, the highest over the course of a year, that has harassed and been horrendous for the human race.
Tests are showing false positives and false negatives. And even vaccines cannot completely mitigate a guarantee that you will never get it. Perhaps, it’ll soften the severity. Like the COVID-19 tests, the law that God gave to the world, especially to the nation of Israel, it only tested and confirmed a positive sinfulness. There were no false positives. There’s no false negatives, actually. Even the vaccine provided a bit of a relief, a bit of protection, but not total protection, not total guarantees. Maybe it’ll help soften the severity of the consequences of having contracted the virus, which never leaves us.
You see, my friend, the tests and the vaccines are never meant to administer life, just like the law. The law was not meant to administer life except for the sinless, the perfect–none of us is sinless or perfect. All that the law could do was to help with some sort of a transactional relationship with God.
In the verse right prior to our anchor verse, in Galatians 2:19, the apostle Paul says, I through the law, died to the law. It sets up the most wonderful, secret, dynamic, animation of what is yet to happen in verse 20. But it comes from a theological point that the apostle Paul wants to present to us. That a transactional relationship with God is not a transformational relationship with God. The former is professional and contractual. The latter is based on God having taken the initiative, and loving us with an unconditional love, and now empowering us. The law could only appeal to my self-empowerment. The law had nothing wrong with it. It was no defective provision. It was not a god who was deficient in His grace. God has always been perfect in His grace. Guess who’s deficient and defective. Me, you.
A transformational relationship based on God’s unconditional love and His provision of resources is going to provide the secret of the Welling. All the law did was to show us that we were sinful. It pointed us to our need for a Savior. It condemned us to death. And like you, I, too, deserve death. The law worked well in reference to myself, but that jurisdiction is deathly. We will soon go into a declaration of death which, actually, brings you life. For, pleasing God not by our merit, keeping control of the spiritual life by ourselves. For the secret of our Welling is His in-dwelling.