Tensions and Faith: The Spirit or the Letter of the Law

Now that we have journeyed to the cross and the empty tomb with Jesus, I want to get back to the line of thinking I had before Holy Week.  You may recall that I was presenting a number of different areas where we may find tensions in our faith life (tensions like knowing vs. believing, interacting with culture vs. being different from culture).  I would like to pick up a few more of these to sound out my thoughts on them, and as always, I welcome your thoughts on them.

You are driving down the road and come to a school crossing.  The flashing lights tell you that you must slow down to 20 MPH as you go through the zone.  You're in a hurry, so you try to see if you can get by with going 28, only to find that the officer is actually at that zone that day and caught you.

Maybe we haven't personally done that, but maybe we have seen it done.  This scene sets the stage for my thoughts on the spirit of the law and the letter of the law, with the law instead being God's Law.  We likely know the Ten Commandments (I would argue that instructions would be a better translation, but I'm not here to argue with Bible translators).  They seem pretty cut and dried.  Do this, or don't do this. 

Then, we hear Jesus' words in places like Matthew 5:21-42.  Here, Jesus points out that keeping the law goes beyond merely doing the actions or not doing the actions.  There is a level of intent which God looks at.  We see this also in another place, in Matthew 23:23, that Jesus speaks to the scribes and Pharisees, saying that they had been neglecting justice even though they had been diligent in their tithes.  Then, He gives this very interesting statement: "These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others."

I often hear arguments about how Jesus doesn't look so much at our outward keeping of the law, but at how we obey the spirit of God's law.  I have also heard the argument that we should strive to our utmost to outwardly keep the law perfectly.  Truth be told, I believe that most of us have a tendency toward one side or the other in this.

Going back to the school crossing earlier in the post: do we slow down because the law says, or because our intent is to show the children crossing there that we care enough for them by slowing down to safe speeds to keep them safe?  I believe Jesus would say the same thing as what I just quoted above.  You do it for both reasons.  If you outwardly keep the law, but couldn't care less for the children as they cross, you are not demonstrating love for your neighbor, and are not keeping with the spirit of the law.  If you keep with the spirit of the law, but believe that you have a better ability to control your car than most, so you can go faster, you are not keeping the letter of the law. 

I believe that God intends for us to keep both the spirit and the letter of the law, and to do so perfectly.  However, I also believe that there is not a single one of us who can do this, which is why we find ourselves wrestling so much over this matter, and why it will continue to be a tension in our faith life.