God's Law and the Brake Pedal

I encountered this practical example last Wednesday of how many of us tend to deal with our sin. When I am driving down the road and find myself going too fast, I don’t want to hit the breaks. Hitting the brakes is by far the fastest and most reliable way to again maintain the speed limit – but I don’t want to. I would like to simply let go of the accelerator and gradually coast to the correct speed limit instead of the inconvenience it would be to actually hit the brakes.

Hitting the brakes causes wear and tare on the car, it causes a violent lurch by the passengers and it shows the world that you were going too fast. However hitting the brakes is what we are told to do. If a police officer were to pull me over in the brief moments between 45 mph and 35 mph I would be no less guilty because of my “coasting complicity” to the law.

I think this is how I tend to treat my sin. I don’t want to actually stop what I am doing by violent actions that would very likely cause me discomfort or outright pain. Yet that is what I am called to do – to mortify the flesh. Where I would rather stop “promoting my sin” or “accelerating my sin” and let myself “coast” back to Christ – I am demanded to turn from my sin. When mortifying the flesh there is no “coasting” to death, there is living and not living.

In the car I may prefer to coast to compliance with the speed limit; but if I saw the child that was ready to jump into the street; the patch of ice on the deceptively sharp corner; or any of the other reasons the speed was set to that limit I would be the first to slow down – but I don’t see the reasons and therefore I don’t take the necessary action. If there is a child in the road, a low hanging branch or some other kind of obstruction we would hit the brakes with every fiber of our being.

The same is true with our sin and the law of God. We do not always see the reasons why God has set certain laws in place and therefore we ignore them. However, if we saw the people that would be hurt; the hearts that could be defrauded; or the potential lives that could be lost as a result of our violation of the clear cut law of God, we would certainly react sooner and more violently. The unfortunate part is that our lack of seeing the potential dangers does not render them any less imminent or dangerous. I need to take a more sobering view of my sin and take the drastic actions to turn from the obvious violations of God’s law before I swerve off the road and suffer the necessary and natural consequence.