Living by the rules

At biblestudy we got into a discussion about rules... Why were the pharisees so bent out of shape about doing things on the Sabbath? People had to know exactly what they could and could not do so that they could make appropriate sacrifices to atone for their sins.

Jesus was wreckless about the rules. He seemed to break them because he didn't follow the letter of the law regarding sabbath. But, he wasn't breaking them, he subsumed them. In speaking to his disciples, he boiled the law down to two rules - love God, love each other. All the other rules are there to help guide people on how to do this.

As Christians, we try to follow these two big rules. We have the 10 commandments which help us understand how to do that. We have the the bible - the old testament and the letters of the apostles to help us understand stand what it means to do that. We are not burdened by the rules. They do not weigh us down as they did the pharisees. Why not? We recognize that we cannot follow the rules perfectly. The rules are there to show us how imperfect we are and how much we need God's help and forgiveness. We don't need to keep track of the millions of ways that we break the rules, because Jesus has already atoned for all of them.