DOUBLE VIOLATION - plugging the meter

I was in a conversation the other night and an analogy of the life of religious performance came to mind and I wanted to expand on it here.

Here is the picture… I said, “your life is like a person who pulls up to a parking meter.  To feel good about yourself you must put in a quarter but the meter. The meter only gives you 15 minutes of peace and security, your 15 minutes in the sun, fifteen minutes of approval. Fifteen short minutes later it demands another quarter for you to stay there, in your happy place.  Without your performance (another quarter) the flag will come back up declaring in big RED letters “Violation!”

Many religious people live right there, PARKED! 

They want God’s love but have missed the entire message of the good news! Plugging money into the offering basket to “park in His presence” on Sunday morning, was not what God had in mind when he started the church.

The good news is NOT that you can earn God’s love it is that long before you knew about or cared about anybody but yourself. 

God lavished His love on you and redeemed you for fellowship with Him. 

In fact, God so loved you, that… He … Ummm, ...well that he gave His only Son as a ransom for you! He did not come into the world to condemn you, but that through Him you might have the joy of living forever as His close friend.

So why then the title Double Violation?

It is one thing to have never heard nor understood the good news that God loves you and has saved you from sin and death, because of the righteousness of His son; in other words, to be living a hopeless life outside of God. “without God, without hope, in the world.”

But it so much more profound to have tasted the presence and love of God and then find yourself back at the parking meter feeding it quarters to keep “earning the right” to the “park in the presence.” 

The writer to the Galatians puts it this way, “ who painted the wrong picture for you? Having begun your new life by the POWER of the SPIRIT, are you going to go back from that freedom and evidence of a Life hidden in God and return to the more beggarly and weak elements of pluggin the friggin meter! I can almost hear Paul shouting: where is the GOOD NEWS in that?

I received Jesus for my salvation with gladness, and I felt so free, but in the end, is He no more than a silver dollar instead of my measly quarters? Giving me an hour of freedom instead of the fifteen minutes I could procure by myself? I don’t think so!  

The writer in Hebrews compares the old way of perpetual sacrifices to cover our sins temporarily. He goes on to say “we were not redeemed by gold coins, by silver or any corruptible (temporary) thing”, “but rather with the precious blood of Jesus the Christ.” Who's sacrifice was not temporary like the blood of sheep and goats but was given once for all and for all time.

The meter (law) was our tutor to bring us to faith in God, Not the other way around. 

So picture this we find an antique store that still has a few of these parking meters in the back room. They purchased them from the city when the city officials pulled them from the streets. They still had a few repaired units in the maintenance department, which they kept at the ready to replace a broken or missing meter. We are so excited to see a familiar friend? Perhaps a familiar spirit! We buy it! With our own money! We hire someone to cement it into the curb in front of our house! And now we make a pilgrimage twice a week and put another quarter in the meter and all the time, in our hearts we accuse God of being a harsh task master, we wonder about our hard life and ask where is the joy of my salvation?

The DOUBLE violation is our returning “like a dog to his vomit” to the weaker and more beggarly elements, returning to performance and fresh sacrifice in order to inherit the kingdom privileges.

Instead God urges us to believe in the LORD, JESUS, CHRIST and you shall be SAVED. God declares a salvation by grace through faith. Jesus not only plugged the meter for us, permanently, he had them all removed from every street in the city and cast them into the sea of forgetfulness! So that, we cannot go back to the former way Jesus and only Jesus is our Jubilee.