Mirror, Mirror: Law and Grace

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with mirrors. From early childhood, we enjoy staring into mirrors to see images of our physical selves. We don’t lose that fascination as time goes by, yet the older we get the more annoyed we become with the truth reflected in our mirrors.

We diet and exercise, we spend obscene amounts of money on creams, gels, medical treatments and plastic surgery; we alter lighting and placement of our mirrors in order to change the images our mirrors reflect.

We manipulate what we see in mirrors in an attempt to satisfy our flesh. But flesh can never be satisfied. God, on the other hand, doesn’t care about the loveliness of flesh; He loves us in spite of our flesh.

People wonder why a loving God would set up so many laws that we’d have difficulty committing them all to memory, let alone following them, and then sentence us to death if we only miss the mark on one and obey all the rest.

But God did not hand down His laws for sadistic gratification or to force us to fail. We were already failing. Adam and Eve had been kicked out of Eden. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed in Abraham’s time. Only Noah and his family survived the cleansing Great Flood. Then God in His mercy revealed our shortcomings by making His laws clear. The Law is a mirror to show us our flaws. God gave us the Law so we can look into it as we would a mirror and see why we need a savior. 

The Old Testament, which contains the Law or mirror of our sins, is about man’s struggle to obey God. The New Testament, which contains the good news of our Savior, is about God’s grace, which releases us from that struggle. (We are released not from the Law itself, but from our need to struggle with it.) 

The New Testament contains a mirror as well. When we accept the new covenant for which Jesus sacrificed Himself, we are able to see ourselves as God sees us; we stare into the mirror of grace and see Christ in us.

Ministry is about holding up two mirrors to God’s people. The mirror of the Law must be held up so all of us can see why we need Jesus, and the mirror of Grace must be held up so we can see who we can be in Him. Both mirrors show us truths that we should always be grateful to see.

There is a balance needed in ministry. We can't hold up the Law mirror that convicts people of their sins and hold back the Grace mirror that offers them hope. Neither can we offer Grace as simply a solution for low self esteem or underachievement; Grace is necessary for Life without damnation. Those in ministry also need to remember to look at ourselves in both mirrors daily, remembering that ministry is servitude and not superiority.

Mirrors made of silvered glass may not always be our friends, but God's mirrors, Law and Grace, show us two sides of a truth about ourselves which leads to eternal life.

(Photograph by Jan Roger Johannesen)