Life Is a Parable

 

Our everyday lives are parables wherein God speaks to us, as Jesus did to the people of His day.

Because I have most of my life been living “under the law,” I have related to God, not as a son to a loving Father, but rather as a servant to a “tutor” or “schoolmaster”:

Galatians 3:24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

Galatians 4:1   Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all;  2 But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.  3 Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:  4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,  5 To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.  6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.  7 Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

God has helped me to understand this as He has shown me how I relate to particular people in my life. It has been all about my trying to please them by my performance and my feeling guilty, condemned and judged whenever I don’t measure up to whatever expectations I believe they have of me.

I think this started with my earthly father who also saw God as a law God of wrath and judgment, always checking us out to make sure we are behaving ourselves. So that’s how he related to us, his children. Like Adam, all seven of us children were afraid of him. Unlike my siblings, I was very careful to keep all his “laws” perfectly so as not to incur his disfavor. I feel that I was like Paul, “touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:6). But of course with the law comes the conscience, always telling us how we have failed and condemning us for that failure; so I could never just relax and enjoy my father’s love.

Now I see how I have carried this way of relating into other relationships, especially with people I love and enjoy pleasing. I “work” extremely hard to do whatever I think will please them, making any and all sacrifices I think might further my endeavor to gain their love and acceptance. I am always conscious of what I am doing and how it might affect them, constantly looking for clues as to what I can do to make them like me—only to discover that it isn’t enough, that it will never be enough. The more I try, the more I feel I fail. I just become exhausted with all my efforts. I don’t even know if the demands I feel they are placing on me and the disappointment I feel from them when I don’t meet those demands, is real or imagined. I just know what I feel inside.

I don’t think it even matters. What matters is that I see the parable and what God is attempting to show me through it. He is showing me that the law is never satisfied with works, no matter how many or how good they are. I have just experienced more and more judgment and condemnation. It is a perfect picture of my attempts to relate to the god of wrath and judgment (the law god) that orthodox Christianity has taught me to believe in. Everything seems to be dependent on what I do or don’t do; yet I don’t even know what that is.

But this “law god” is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ revealed to us by Jesus and whom Jesus referred to in John 17 as “the true God”—the God John calls “love” and whom Jesus said “judgeth no man.” Paul says that this “true” God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing our trespasses, and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation (2Corinthians 5:18-21).

And Jesus said that this “true” God sent His Son into the world to save it, not condemn it.

(John 3:17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.)

Now I know that the law god is not even a reality, just a concept of god I was taught to believe in and attempt to relate to. And neither are these personalities that I call family members or friends. What I am experiencing in these relationships has nothing to do with the people I’m relating to per se. I have just attached myself to their personalities (which of course is not them in their true identity) and have experienced the consequences of that attachment.  I know that I have drawn these personalities to myself for the purpose of this very revelation. In order to let go of the law god for the only true God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (and of myself), I have to be able to see it for what it is—a figment of my imagination.

I now see that we have to be led by the Spirit into the wilderness of our carnal mind in order to see the beliefs that are hindering our spiritual ongoing and let go of them. I am finding that a principle way of accomplishing this is to allow God to show us through parables how our everyday lives are just mirrors of what is occurring in our spiritual life. Instead of fretting that we aren’t as far along spiritually as we would like to be, we can rejoice that

Matthew 15:13 . . . Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.

We don’t know how seeing these parables is going to play out in our spiritual journey. It is our Father within who gives us understanding and who does the work. Our only responsibility is to listen so that we can know the truth that will make us free! If we are to do or not do something, we will hear that too. Right now we can rejoice that we are able to understand the parable and let the government of our lives be on His shoulders.

Now I would like you to read God in Expression for another treatment of this subject.