Preceptivity

I've been thinking a lot about God's precepts, his Word, his commandments. My own experience is reflecting what I see the writers of Scripture trying to convey about obedience to God's precepts. It seems to me that all of this is less about right and wrong, good and bad, and much more about healthy and unhealthy, beneficial and detrimental.

Stay with me for a minute. David says that God's precepts bring joy, wisdom, freedom from the oppression of others, and a deeper love between himself and the Lord (Psalm 119). He never once presumes it makes him "good" or "perfect." You see, the "acceptable standard" view of the law is what Paul rails against as the "law of sin and death;" it is not the law of the Spirit of life.

When we as individuals or we as the church portray our obedience to God's precepts as a standard for being righteous, we have just shackled the listener with the law of sin and death. When we teach God's precepts as a remedy to our brokenness, and it is God who helps us move more and more into a life of obedience as we submit to him, then we introduce the law of the Spirit of life. In a sense we don't make ourselves good, we defer to the goodness in us - Christ.

I think postmodernity is much more capable of hearing "the things you are participating in are unhealthy for you" than they are "you are bad because you don't do what's right and YOU better start doing what's right so YOU can be good and not bad." Everything may be permissible for us, but not everything is beneficial. Understanding that is having what I call "preceptivity."