Doing All The Right Things For All The Wrong Reasons

The speed limit was 55 mph and I was doing 65. I came over a rise in the road and there sitting on the side was a State Patrol car. I looked in the rear view mirror and it was several seconds before he turned his lights on and pulled out onto the road.

My first two reactions were “Oh, no and oh, good.” Oh no, because I knew that I was about to get a speeding ticket. Oh good, because in just about another 10 seconds, in order to get where I was going, I had to turn off the main road onto a smaller road that was surrounded by cornfields with stalks 8 feet high.

If I could just make it to that road, maybe he would drive right on past. I made my right turn onto that road through the cornfields smug with my temporary escape from the law. Then I looked in my mirror again. A long thick streak of blue smoke coming out behind me like one sees the streams of white smoke coming from jet airplanes in the sky. He didn’t have to use radar. My blue exhaust was a homing device that led him right to me.

He pulled me over and said, “Son,” they always call you “son” down in the south, “Son, ya were doin’ sixte six in a fifte-fav zone.” What could I say in my defense? I know! I’ll remind him of the separation of church and state…I’ll tell him I’m a minister! He was not impressed.

As he wrote out the ticket, the only two members I had who traveled that road almost never attended Sabbath School. That morning they decided to attend Sabbath School. They saw their beloved pastor sitting in the front seat of a police car.

I received the ticket with it’s $55 fine and continued on my way. I entered into the city of Hopewell with thoughts of the previous speeding ticket on my mind. The speed at that point dropped from 55 mph to 35 mph. I was not doing 35. I knew it and so did the city policeman parked just ahead.

He pulled me over. Before he could say anything I blurted out, “Officer, I just a speeding ticket 15 minutes ago!” I thought that would invoke some mercy. He said, “Well son, you’re about to get another one.” Two different lines of defense I used and neither one worked. I was feeling pretty tense and upset by the time I reached my church.

I fought the law and the...law won.

Whenever I drove that route in the future, every Sabbath morning, I obeyed the law…with my teeth clenched. For a long time all I could think about was the money it cost me; the policemen, albeit, doing their job but not letting me off with a warning. Outwardly, I obeyed the speed limit signs, but inside…I felt like James Dean.

TRANS: There’s a better way. A sullen submission to the law of the land may be necessary to keep society from destroying each other, but obeying God with a heart overflowing with gratitude for His grace is the only way to go.

Obeying God for the Right Reasons

Experiencing, but more importantly, focusing on God’s daily bestowal of his forgiveness and blessings will lead us to a response where we now do all the right things for all the right reasons.

Karl Barth, the great theologian, once said, “All of salvation is grace, all ethics is gratitude.” In other words, how we live flows from an understanding of how good God is to us.