What does First B Jackson teach about rules vs grace?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on rules versus grace starts with a picture Paul paints in Colossians 2: the dietary laws, festival calendars, Sabbath regulations, and other requirements that certain teachers were pressing on the Colossian believers were never the destination. They were shadows. The substance they were always pointing toward is Christ himself, and once you have Christ, going back to chase the shadows is simply missing the point. Pastor Ray, Pastor Ryan, and Pastor Scott have all worked through this passage and landed in the same place: adding rules, rituals, or bodily self-denial on top of faith in Christ does not get you closer to God. Paul says plainly that those things are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
The teaching gives real weight to why rule-keeping feels so spiritually serious. Martin Luther is the clearest example the pastors return to: a man who fasted, slept without a blanket, and punished himself, yet still felt condemned, until he ran headlong into justification by faith while teaching Romans. The Colossians were living under the same pressure, and so are people today. Teachers can whisper that faith in Christ is a good start but that something more is still required. Paul's answer is two direct commands: do not let anyone act as judge over you on those questions, and do not let anyone disqualify you or sideline you from the work.
The broader frame the teaching uses is a target. Christians and whole denominations drift in one of four directions, toward naturalism, toward supernaturalism, toward rigid dogmatism, or toward pure experience and feeling. Jesus hit dead center in all of it, and that center is what holds people from very different backgrounds together at First B. The goal of the Colossians series is to keep pulling back toward that center, where grace through Christ is the ground and not a starting point you eventually have to leave behind.
Taught from Colossians 2:16-23 · Colossians 3:1-4 · Colossians 2:6 · Ephesians 2:8-9 · Romans 12:1-2
The passage taught · Colossians 2:16-17
16 Let no one therefore judge you in eating, or in drinking, or with respect to a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day,
17 which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- February 26, 2017 Christ Hits the Center of the Target Paul's letter to the Colossians warns against rules, rituals and angel worship as substitutes for Christ, who alone hits the center of every target.
- February 26, 2017 The Substance Belongs to Christ Colossians 2-3 sermon on why rules and rituals can't change us, and why Christ alone is the center that holds our faith together.
- February 26, 2017 The Substance Belongs to Christ Paul's letter to the Colossians cuts through religious rules and rituals to show why Christ alone, not law-keeping or self-denial, is the center of the Christian life.