Galatians - The One Thing They Forgot

I absolutely love the Jesus Storybook Bible. I have read it to my kids and have used it countless times in a class that I teach with Cru. I love its focus and its style and its simplicity and at the same time its depth.  

But the one thing I don't love about it is that there isn't enough of it.

So, I have begun writing stories that Sally Lloyd-Jones doesn't cover in the JSB for my 7 year old son. Because of how much my kids have loved the JSB, I have attempted to capture the tone and focus and style of Sally's writing (including some of her great phrases). Not sure if I have succeeded or not, but they have provided rich times of reading when I tuck my son in bed at night.

I wanted to begin to occasionally share these in case you wanted to share them with your kids (or enjoy them for yourself).

Here's the first one:

Galatians - The One Thing They Forgot

Now Paul (you know, the one who was knocked off his horse by Jesus and then couldn’t stop telling people everywhere about him) had some friends who he had told about Jesus.  And they believed in him.  But now these friends were starting to believe something different about Jesus.  Oh, they still believed a bunch of right things about him – that he was God and that he came and died for them and was even resurrected from the dead.  But, there was one BIG thing that they stopped believing about him.

What is that one BIG thing?  Well, to be honest, it may not look that BIG to you and me, but it was HUGE.  In fact, Paul was shocked that his friends had stopped believing this one HUGE, SUPERSONIC, ENORMOUS, MASSIVE, and GIGANTIC thing.

Are you ready for what that HUGE, SUPERSONIC, ENORMOUS, MASSIVE, and GIGANTIC thing is?  They had stopped believing that Jesus was all they needed.  

“That’s it”, you say?   Yes.  But let me tell you why that’s so HUGE.  It’s like working so hard on a puzzle only to realize you don’t have the last piece…the center piece…the piece that completes the entire picture.

And, you see, because they stopped believing that Jesus was all they needed, they began to believe other things…untrue things.

One of the untrue things that they began believing was that God loved them more if they followed certain rules.  We all have rules…like don’t hit your sister…brush your teeth…obey your teacher.  But those rules didn’t compare with the rules they had.  They had the 10 commandments.  You know…don’t worship any other god; honor and obey your parents; don’t want what your friends have, etc…

Now, these rules are from God, so you would think that these are the things he would expect his people to do.  And, we would think that if we do them, God will love us more.  Right.  Actually, wrong.

You see, Jesus is the only one who perfectly obeyed all of God’s rules.  But, he died as if he had disobeyed every single one.  He died not because he broke the rules, but because we did.  He took our punishment.  It’s like if you broke your mom’s favorite lamp and after you told the truth, she punished your brother in your place.

And because of that, when we believe in him, God’s love for us will never ever change.  He will never love us less when we break a rule or he will never love us more because we keep the rules.  Because we believe in Jesus, He loves us because he loves us.

But, there is one more thing that these friends of Paul were believing.  You see, while these rules are good, there is one big problem with them. They can’t make us good on the inside.  Paul’s friends thought that if they tried harder and harder to obey the rules, they would be better and better on the inside.

What they forgot is that all they needed was Jesus.  Not only did he die for them, but he also now lives in them to make them better on the inside.  It isn’t about keeping the rules.  It is about believing that Jesus is the only one that can make us more loving and kind and giving and joyful and patient.  Rules can’t do that.  But Jesus can.