I didn’t used to read the instructions.

I would get a piece of furniture, or some kind of electronic equipment, or decide to take on some kind of home repair, and just start in on it. In my younger days, I didn’t have the time for the whole “measure twice, cut once” principle; it was more of a “just get started and figure it out along the way” kind of vibe.

Now I recognize that for some people, that kind of methodology works; these are the people who have some natural proclivity towards being handy. But I’ve lived long enough to know that’s not true of me. Even when I have been able to muddle my way to some semblance of the end result I was looking for, it wasn’t done in the right way. Consequently, my past is littered with furniture that wobbles, retaining walls that don’t really retain, and dry wall repairs hidden by pictures on the wall. 

So why did it take me so long to start reading the directions? Lots of reasons probably – impatience, the need for activity, the desire for something tangible to show my work – these are some of them. But perhaps in some way, if you look deeper, there was also pride lurking there. Pride that said I could figure it out. Pride that thought more of my own intelligence and ingenuity. Pride that my way was going to be just fine if I got close to the end result.

I was thinking about these projects when I read these words from Paul about his countrymen, the Israelites, recorded for us in Romans 10:

Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes (Rom. 10:1-4).

Paul loved these people. And no doubt, they were zealous. But there was an ironic quality to their zeal – they were missing the very God for which they were so zealous. In his words, their zeal was not based on knowledge. The Israelites of his day were operating under the assumptions that they knew all there was to know about God, and to be fair, they had a tremendous amount of knowledge through the law, the prophets, and the like. But despite all this knowledge, they missed the crucial piece that tied it all together – Jesus Christ.

Jesus was (and is) the source of true righteousness, because it’s only through Christ that our hearts can be made new. Without Him, all the righteous acts we might perform are just window dressing – they are like hanging pieces of fruit on the branches of a dead tree. 

But in order to get this missing piece, the Israelites had to submit their own knowledge to what God had revealed in Christ. To put it in terms of the illustration, they had to stop working on their own version of the project and start embracing the prescribed nature of the actual project. The one given by the Designer Himself, not their interpretation of what that end product should be. And in some ways, not much has changed.

There is still within all of us the deep desire to prove ourselves. To justify ourselves by our actions. To make a go at righteousness on our own without submitting to the design for true righteousness. And when we do that, we are making a startlingly bold claim:

My version of righteousness is better than God’s.

And here again we run up against the ironic nature of that claim – true righteousness is available to us. It’s available not through achievement, but through faith; not through our works, but through the finished work of Christ. 

So we come again today to the question of what project we are working on – are we going at it on our own? Convinced that through our own effort and ingenuity we can come out with something closely resembling the design? Or are we submitting ourselves to the Designer’s intent? The gospel demands the latter.