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MAY 31, 2011
KEEPING IT SIMPLE
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different
gospel—which is really no gospel at all. (Galatians 1:6-7, NIV)
A solid golf swing is built on a few fundamentals—five, if Ben Hogan is to be believed. And since we’re
talking golf, Ben Hogan is a good one to believe.
We are aware in the beginning, if we receive some helpful basic instruction through a group lesson, say, that we want
to take care of our grip, our stance, our pre-shot routine (maybe even employing Hogan’s famed waggle), and then the balance of a good swing. In the end, a solid golf shot is about the position of
the clubface at impact, and the more simply we can consistently bring that clubface to the right position, the better off we will be.
So, why, we might ask, are golfers always looking for another “secret?” As a matter of fact, many have
postulated that Hogan himself kept a secret to himself that we must uncover and employ if we’re ever going to get golf right. Never mind that golfers named Palmer and Player and Floyd and Trevino
and Nicklaus and Lopez and King and Faldo and Pak and Woods and Sorenstam and Ochoa—to name more than a few—have assembled Hall of Fame careers without any secret other than this: finding and
maintaining a repeating swing through simple mechanics.
The minute you start adding “secrets,” you’re setting yourself up for disaster. Sadly, we could
produce a second list of once-prodigious professionals who lost their way through tinkering with, toying with and otherwise tripping up their essentially excellent swing.
Which brings us to the Galatians, the most confounding group of “believers” the apostle Paul ever
encountered.
These men and women had heard the simple gospel—Jesus paid it all—and had accepted it with vigor. But their
simple, pure faith, Paul came to discover, was a dangerous flare-up looking for any kind of fuel that would feed its hungry flame.
The trouble came mostly from the same place it comes for you and me: self-dependence. It was nice and all that
Jesus’ death and resurrection provided the whole course of salvation, and that the Spirit of Christ, sent by Jesus Himself, infused the entire volume of faith one needs to follow Jesus. But there
was still the opportunity to prove something to God, right? To show Him that we are pretty good at following His commands. To rise above the average believer and really get it right.
It was at this very point that Paul cried foul. These
people he loved, just as he loved all the others, had tangled themselves up in a legalistic mess, adding to the beautiful simplicity of the gospel. They were adding to the work of Jesus the necessity
(and assumed ability) to work quite well themselves.
We are all of us prone to the same. We know the basics that come through Jesus. But we layer in the particulars of this
denomination or the specifics of that beloved TV teacher or the “gotta-do-its” of a popular author, and suddenly the gospel is a tangle of tenets and trials-by-error that leave Jesus on the
sideline.
Let’s keep it simple, doing our very best to do one thing well: live by the Spirit of the Savior who died that we
might live at all.
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Jeff Hopper
May 31, 2011
Copyright 2011 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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