Just Follow the Rules

by John Comer

Way up in the town of Janesville, Wisconsin, a lady named Amy unloaded her grocery shopping cart onto the 10-items-or-less checkout stand. Bad move. She had eleven items.

In line behind her stood John, and he could count really well. He informed her she had too many items for this checkout stand. She said she was sorry.  He told her a second time. She said she was sorry.

According to the newspaper item from which I learned of   this little episode, John was an exacting man, and even coupled with two apologies, he could not accept Amy’s wayward behavior.

So he approached her for a third time and let her know he had served in two wars and didn’t want to stand in a line behind people who couldn’t count.

Apparently John did a little swearing, and when the two got into their cars on the parking lot, he cut her off. He also got fined $212 for disorderly conduct.

John said none of this would have happened if Amy had simply followed the rules.

When it comes to keeping rules, are you an Amy, or a John? Most of us could probably fit comfortably in line right along with Amy. Nobody can keep all the rules all the time.

Adam and Eve certainly weren’t the best rule keepers. They didn’t have a terrifically complicated set of regulations imposed upon them, but they messed up royally all the same.  It has to do with being human.

Would you say that the Ten Commandments are the best known rules in the history of the universe? They were a marvelous piece of legislation straight from the hand of God. But nobody could keep them.

God’s Son came to earth to do things for us that we could not do for ourselves. We can never be good enough no matter how hard we try, so Jesus is “our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). We’re not very good at obeying, so he obeyed and made us righteous (see Romans 5:19). He was crucified because of our shortcomings. It would not have happened if we had kept the rules.