”It’s never crowded along the extra mile.” — Wayne Dyer

The "extra mile" is a reference to Christ's comments recorded in the Matt. 5:40-42 "If someone forces you go one mile, go with him two miles."

Roman law stated that a Roman soldier could place the flat portion of the tip of his spear on any person’s shoulder and then command them to carry his gear up to one mile.

Christ said, we should not only go the first mile, what is required under the law (and at that a pagan law), but we should go the second mile — do what the law states again, a new, repeated. This is how we get beyond what the law requires, by doing the law and then doing the law again for Christ. This is how we transform even a pagan law into the law of Christ.

It is in the second mile that we find liberty, freedom and even justice. It is in the second mile that we find service to Christ. It is by doing the second mile that the first mile is transformed.

It is here we find the fundamental truth of life — that we can only get to the second mile after we have completed the first mile. The first mile under the law; the second, while still in the law, yet free from the law, when in service to Christ.

It is sad that many, in an attempt to find freedom from the law, never obey the law and thus never go the first mile. By never going the first mile, they cut themselves off from the opportunity to go the second mile and all the blessings the first and second mile contain.
 

© 2010, VoiceWind. . .Greg Loveless. All rights reserved.