The Bear's Old Cage

THE STORY is told of a bear that lived in a 12 × 12 foot cage. It lived there for some twelve years and so it got to know that cage extremely intimately. The bear was so proficient at moving around his small world that it could close its eyes, walk to the end of the cage, and before it hit the end of the cage, it would stop, turn around, and go to the other end.

Before it hit the other end, it would spin around and do it over and over again, never ever bumping into the cage. As it got larger, the bear’s handlers decided to enlarge its world, and built the animal a 36 × 36 foot cage to give it a lot more room to experience life inside of this cage. The problem was that when they put the bear, which had lived in the 12 × 12 foot cage, into the 36 × 36 foot cage, it would still only walk twelve feet and then turn around and go the other way.

The bear’s problem was that even though it moved to a new cage, it brought the old cage with it. The problem with the bear was that it was still hostage to the limitations of its old life. Even though it had been promoted to a whole new environment, it had not shed the habits that had been learned in the old place. This is like the effect of the law on the lives of Christians.

Many of us have been used to living under law so long and under the limitations and restrictions of a performance-based approach to Christian living, that we don’t know how to handle the new freedom called grace. We keep living, limited by law, even though we’ve been set free to a lot more room under grace.