There is a HUGE difference between correcting somebody and making an unreasonable moral demand from somebody. Let me give you an example: when your parent rips off a wooden blind and beats you for hitting your younger sibling, all the while saying that hitting other people is wrong, is the epitome of making an unreasonable moral demand. However, if your parent scolds you and sits you uncomfortably close to the sibling you just hit to cause radical reconciliation, that is correction. And what we want to do is make unreasonable moral demands of people as a way to “correct” them in their behavior, but that’s just not it. A lot of us forget that sometimes. Us religious people, especially. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” – Acts 15:10-11 The disciples ran into a quandary early on when the gospel went from just being circulated amongst the Jewish Diaspora to the non Jewish people of the Roman Empire. The quandary was: how do you deal with people who are converting from religion to faith in Jesus Christ. There was no formula “sinner’s prayer” and there was no book of polity or baptism class or confirmation class to guide them. Essentially, the Jewish believers said that the new believer should adhere to the rules and regulations governing their religion, that is to say that the new believers should first become perfect Jewish men and women in order to be liberated by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. You can see how this would be a problem. The Jews who memorized the first five books of the old testament and practiced their entire lives couldn’t become perfect Jews and yet that was the bar they wanted others to reach before allowing them the same grace Jesus Christ offered. We put other people through hoops and loops before accepting them. Or we punish them for things we commit in the act of punishing them (perhaps not so violently like my hypothetical example earlier). Yet as bizarre as it sounds to us when we’re not doing so, we can’t help ourselves and it’s like we don’t want to grant others the same grace we receive from God. Peter told the church that they need to open others for the grace of God. Likewise, we need to allow others around us to be transformed by God’s grace and not yoke them to the craziness we can’t even achieve by our own merits. Just imagine how much reconciliation and change would happen if we would just stop unrighteous choke holds.