~ A Return to a Familiar Topic ~
introduction ~ Long-time
followers of Abundant Life Now know that the subject of law versus grace has
been posted multiple times in the past (a listing of relevant past postings are
at the bottom of this post).
Sometime ago
I read a marvelous book, I Never Thought
I’d See the Day: Culture at the Crossroads, by Dr. David Jeremiah which I heartily
recommend. It is about what’s happening
both in our culture at large and within the Church. What follows is an excerpt relevant to Law
vs. Grace.
quote ~ For
those Christians who think that living under grace in the New Testament means
morality is no longer the hyper issue it might have been under the Old
Testament law, the Bible offers several clarifications:
First, through the prophet Jeremiah in the
Old Testament, God promised to take His laws off of stone tablets and put them
in the minds and write them on the hearts of His people (Jeremiah 31:33). That promise was part of the provision of the
new covenant that was instituted through the shed blood of Christ: “This cup is the new covenant in My blood,
which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20). In
other words, by the indwelling Spirit of God, the laws of God—His standards of
morality—move from being an external to an internal reality. God’s law is no longer something to be read,
examined, and debated as an intellectual matter. It becomes part of the heart and the mind of
the one united to God by faith in Christ.
As the great Bible commentator Matthew Henry wrote, “When the law of God
is written on our hearts, our duty will be our delight.” The law changes from being a burden that
keeps us from pleasure to a guide that leads us to a wholly new kind of
pleasure—the pleasure of walking in God’s best plan for our lives. As Jesus said, “My yoke is easy and My burden
is light” (Matthew 11:30).
In addition,
we find that conforming to God’s law in our hearts allows us to experience in
all activities of life the specific kind of pleasure and satisfaction God meant
for us to find in that particular activity.
So the laws are entirely for our benefit; they are given not to prevent
pleasure, but to increase it.
Second, the apostle Paul clarifies what
grace doesn’t mean: It doesn’t mean that God’s law has been nullified. Anticipating that he, by his preaching of
grace, might be accused of antinomianism (negating the obligation to live a
lawful life), Paul wrote, “Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law” (Romans
3:31). He says that we are not free to
disregard God’s moral laws must because we live under grace (Romans
6:1-2). And he confirms what Christ
taught about love being the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:8-10). As we noted above, we follow the law because
we love God, knowing that His ways are always best for us and increase our joy.
So New
Testament Christians are in no way exempt from the moral and ethical
requirements of God’s law. Indeed, we
have an even higher motivation for fulfilling God’s moral law: love. Grace means living a moral life not because we
have to but because we want to.
Third, Paul puts an even sharper point on
making moral choices by saying, “All things are lawful for me, but not all
things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things
edify. Let no none seek his own, but
each one the other’s well-being” (1 Corinthians 10:23-24). There may be an action or choice that breaks
none of God’s laws yet is still not “helpful” or “edifying.” The Christian Gospel moves us to a higher
plane in life. No longer do we look out
only for our well-being but also for the well-being of others. Is something is “lawful” on the basis of the
letter of the law, yet it has the potential for hurting another person or
tarnishing our testimony for Christ, then it becomes unlawful of us.
Fourth,
when a Christian acts immorally, he or she negates the reason for the death
of Christ on the cross. Christ died to
satisfy the demands of the law” “The
soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4, 20).
Christ died and was raised from the dead to pay the penalty of the law
and to break its power over us. The law
was good, but because we were sinners, we could not obey it. Thus we failed to be what God created us to
be and incurred the condemnation that comes from breaking the law and the
enslavement that comes from being subject to it (Romans 6:1-14; 8:1). But by His death, Christ took the penalty we
deserved.
Considering
everything that is bound up in the cross and the empty grave, our choice to
bend the moral requirements of the law of God is an outrageous affront to the
One who suffered and died to free us from the power of sin. Why would anyone who claims to have accepted
God’s gift of forgiveness for breaking the law choose to insult the Christ who
procured that gift through His own suffering?
But the most
delicate take on the laws of God is the one provided by Jesus Himself in the
Sermon on the Mount—the place in which He corrected human interpretations of
the law with divine interpretations, where He revealed to His followers the
difference between the letter and the spirit of the law.
closing comment ~
Previous Law vs. Grace posts on Abundant Life Now include:
(1) Law
vs. Grace (July 6, 2010)
(2) Law
vs. Grace, 2 (July 5, 2011)
(3) The
Core Message of the Bible #2 (February 1, 2011)
(4) Law
vs. Grace, 3 (This was a 12-part series, published one per month during
2013, and was based upon the book of Galatians.)
~ Robert Lloyd Russell, ABUNDANT LIFE NOW
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