Grace V’s Law

Excerpt from new book

2

The Requirement of The Law

     The influence of evil in the world will always rule over what is good and right in man’s eyes. Right up to this day and into the future till the return of Christ. That is the legacy of what Adam did by eating the fruit of the tree of good and evil. The people of Israel had got to the point of not knowing where the line was between good and evil. God needed to show them what was acceptable to Him. Set in stone what was right, the Law was issued to show them what was sin. God also provided ways for the people to escape His wrath, through sacrifices and sin offerings.

     In dealing with the freedom of grace, against the obedience to the law, we need to look at the requirements of the law. I want to begin with What God said to His people through Moses and Joshua. What the law says about obeying the law, the blessings and the curses. This is very pertinent because God is specific about what happens; both when we obey as well as the consequences for disobeying His law. Deuteronomy 28 sets all of this out.

     “Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God: Deuteronomy 28:1-2

     “But it shall come about, if you do not obey the Lord your God, to be careful to follow all His commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: Deuteronomy 28:15

     God tells His people the Israelites what will happen when they obey every word of the law. He tells them how much He will bless them; they will be prosperous in every way. No matter where they live or what they do, so long as it is not against the law. They will be blessed with children, and all of offspring their animals will be blessed, also the crops of the ground. God will defeat all their enemies for them. They will be blessed in their store houses. They will not get sick; they will live long and prosperous lives. If you read verses 1-14, it just sounds almost too good to be true. That is the grace of God to those who obey the law. The history of the Jews shows that when they, or the king obeyed they laws they prospered, and lived in peace.

     There is a flipside to this from verse 15-68 tells what will happen if they do not obey the word of the law. It is hard reading, sad really. God makes it quite clear that to obey is better than not to. Horrible sicknesses, poverty, children still born; fear gripping them; overrun by enemies, slavery. To name but a few. All things that you would not wish to experience. When you read it, you might think, why would a loving God do those things to His people. He did not do these things they are a consequence of sin. A consequence of God removing His protection from His people.

     I see it like this, from the story of Job. Satan came and asked for God to remove His protection from Job, because then Satan said that Job would curse God. God gave permission to Satan to do what he liked to Job except take His life. With Israel Satan is the one who was allowed to inflict the curses upon the people, through God removing His protection. We must remember that Satan will not be allowed to have complete dominion over the Israelites. The limit is that they should continue to live. When we look at history, we can see that there are times when nations have tried to absolutely destroy Israel as a nation; but there is a limit, God will not allow them to be destroyed. Despite all the turmoil’s the people of Israel have had to endure, they still remained as a powerful nation.

     They were scattered to the farthest ends of the earth; and some still are. Yet God brought them back to the promised land to live. There will be one more attempt to destroy the people of Israel at the battle of Armageddon, that will fail because the restriction that God placed on Job is also upon Israel, they will not die as a people. God holds that right of protection over them. They are still under the curse of the law. Nowhere in the list of the curse of the law does it say that they will be allowed to be totally destroyed. That is not one of the curses. So, when the armies of Satan amass against Israel in the one final battle, they will see that there is no way to survive, but God will win the battle on their behalf.

     Back to the law.

     For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, “cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them.” Galatians 3:10

     The curse of the law, here stated in the New Testament by Paul. Paul had been a Pharisee, a student of the law. He knew every little bit of the law. Yet so many Christians cannot understand what he has to say about the law and it no longer having dominion over us. As gentiles/non-Jews, we as Christians were never under the law of Moses. We have the law there for us to see and learn from it as the word of God. But we were never subject to the law and should have never been taught that we are subject to it. Once we succumb to the false teaching on this and begin to live according to the law, we are doomed. We become subject to the consequences of disobedience, the curses of the law.

     Paul tells us here in Galatians that if we try to live according to the law and do not abide by ALL the things written in the book of the law, we will live with the curses that come by our failure to keep every part of the law. This is big. I have been taught for most of my life that I must make sure that I obey the Ten Commandments. I was not told the consequences for disobeying them except that for some things I could be prosecuted for and sent to prison. The Ten Commandments are an overall summary of the moral law of Moses.

    The curse comes upon those who do not keep the whole law. So, I can keep the big ten and break another laws; wearing two different types of material at the same time; then I am guilty of breaking the law as a whole, or as James put it, the whole law. The Israelites could not pick and choose which parts of the law they could or need not to obey. They were required to obey every part of the law. The Christian world seems to think that it is OK to obey some parts of the law and disregard the rest. Is that pleasing to God?

     There is maybe someone who thinks that it is OK to commit adultery but will never eat pork. If we put it the other way round it is still the same; it is OK to eat pork but will never commit adultery. The law is still broken. I have heard some say that the Ten Commandments are the ones that God requires of us as Christians. That is not what Jesus taught us. The new Commandment from Jesus was to love one another as He loves us. In truth if we do this, we will never break the big Ten. Out of our love for God and people, we won’t steal; we won’t lie; we won’t murder; we won’t commit adultery, and we won’t want the things that other people have got.

     It is not about obeying the law; it is about love.

     Apart from the curses of the law as stated in Deuteronomy 28, if someone was caught trespassing the law, there was a judicial system, and punishments to be handed out. Sometimes all that was needed was to bring a sacrifice to the priest. Things like adultery, murder, homosexuality, bestiality, amongst other sins carried a penalty of death by stoning. In these days we tend to think of stoning to death as a barbaric punishment. Even the death penalty is frowned upon and abandoned in some most countries. If we obey the Ten Commandments but will not obey the part of the law that says that a person should be put to death for committing murder, we break the whole law.

     See how it gets so complicated when we pick and choose which parts of the law to obey. That is what the world of Christianity has done. I have had discussions with people/Christians who insists that we should obey the law of keeping the Sabbath. Thy do not understand that if we have to keep one law, we have to keep the whole law. What they really mean is that we should have church on the seventh day of the week; but it is Ok to cook and wash up after themselves on the sabbath; after they have been to church. That is not keeping the Sabbath. If you are trying to keep the Sabbath day, cooking and washing up is breaking the Sabbath. The penalty in the law for this, is stoning to death.

    It reminds me of what it says in the Book of Judges. After Joshua died things started going downhill. They got to the point where it says, over and over that, ‘There was no king in the land and everybody did what seemed right in his own eyes. We could say something similar about most governments today. There is no God in the lands and the governments did what seemed right in their own eyes. They pass laws that allow people to do what seems right in their own eyes. Most governments have abandoned God, some even pass laws that make it an offense to preach certain things from the word of God. These are supposedly Christian nations.

    If there is a man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, one who commits adultery with his friend’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death. Leviticus 20:10 NASB2020

    There must be many thousands of people who are glad that we do not adhere to this law anymore, though there are countries and religious groups that do still uphold this law.  The people in the west get shocked and horrified at the barbarity of it when they hear of this punishment being carried out. The mindset is that no one deserves to be put to death just for adultery. Most of us see that the death penalty for any crime is so backwards. Christians too, yet they are the ones who will tell us that we must obey the law. Look at it this way, God set out laws, you shall not commit adultery; He also set the penalty, death! So, if we do not commit adultery but agree with not handing out the penalty God set for that sin, we are just as guilty of breaking the law as the adulterer.

     I know that it sounds harsh, but we are picking and choosing which parts of the law seem acceptable to us, and this is not right. In our Weston societies it is no longer against the law to commit adultery, but adultery can be used in law to justify divorce. That is a conflict of the law of God, and if you think deeply about it a conflict in the laws of the land too. The biggest conflict that we have is through those who teach and insist that we obey only parts of the law and leave out the need to obey the whole law, as against the perfect law of liberty. We have been released from the requirement to follow the law. The law of sin and death. Of sin because it shows us what sin is; of death because the penalty for not keeping the whole law ultimately, is death. God’s word says that if we live by the law we will be judged by the law.

     But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. Romans 7:6

In Christ, we have been released from the law, we are no longer in fear of death because we have been given life by the Spirit of Life that lives in us. This is how the law works, it is an instrument of fear. If you do not do what is right by the law, you will be punished. What we do not understand is that we can be punished by man passing judgement against us, and issuing a punishment, whether it be a God ordained punishment or a man devised punishment. We can also suffer the consequences of that sin in physical sickness. This is because we have opened ourselves up to the curse of the law and allowed Satan to have some rights over us; to be able to inflict sickness and disease.

     This is especially true with immorality, sexual sin. This type of sin includes, adultery, fornication (casual sex), homosexuality, prostitutes, rape, paedophilia. All are sexual immorality and is picked out as not sinning against God but sinning against our own body, if we do any of these things. Although sexual sin against a child could easily be viewed as a sin against God. And we will suffer the consequences in our own bodies. For the most this is sexually transmitted diseases which includes Aids, chlamydia, syphilis, and a lot more.

     Flee sexual immorality. Every other sin that a person commits, is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 1 Corinthians 6:18

     Though homosexuality is particularly pinpointed as an abomination to God. Below in Romans it definitely says that they will receive due penalty in their own persons. This can be recognised as STD’s. We know as documented that AIDS came about within the homosexual community, then spread to the heterosexual through bisexuals. This is an example of how sin and its consequences can spread throughout the world even infecting those who did not take part in that particular sin.

     Sin has no morals; it does not care about who it infects. That is why God gave the law, to protect His people; so that they could see what is right and what is wrong. God told His people to destroy everyone in the land of Canaan, because He knew that the sin that they practiced could infect them. They did not destroy all the people and so the sin of the Canaanites and other nations around them, did infect God’s people, even to the point of sacrificing children to the god Molech. If the Israelites had obeyed what God had said to them, they would have remained under God’s protection. Instead, they allowed themselves to be deceived. Which caused God’s protection to be withdrawn, or to put it another way, they stepped out from under God’s protection.

     The law was God’s protection of His people in a way. God told them, so long as they obey, they will be blessed, and prosper. If you don’t obey bad things will come upon them. Right back when the law was given, God spoke about consequences of obedience. Health wealth and a prosperous fulfilled life in every way.  He also set out the consequences of disobedience in what seems to be a more detailed way. Instead of just saying many sicknesses, including the plagues of Egypt. He lists a horrific set of things, curses that will be allowed to come upon them. To top it off He also say and anything else not listed will come upon them.

     God knows that the devil has authority over the earth, all of His creation. The devil’s logic is, worship me or die, and while you die take some pain and suffering, so that your life will be a miserable existence. Ultimately the consequence of sin is to allow the devil to oppress us. There are many more sicknesses in the world than those listed in Deuteronomy 28. The law was given so the people knew what was right and wrong, as a protection to His people. To protect them from the consequences of sin, and the sicknesses that the devil wants to bring upon the people.

     But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the Law, being confined for the faith that was destined to be revealed. Galatians 3:23

     Before faith in Jesus, God’s people were under the custody, protection by obedience to the law. Though there were those who live and walked with the Lord in faith. Even though they were not perfect and kept all of the law, their faith in God’s promises gave them preferential, attention in the eyes of God. Faith being credited to them as righteousness, even though they messed up from time to time. The Man after gods own heart, David committed sins that called for the death penalty, yet he was told before he wrote Psalm 51, that, “Do not worry you will not die.” God said that He had removed the sin from David; that he had been forgiven. David’s faith and faithfulness to God outweighed his sin. Because of his faith, he was credited as righteous, until Jesus came and removed the note of charges that were held against him. David new the grace of God in all circumstances of his life. Who holds that note of charges against us? It is the devil, and he uses it to accuse the saints.

     The requirement of the Law is more than just obedience. A part of the requirement of the law; or to put it another way, why the law was required; was to show God’s people what was sin, and what was righteousness. This was to show that the people needed to live by faith in what God had told them. In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now God was showing His people what was good and what was evil. Now that sounds a bit strange to me.

     Mankind already had the knowledge of good and evil. So, why would God need to give His people a set of laws, so that they knew what was right and wrong? The answer is that left to our own devises we as fallen man will naturally gravitate toward what is evil.  That is what happened before the flood. It is what happened to the Children of Israel in Egypt. We can see it in our societies today. Not everyone does what is evil, but they do stand up for the rights of those who do what is evil. Even to the point of giving hearty approval to the things that they do. This approval, much of the time, goes under the name of political correctness.

     Israel was going into a land where people were doing detestable things in God’s eyes. They had come out of a land (Egypt) that worshipped man made and man declared gods, they had become infected by the culture of Egypt, and were ready to worship the gods of Egypt, they had four hundred years of influence to follow after the worship those gods. They really did not know the truth of what was right and wrong. What the world calls right and acceptable, is rarely right. They did not know any better than what they had lived with. We understand theologically that Egypt was a type of the world.

     because by the works of the Law none of mankind will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes knowledge of sin. Romans 3:20

     The real truth behind the law was that disobedience is sin. That disobedience (sin) has consequences. Disobedience is associated with the desires of the flesh. These include seemingly minor things such as strife, jealousy, dissentions, factions. Things that we do not usually associate with being sin. Something that is not listed specifically but is just as much of a cause of factions as anything, is gossiping. We tend to frown upon someone who has a casual sexual relationship, but not bat an eyelid at someone who tells some secret about another person. We know it is wrong, but it has become an everyday occurrence in some peoples’ lives; it is just normal. It is though, disobedience to the law of God.

     Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: sexual immorality, impurity, indecent behaviour, idolatry, witchcraft, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5:19-21

     We could change the word evident in the verse above to obvious; Now the deeds of the flesh are obvious. Yet some of these things listed we see but do not recognise them, in our interactions with other people. Paul is pointing out that when we look at the world these things are obvious, warning that we should not allow these things to come into the fellowship of believers. Pauls talks in a couple of places, reminding people of how they used to be before Christ; that now they have been set fee from the old way of life through Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit.

     We have a choice. We can choose to live according to the law, and suffer the consequences when we fail, or we can live under the grace of God; knowing His forgiveness when we fail. Living or trying to live according to the law, is having a works-based mentality. It is taught in our churches. They teach that if you want to be blessed by God, do this. Don’t tithe or give and God will not bless you. This is a law-based mentality. It is not wrong to encourage to tithe and give to the work of God, give to the poor. It is wrong to attach conditions of God’s blessing to giving. Just as it is wrong to attach conditions to God’s blessing to any part of obeying the law. What is even more wrong in the New Covenant is to attach the curses of the law to not give or obey any part of the law.

     There are many parts of the biblical law that we do not follow; whether it is due to political correctness, or the fact that the consequences set out by God are just too barbaric for our civilised societies. Yes, God did tell the Israelites the conditions and consequences for obeying and disobeying His law. We can say that it was specific to the Israelites at that time. It was for their protection from the customs of the people of the land that God was going to give them. God said them specifically about some things, “Do not do what these people are doing.” It was because of these things that God was going to dispossess the land from the people. Deeds of the flesh!

     However, at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? Galatians 4:8-9

     Paul said the law was weak, because it could not achieve the require effect. That is to make people righteous. It is quite clearly stated that righteousness can only be achieved through faith. God gave the law to His people knowing this. What the law could do was give people confidence in that If they obeyed, they would be blessed. If they slipped up in some way by their humanness, they could offer a sacrifice that would cover their sin. This was a temporary measure until Christ the redeemer came and ended all need for sacrifices.

     In this respect the law was perfect, or we could say that it showed perfection; what perfection looked like. It was perfection for the Israelites. Paul tells us that as perfect as the law was, that there was something that it could not do. It could not redeem us from the consequences the of sin that is in the world. The sin that infects and affects everyone. What the law could not do was to make us righteous and justified and holy before God. What it can do is show us where we go wrong and fail. As Paul said, the law is our tutor, that leads to Christ. Here’s a thing, the law leads us to Christ, but Christ does not lead us back to the law of Moses. Christ leads us to the law of liberty.

     Some of the requirements of the law was to offer animal sacrifices to cover people’s sins, and for other things also. We are told that these sacrifices were temporary, until the perfect sacrifice of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Those sacrifices were also temporary because they had to redo them repeatedly. Not just the sacrifices but we are told that the LAW is ONLY a shadow of the good things to come through Christ.

     For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the form of those things itself, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually every year, make those who approach perfect. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins? Hebrews 10:1-2

     The law was an intermediary plan by God until the promised Messiah came. The law was for guidance; a to do list, if you like. Before the Cross of Christ, a covenant of obedience or else! God promises to bless if you obey. This what we call a conditional covenant, as opposed to an unconditional covenant. God’s promise to never destroy the earth by flooding, is one of God’s unconditional covenants. The covenant that God made with Abraham; all the promises were unconditional, later to be sealed by the sign of circumcision.

     These are pre-law covenants. They continued through Isaac and Jacob with God repeating the promises to both of these sons of Abraham. What then is the reason for the conditional covenant of the law? Our all-knowing Father God knew that His people would be enticed into idol worship and immoral practices of the nations that were in the promised land and surrounding areas. The law was the way to steer the Israelites towards righteousness. Righteousness is only achieved through faith, God expected for His people to have faith in His law, in His Word.

    But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. Romans 7:6