Mar 14, 2007 - Under whose law?
March 14, 2007
Gal 3:22-25 AUV-NTWe as human beings have two choices. We can live under the law or live by faith in Jesus. If you try to live by one, the other cannot come into play. You either live under the law or you live by faith in what Jesus did for us. The law needs to be kept, every jot and tittle of it. It is obvious that we cannot please God by keeping the law. We never will be able to do everything that it asks. That is why Jesus came. He fulfilled every bit of the law that we could never do. The law points us to the fact that Jesus would come. It brings us, like a school bus would bring a student to school, to Jesus as the way to get to God.
(22) But the Scriptures indicate that everything [i.e., everyone] is under the control of sin, so that the promise [of never ending life] could be available [only] to those who have faith in Jesus Christ.
(23) But before faith [in Christ] became available, we [Jews] were kept in bondage under [condemnation for not obeying perfectly] the law of Moses. [This condition existed] until the faith [i.e., the Gospel message] was made known [to people].
(24) So, the law of Moses became like our “transportation to school,” bringing us to [the school of] Christ where we [learn how to be] made right with God by faith [in Christ].
(25) But now that faith [in Christ] has become available, we are no longer in need of this “transportation to school.”
The New Testament: An Understandable Version, © 1994 by William E. Paul,
Impact Publications,
Post Office Box 30526
Seattle, Washington 98103
http://ncbible.org/AUV/Contents.htm
As a Christian, I am no longer under the law. There is nothing I can do to make Jesus' sacrifice any better that it is. Does that mean that I do not have to keep the law any more. In reality it means that I do not. In reality it also means that I want to. I want to follow the laws that are important. Jesus points them out to us. Love God will all your being and Love one another as you love yourself.
So why do we try to put the law on others? Why do we try to make them fit our mold of what a person should be? And even more important why do we put ourselves under the laws that other people put on us. I am not talking about laws from society, they are good and needed, otherwise I could not drive my car through and intersection with out the risk of getting hit. I am talking about the laws that people put on other people. If you want to be a Christian, you must not do something (or have to do something). Even worse, if you want to prove that you love me, you will do things this way. We tend to put those laws on our spouse so that they can be manipulated into what we want them to do. And of course they do the same.
But Jesus comes and says the law is no effect. The law points to me and I have done it all for you. So if Jesus has done it all for us, and we are not judged by Him, why do we put these laws on others, or even take them on ourselves? We are right with God, do we need to get right with man, or force others to get right with us?
