The Law, or Grace and Truth?

 

“For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).

 

We are, I think, afraid of Grace and Truth in Jesus Christ. We are, I think, afraid to acknowledge that we are dead to the Law and married to Jesus Christ (Romans 7:1 – 6).

 

We usually agree with Paul that, “But now apart from the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).

 

But I’m not sure that we agree with Paul that, “…whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may be accountable to God” (Romans 3:19). I write this because the Law is often still preached and taught to those in Christ, those under grace. This does not appear to square with Galatians 4:1 – 7, which pictures us first as being under the tutorial Law but then being adopted (placed) as sons and entering a new realm of relationship with God and frankly a new Way of living.  

 

We don’t seem to actually believe that the Law is “the ministry of death” (2 Cor. 3:7), that the letter kills (2 Cor. 3:6), that it is the “ministry of condemnation” (2 Cor. 3:9), or that frankly it has no glory when compared to grace and truth (2 Cor. 3:10). If we truly believed what the Bible teaches about the Law we would stop teaching it and trust ourselves and our congregations to the grace and truth which is in Jesus Christ.

 

This does not mean that we should stop teaching the Old Testament, absolutely not, we need every page, every paragraph, every word of the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. But it does mean that we teach the Old Testament so as to see Jesus Christ – this is the way Jesus taught and revealed Himself through the Old Testament (see Luke 24), as well as how the Apostles taught the Old Testament.

 

This is, by the way, not antinomianism, that is, it is not lawlessness as some would charge and as most would fear (hence our fear of teaching what the Bible teaches about the Law). It is rather teaching what the Bible teaches about who Jesus Christ is in us and who we are in Him. It is teaching that we are to love as Jesus loves, that we are to lay down our lives as Jesus laid down His life - and as He desires to continue to lay down His life in us, His Body.

 

It is to teach that we are “partakers of the Divine Nature” rather than partakers of the Law. It is to teach that the Trinity dwells within us and desires to draw us into deep eternal koinonia – individually and as God’s People.

 

There is something in our religious nature that rejects the idea of being dead to the Law and married to Jesus Christ. We would rather remain under the Levitical system than walk with Melchizedek (see the NT book of Hebrews). We think it is safe, we’ll keep one foot in the Law and the other foot in the Gospel – the result is that while we may have crossed the Red Sea, our hearts and minds tend to remain in Egypt.

 

In the Gospel of John, the religious leaders apply unrelenting pressure on Jesus, they must hold onto the Law at all costs – they are even willing to murder. Is it possible that we also put pressure on grace and truth, becoming unwitting accomplices of the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees? How else can we explain the poverty of the professing church? How else can we explain that the typical professing Christian has no sense of his sonship? Her inheritance in Christ? No sense of loving as Jesus loves, going as Jesus goes, laying down his life as Jesus lays down His, being dead to sin and the world and alive to Jesus Christ, being crucified to the world by the Cross.

 

How else can we explain the lack of sharing the Gospel, that we neither speak to others of Jesus nor pray with others as Jesus?

 

Well, while there may be other contributors to the answers to these questions, I have little doubt that living under the Law and its perpetual condemnation is one of the core problems. The Law treats us as children at best, not as sons and daughters of the Living God. The Law can produce but condemnation and death – not the Life of Jesus Christ, not Grace and Truth.

 

Dear friends, the Nature of God living in us, through Jesus Christ, will accomplish far more than the Law. Why isn’t this self-evident? We see an initial Incarnation in John chapters 1 – 12, then we see an expanded Incarnation is chapters 13 – 21. Do we really think that the Law offers us something better than the Incarnation? “Except a grain of what falls into the ground it abides alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

 

Are we living in the Law, or is the Incarnation living in us?

 

When people touch us, are they touching the Law of Moses, or are they touching the Incarnation of Jesus Christ in His Body?