I'm referring to the following post.
Do you think this gift of the law is the greatest gift God has given us? Do you think there is any other gift that God has given us greater that the gift of the law and its instructions? Do you feel that all other gifts God has given are not as important as the gift of the law? Where do you...
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Where do you get this idea? Jesus is the most important person in the universe to humanity but Jesus also gave us the 10 commandments and because we love Him we think it is not only our duty but out privilege to obey Him. He told us this Himself. If you love me keep my commandments.
All of His commandments are based upon the principle of God's love. If we love Him most of all we will keep the first four and we will love other as ourselves and thus keep the last six through His power to replace the selfishness inherent in our human nature with His love for others. That is not legalism any more than doing what your wife asks you to do because you love her.
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I replied to this post. I will respond again differently.
1.) Jesus is indeed the most important person. And Jesus gave us JESUS.
The most important matter Jesus gave to man was HIMSELF- HIMSELF- HIMSELF.
NOTHING in existence surpasses the criticality of Jesus being OURS.
But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom to us from God: both righteousness and sanctification and redemption,
That as it is written, “He who boasts, let him boast in the Lord.” (1 Cor. 1:30,31)
2.) You say He gave the 10 commandments. Okay, because He is God we may say Christ gave us the commandments.
For Jesus is God after God became incarnated as a man.
The Apostle John was exceedingly close to Jesus. And he draws up this contrast.
For the law was given through Moses; grace and reality came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:17)
On one side of the contrast we have the Law given through the man of God Moses.
On the other side we have what CAME through Jesus as REALITY, as grace and REALITY.
That means that as wonderful as the Law given through Moses was (getting it from God) that law keeping
is now surpassed by receiving God Himself in Jesus. Reality from grace is now ours !
John 1:11-14 - He came to His own, yet those who were His own did not receive Him.
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, to those who believe into His name,
Who were begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father), full of grace and reality.
3.) The Son of God was full of grace and reality. (v.14)
Grace and reality now indwell us who have RECEIVED Him.
We have gone from law keepers to living born SONS.
Yes, God gave the ten commandments.
But there was something lacking to us in TRUTH, in REALITY.
These are a living Person - Jesus Christ. There is no comparison to the former way of living and the new way of living.
4.) You write and I agree -
All of His commandments are based upon the principle of God's love. If we love Him most of all we will keep the first four and we will love other as ourselves and thus keep the last six through His power to replace the selfishness inherent in our human nature with His love for others.
And it is impossible apart from Him. Therefore all the law keepers lacked REALITY. They lacked the TRUTH.
The law was given through Moses. We have received grace upon grace upon grace in layers, in our living
and ever deepening experience of grace and reality which comes to us in the indwelling Jesus Christ.
5.) then you write -
That is not legalism any more than doing what your wife asks you to do because you love her.
The righteous requirements of the law are fufilled in us if we learn to walk by the living Spirit of life.
Romans 8:1-4 - There is now then no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the Spirit of life has freed me in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and of death.
For that which the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin and concerning sin, condemned sin in the flesh, That the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us,
who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit.
I think we may come to see eye to eye or meet each other half way.
If I understand that you MEAN living Jesus is the
ONLY way the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled.
And you understand that because I speak of the Law Keeping in disparaging terms I do NOT mean we are free to live lawlessly, sinfully.
Romans 8:1 follows chapter 7 that CONDEMNATION, especially SELF CONDEMNATION is history, gone, over, to those who
are in Christ Jesus walking in a united way with Him.
There is now then no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.