i spent many years trapped in the predicament of trying to measure up to the Christian "law" and failing miserably. Perhaps the following may be of help in keeping new Christians from making the same legalistic mistakes as i did.
MAY GOD'S BLESSINGS BE UPON ALL!
ephraim
"You can have Christian law as much as you can have Mosaic law. You can be in bondage in Christianity just as much as in Judaism. Christianity can be an imposed system with thou shalt and thou shalt not, just as much as the Mosaic law; and there are just as many Christians today who are afraid of Christianity, so to speak, as there were Jews who were conscious of the dead weight of the law imposed upon them.
"That wants explaining. Is Christianity to us in any degree a matter of what we must do and what we must not do? And if we do not do what we should do, or if we do what we should not do, do we lose our peace of conscience our peace of mind? Is that our experience?
"It means this: I can take this Bible and I can say, Here is Gods standard for your life it is all here . . . Old Testament and New Testament . . . Gods standard for your life. It is a very exhaustive one a very thorough one and you will not find that any point of your life remains untouched by it. It has something to say about it all; take that . . . God expects you to live up to that!
"What is your reaction to that? Try it . . . and a lot of people are trying. They are trying to live up to the New Testament, and it cannot be done. It cannot be done that way. I tell you, beloved, that if you are going to take this Book and try to live up to it, you will be far better advised to leave it alone; dont you make the attempt. You will come back very sorry people in a little while if that is your line; and yet multitudes of Christians are trying it.
"That is one way of reaching Gods standard. I have given you the Book and told you Gods standard; you have tried it and found that it condemns, condemns, condemns more than anything else. The one effect it has upon you is to make you feel what a wretched, miserable failure you are . . . and how impossible you are; that is the effect of it from that standpoint.
"What is the other? I bring you, NOT a Book but a PERSON a Person who has lived up to that standard, who has fulfilled every minute demand with the most absolute success, who has satisfied God to the full under our conditions of life: TEMPTED IN ALL POINTS LIKE AS WE ARE; subjected to all the trials in spirit, in soul, in body; tried under all conditions, inwardly and outwardly; and made to pass through what you and I will never have to pass through. We shall never know the depth of His temptations of His soul-sufferings, of that which tried Him to get Him to swerve from the path of obedience; we shall never know the same measure. But in a far greater measure than we can ever know, He has been subjected to the ultimate test of all Gods perfect will and has triumphed, succeeded, satisfied God . . . and has, therefore, gone out from the realm of law. The law has no more power over Him; He is now far above law as law.
"That Person that living Person in all the virtue and content and power of that complete triumph, I bring to you; and I say, God in His great grace and wisdom and love has offered to allow that Person to live in your heart by the Holy Spirit in all the virtue of His Cross. He is there with all that accomplishment in His possession . . . living within. And I say: if you will utterly yield your will, your heart, your mind to Him if you will allow that Cross on its death side to be planted in the realm of your mind with all its independent thoughts and judgments; in your heart with all its desires and affections; in your will with all its choices and its ways; in your entire nature you need not worry about the Books standards any longer. If you will allow the Cross to be planted there to cut you off from yourself unto Him . . . and you will yield and obey and go on with Him and cooperate with Him as He witnesses in you to His will . . . you need not worry about the law any longer you are free from the law, you are above the law, you have the law of God written in your heart, NOT WITH PEN UPON TABLES OF STONE, BUT BY THE HOLY SPIRIT UPON THE FLESHLY TABLES OF YOUR HEART. The law of God is written there, and you know the mind of the Lord about things; and what is more the power is there to do it. It is inward; you see the difference between a Book and a Person between Christianity as something to be lived up to and Christ living within.
"What is the law for us? Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? That is the Lords speaking in our hearts, not law imposed upon us from the outside; but the Lords making know in our hearts what we should do. We have the law in our hearts.
"The Lord Jesus embraced all the will of God on every point on every matter and perfected it in His own Person. Now He, as the perfected will of God, comes to reside in us in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit to work out that perfected will of God; not to ask us to struggle toward something, but to work it out in us as a power; not as a binding imposition of something upon our lives, but as the living force within.
"The difference between the Old Testament and New Testament truth is just this that in the Old Testament it was something presented, and people groaned under the weight of it in trying to fulfill it; in the New Testament it is Someone resident within who is perfectly capable of living up to the will of God and bringing us up to that standard by working within us to will and to do of His good pleasure. It is LIFE, not legality."
MAY GOD'S BLESSINGS BE UPON ALL!
ephraim
"You can have Christian law as much as you can have Mosaic law. You can be in bondage in Christianity just as much as in Judaism. Christianity can be an imposed system with thou shalt and thou shalt not, just as much as the Mosaic law; and there are just as many Christians today who are afraid of Christianity, so to speak, as there were Jews who were conscious of the dead weight of the law imposed upon them.
"That wants explaining. Is Christianity to us in any degree a matter of what we must do and what we must not do? And if we do not do what we should do, or if we do what we should not do, do we lose our peace of conscience our peace of mind? Is that our experience?
"It means this: I can take this Bible and I can say, Here is Gods standard for your life it is all here . . . Old Testament and New Testament . . . Gods standard for your life. It is a very exhaustive one a very thorough one and you will not find that any point of your life remains untouched by it. It has something to say about it all; take that . . . God expects you to live up to that!
"What is your reaction to that? Try it . . . and a lot of people are trying. They are trying to live up to the New Testament, and it cannot be done. It cannot be done that way. I tell you, beloved, that if you are going to take this Book and try to live up to it, you will be far better advised to leave it alone; dont you make the attempt. You will come back very sorry people in a little while if that is your line; and yet multitudes of Christians are trying it.
"That is one way of reaching Gods standard. I have given you the Book and told you Gods standard; you have tried it and found that it condemns, condemns, condemns more than anything else. The one effect it has upon you is to make you feel what a wretched, miserable failure you are . . . and how impossible you are; that is the effect of it from that standpoint.
"What is the other? I bring you, NOT a Book but a PERSON a Person who has lived up to that standard, who has fulfilled every minute demand with the most absolute success, who has satisfied God to the full under our conditions of life: TEMPTED IN ALL POINTS LIKE AS WE ARE; subjected to all the trials in spirit, in soul, in body; tried under all conditions, inwardly and outwardly; and made to pass through what you and I will never have to pass through. We shall never know the depth of His temptations of His soul-sufferings, of that which tried Him to get Him to swerve from the path of obedience; we shall never know the same measure. But in a far greater measure than we can ever know, He has been subjected to the ultimate test of all Gods perfect will and has triumphed, succeeded, satisfied God . . . and has, therefore, gone out from the realm of law. The law has no more power over Him; He is now far above law as law.
"That Person that living Person in all the virtue and content and power of that complete triumph, I bring to you; and I say, God in His great grace and wisdom and love has offered to allow that Person to live in your heart by the Holy Spirit in all the virtue of His Cross. He is there with all that accomplishment in His possession . . . living within. And I say: if you will utterly yield your will, your heart, your mind to Him if you will allow that Cross on its death side to be planted in the realm of your mind with all its independent thoughts and judgments; in your heart with all its desires and affections; in your will with all its choices and its ways; in your entire nature you need not worry about the Books standards any longer. If you will allow the Cross to be planted there to cut you off from yourself unto Him . . . and you will yield and obey and go on with Him and cooperate with Him as He witnesses in you to His will . . . you need not worry about the law any longer you are free from the law, you are above the law, you have the law of God written in your heart, NOT WITH PEN UPON TABLES OF STONE, BUT BY THE HOLY SPIRIT UPON THE FLESHLY TABLES OF YOUR HEART. The law of God is written there, and you know the mind of the Lord about things; and what is more the power is there to do it. It is inward; you see the difference between a Book and a Person between Christianity as something to be lived up to and Christ living within.
"What is the law for us? Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? That is the Lords speaking in our hearts, not law imposed upon us from the outside; but the Lords making know in our hearts what we should do. We have the law in our hearts.
"The Lord Jesus embraced all the will of God on every point on every matter and perfected it in His own Person. Now He, as the perfected will of God, comes to reside in us in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit to work out that perfected will of God; not to ask us to struggle toward something, but to work it out in us as a power; not as a binding imposition of something upon our lives, but as the living force within.
"The difference between the Old Testament and New Testament truth is just this that in the Old Testament it was something presented, and people groaned under the weight of it in trying to fulfill it; in the New Testament it is Someone resident within who is perfectly capable of living up to the will of God and bringing us up to that standard by working within us to will and to do of His good pleasure. It is LIFE, not legality."
--T. Austin Sparks
from "LIVING WATER FROM DEEP WELLS OF REVELATION"
ALL GLORY TO YOU,
MY LORD!
THANK YOU!
from "LIVING WATER FROM DEEP WELLS OF REVELATION"
ALL GLORY TO YOU,MY LORD!
THANK YOU!
