Law and Order (part I)

During the recent ongoing “Grace Awakening” the biggest obstacle I see (especially in the pastorate) is a fear of completely letting go of the Law. I struggled with this as well, wondering why God would introduce something so pivotal for a brief period of time and then seemingly cast it aside as if He’d changed His mind regarding its significance. After all He is the same yesterday today and forever.

As I searched for an answer, two foundational truths have guided my study. 1. Who God is; His attributes and His principals will never change. 2. God’s ultimate purpose for mankind will never change. My next several postings will build on each other, I pray that you will meditate on God’s Word as He leads you to seek greater revelation into His person!

Righteousness and Justice are the foundation of His throne. (Ps 97:2) For God to righteously establish justice, He must be righteous and just. For Him to govern righteously and justly He cannot rule arbitrarily based on a whim. God holds himself to a standard! You may say, but He is sovereign! GOD has set the standard that He will hold Himself to thereby maintaining His sovereignty. (We will discuss sovereignty, justice and righteousness in later postings) This standard is LAW; God is a God of Laws! Don’t let this scare you, it actually offers us assurance!

God is not above the law, He has established the Law, and He operates legally within the confines of the Law He has established. Think about it: when He created, He simply spoke laws into place that man later discovered, and actually had the audacity to name some of them after himself. ie. Newton's Law of Gravity. There are laws of physics; laws of electricity, mathematical laws, there are even laws that govern the English language.

God spoke laws into chaos and the result was order. That’s because a law governs. Each law carries with it governing actions that bring about an expected outcome. Each time the law is followed the outcome will be the same. The only way to render a law inoperational , is to put a law into place that overrides the existing law, either permanently or temporarily. (I hope you see where this is going!)

Some have concluded, (in error) that since we are no longer under the old “covenant of Law” but under grace that everything now is just willy nilly, loosey goosey, and we never know what God will do because it is after all based on His will and who knows what that is?  But God has given us imagery in the bible (yes in the new covenant) that contradicts this theory.  Jesus spoke of a Kingdom that is within us, and  a kingdom is established based on rule and law and government.    The bible speaks of warfare and armor (Eph 6, Acts 17, II Cor. 10) The military’s very foundation is rule and discipline, not to mention rank!

So are we under law in the new covenant or not? If so what is the rule of law we are subject to? Who are the powers that be? What is the hierarchy? What are the principals that govern this kingdom?

Please hunt for answers to these questions before we meet again, and please come back for part 2 of Law and Order.

Dumbing Down the Gospel

As I listened to my Pastor deliver the message last Sunday, I wondered how we, the body, have taken the Gospel of God, in which God has given us everything pertaining to life and godliness, and have managed to make the promises of God of no effect in our lives? This is the same gospel that by its OWN power caused the Holy Spirit to fall on the hearers, as they believed, while Peter was still speaking! (Acts 10:44) And I heard several people talking after the service whose Spirit man recognized TRUTH and LIFE and they physically felt Him grab onto the message. A woman said it’s as if she’s had amnesia, and grace was something she knew once and was now awakening to. One man said he felt like he was having a panic attack on the inside during the message. AMEN! If we weren’t in “civilized” America, I wonder what that reaction would have looked like on the outside!
This week I’ve meditated on “what responsibility as a body do we bear for the lack of power in the church” and the answer is ALL of it. In our effort to make it palatable we coin phrases (I’ve done it, we all have) like “I’m living for Jesus” REALLY? As if we could, on our BEST day, do anything in our own strength and pride to add one iota of Magnificence and Glory to His person. He isn’t asking us to live FOR Him, He says Yield! And I will live through you. Even there, we pat ourselves on the back for “accepting Christ” we tell others, you can “invite Him into your heart” MORE LIKE TRY TO RESIST HIM! I will never forget the Sunday evening service 30 years ago, I experienced His love full force. I had said no to Him for the last time that Sunday morning. When the service started I knew what I was there to do, I could hardly wait for the altar call. I don’t even remember getting to the front of the church, nothing around me mattered, at last I was His. It reminds me of the old movies where the man decides he will kiss the woman and she makes a futile attempt to struggle for a while before she surrenders to what she was hoping for all along.
The ironic thing is, our biggest struggle seems to be remaining humble, “less of me and more of Him”, and we end up making ourselves the focal point even in that. We worry so about Him getting the glory, and if we are in His will. When we see how big He really is, we will see that He is not concerned with our ability to stand in His way. In fact our preoccupation with our “self-centeredness” may be the one thing that makes us most ineffective.
The key is seeing Him. When He unveils Himself in the Gospel, we are beholding the risen Christ; the inexplicable truth of everything that He is overwhelms us. At that moment we begin to understand that He has done it all, and all that is left to do is yield, and we are so disarmed at that juncture that we can do nothing else.
If we truly believe He is IN us, the Spirit of the risen Christ, will we believe for a moment that our simple fleshly shortcomings are an obstacle to Him? He will simply reveal more of Himself, become even more disarming, and in a moment of “controlled ecstasy” we will relinquish what was never a concern to Him anyway. And our plea that we would bring Him glory. Hah, how ludicrous, we cannot! All glory and honor belong to Him; by His very nature he receives all glory. For us to bring Him glory we must stop trying to bring Him glory. We are hidden in Him so He has already taken us out of the equation and He lives through us to glorify Himself because any attempts on our own would only serve to give us cause for boasting. We grovel and attempt to demote ourselves, all the while bringing more attention to ourselves, He waits patiently till our flesh is satisfied that we are sufficiently humbled, and then reminds us that our flesh is no match for Him and can we now proceed? True humility, is boldness, as we recognize that it IS none of me and ALL of Him. We will stop being victims and we will walk in victory when we stop trying to make Him preeminent and recognize that He already is!