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Mixing Law and Grace: Difference between revisions
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:''You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.'' (Ga 5:4) | :''You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.'' (Ga 5:4) | ||
If you try to mix grace and the law as the Galatian church did, Paul said that you have fallen away from grace. Paul said you are either entirely under the law or you are under grace. They can't be mixed. | '''If you try to mix grace and the law as the Galatian church did, Paul said that you have fallen away from grace.''' Paul said you are either entirely under the law or you are under grace. They can't be mixed. | ||
==The Old Covenant is Obsolete!!== | |||
The Bible is a book organized around two covenants: one between God and ancient Israel and one between God and you! Focus on the second one. The covenant between God and Israel is obsolete. Read it for historical context and inspiration. | |||
Wait a minute. You just called part of the Bible obsolete! Actually, it wasn’t me. One of the authors of our Bible calls part of our Bible obsolete. | |||
If you had an overwhelming amount of debt that you wanted to rid yourself of, one option would be to declare bankruptcy. In that case, your obligation would not be fulfilled, just removed. But if someone came along and paid off your debt, the obligation would be fulfilled and the burden of fulfilling that obligation would be removed as well. Jesus fulfilled—as in ended—the necessity of the Jewish law. Just as you don’t abolish a home by completing its construction, just as you don’t abolish a flight plan by landing a plane, just as you don’t abolish a homework assignment by completing the assignment, Jesus did not abolish the law when he fulfilled it. But in fulfilling it, he made it . . . obsolete.<ref>Stanley, Andy. Irresistible (p. 103). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. </ref> | |||
Paul says in Romans 7:6: | |||
:''But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the '''old''' way of the written code.<ref>The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 7:6.</ref> | |||
The Greek word that Paul uses that we translate as "ole is παλαιότης which refers to something in the state of being superseded or obsolete,<ref>William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker, and Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 751.</ref> | |||
This statement of the old covenant being made obsolete is made clear in the book of Hebrews: | |||
:''In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.<ref>The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Heb 8:13.</ref> | |||
To be clear, obsolete doesn’t mean bad. Obsolete means something new and better has come along. Cassette tapes are obsolete, but they’re not bad. Back in the day, cassette tapes were cutting-edge technology. Cassette tapes were the first technology to create the possibility for portable personalized music, until CDs came along, and now CDs are fast becoming obsolete. Not because they’re bad. Because something better has come along. Each of those technologies played a critical role in the evolution of music storage and portability. They were necessary steps to get where we are today. The same is true of God’s covenant with the nation of Israel. Sequential.<ref>Stanley, Andy. Irresistible (p. 154). Zondervan.</ref> | |||
N. T. Wright summarized it perfectly when he wrote: | |||
:''The Torah [law of Moses at Sinai] is given for a specific period of time, and is then set aside—not because it was a bad thing now happily abolished, but because it was a good thing whose purpose had now been accomplished.''<ref>N.T. Wright, ''The Climax of the Covenant'' (Minneapolis:Fortress, 1991), p. 181.</ref> | |||
To love the way Jesus called us to love requires a complete break with the inspired but retired, beautiful but obsolete, old covenant. As long as we continue mixing old with new, we will never be free to love as we have been called to love. Until we dispense with the old and embrace the new, our love will be leverage. And love that is leverage is no love at all.<ref>Stanley, Andy. Irresistible (p. 245). Zondervan.</ref> | |||
=So how are Christians supposed to behave?= | =So how are Christians supposed to behave?= | ||