Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Proverbs 29:18 (06/08/23)
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TITLE: What's the Law got to do with it? | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ramona Cook
06/11/23 -
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Do you grow weary, and perhaps confused with the continuous theological discussions about THE LAW?
There are those who refuse to accept that any part of the 10 Commandments has an impact on our Judeo-Christian faith of today.
I am somewhat suspicious that they just don’t want any rules to apply, and usually they confirm it by saying that, “Christianity has no rules.”
Then I wonder, “Do these folks ever read their Bibles?”
What was the purpose of the 10 Commandments that God Himself gave to Moses, written in stone by the very finger of God?
The answer: God was forming organized living for humans on earth. God knew that people, humans, could NOT keep those Laws written by His finger on stone tablets.
Why then did He give them? God was setting a vision for the people of what holiness looks like, or if you like, what sin is.
Jesus, called “The Lamb of God,” with His death stopped the need for animals to ever be slaughtered again. Their blood could not make permanent restitution for sin anyway. Jesus’ Blood is once and forever sufficient for erasing sin.
God made the statement to Abraham, when he was just before offering Isaac as a sacrifice, “Don’t do it! I will provide Myself a sacrifice.”
This statement to me is a prophecy that He would give Himself as a sacrifice for sin, and He did that in the person of Jesus.
Jesus liked to call Himself, “Son of Man.” He had to be one of us to get the job done. He was human, but also God in the human body. Otherwise, He could not have kept all the Laws that were written on those tablets of stone and been qualified to be The Lamb of God offered without spot or blemish, thereby providing us salvation without the keeping of THAT set of Rules.
God speaks to us by creating pictures of spiritual truths portrayed in the physical things we understand. Those are called parables. He tells us stories to open our understanding of spiritual truths. He gives us written instructions.
Jesus did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it, a thing no natural, simply human could do. He did abbreviate the contents into 2 Commandments. 1. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, body and strength; and 2. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
Jesus’ comment on this condensation of The Law was that IF we do these two things, we will have fulfilled ALL The Law. Yes, we do have rules or laws in Christianity. And there are other commands as well.
Why are these instructions, rules, commands, necessary?
In a society, whether as large as a city or as small as a family, there must be rules that we live by. If everyone does whatever they feel like doing, what a mangled mess that would be. We need a common vision of what is acceptable for living together.
“Vision” comes in close range and long range. “Vision” pertains to large groups of people and to individuals. For instance, governments, companies, and religious institutions, all form a “Vision Statement.”
Individually, short range vision says, “This is what is to be done now and in this fashion;” and then, long range vision says, “This is what I want my life to count for as I live it.” We then stage what we must DO to get to the goal, and to accomplish the “vision.”
However, IF we have no vision or goal, then we have no purpose except to eat daily and live indoors, and we will die, whether young or old never having done what God’s grand purpose was for our life.
If we have no instructions for proper choices our vision is unclear.
IF we purpose to live a life that is fruitful and contributory to God in service to His creations, we will still die but having lived life in the way we were created to live it. However, it is the individual person, or even a group that must formulate the path to fulfilling the “Vision.”
Therefore, the Rules or Laws create for us a picture or Vision of the right things to do and the right ways to do them.
IF we have no “Vision” the purpose for which God put us here is never lived, it perishes within us.
Proverbs 29:18
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