The place of The Law
Read Leviticus 19 with Ben this arvo, and we were pondering over how and if The Law still applies to us today. Because obviously there are some laws that do not, eg. growing trees in a foreign land, you can't eat its fruit in the first 3 years, in the 4th, it is an offering to the Lord, only in the 5th year can you eat of its fruit. (Lev 18:23) But there are others that are still applicable today. Like not degrading your daughter into prostitution (Lev 18:29)
How does one "pick and choose" which laws apply, and which don't? You can't. We are not in a position of ANY authority where we can pick and choose which laws to obey.
So how do we regard the Old Testament law? It is still valid? Do we still have to obey it? What purpose does it serve?
The short answer to this question is "by grace"...
We know that the law is not obslete because Jesus himself said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" - Matt 5:17
and also that "we are not under law but under grace" - Rom 6:14
We found the following comment from Peter Jensen (Archbishop of Sydney) most helpful. I quote...
"One of the uses of God's law is that of a spiritual miror in which we may examine oursleves and find out the truth... it needs to be interpreted in the light of the whole Bible - and of course Christians have been set free from the condemnation of the law. But the law still enables us to know ourselves and to know what pleases the Lord..." - Southern Cross Aug 2005, pg 6.
posted by mockkie @ 7:13 pm
2 Comments:
Hi Flo,
welcome to my blog. :)
forgive, but my memory is rather rusty. can u refresh my memory of which flo this is? were u in ACES? or just Ecos?
Thanks for the comments and the suggested passages. :)
Totally agree with u there. Thanks for the reminder about the Spirit of the Law. :)
For me, "living by the spirit" means that because we are no longer under law, but rather under grace, we recognise the place of the law to show God's holiness and our utter depravity. But because of grace, we are able to rely on the saving grace of Christ who is the fulfillment of the law.
Because of this, we no longer have to try and fulfil the law ourselves (which is a losing battle) because Christ has done that for us! Rather what that means, is that we are now free to live to please God through Christ. The law gives us an indication of what pleases God (as noted by Peter Jensen), and serves as an ever encouragement and reminder to seek God's will in our lives.
Hope that helps. It's only barely scratching the surface i know. :)
oh cool...
hmm..
now that i think about it more, i do vaguely recall meeting a girl called Flo...
but i can't seem to put a face to the name sorry...
how did u find my blog btw? i'm surprised that u even still remember me!
were u on a weekend away to Mountain Camp that I was convening?
glad that little explanation helped. :)
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