What About Law?

(This post is in response to a comment on my previous thoughts also posted today. As can be seen, the answer got rather lengthy and I decided to simply put it out as another post instead of having it hid away behind the comments link. For context behind this writing it will be helpful to read the last post as well as the questions raised in the comments on it. I welcome and enjoy the discussion raised by these honest questions.)

Josh, you bring up some very good issues here that I too have struggled with and am not satisfied to accept simplistic answers to resolve. At the same time, many of these very issues are bothering us precisely because we have accepted far too many simplistic answers already, maybe not knowingly but as a culture and partly just because we are under the delusions from inheriting Adam's fall.

What is becoming much more clear to me very recently and is helping me to make sense of the issues you raise is the great need to delineate a clear difference between legal thinking that was invented by humans very early in the history of the world and natural law or more accurately the basic principles that undergird reality such as gravity and heat and physics etc. The commingling of these two very different constructs has brought about the stress and fear that we feel in trying to sort out much of our misunderstandings. It also greatly contributes to the serious misconceptions about God that distort our views of Him and prevent us from trusting Him more fully.

I understand that much of what I have been saying comes from recently learning a great deal more about the bigger picture behind how we arrived at our current state of culture. Much of the background information from which I am synthesizing many of my comments come from a researcher and professor who has spent years carefully immersing themself in very ancient near-east records of how people thought and lived back then and the cultures that arose through the beginnings of Babylon that gave rise to everything we see today. When we better understand our roots and the context in which much of the Bible was written it is much easier to understand more about our problems. In addition it also sheds a great deal of light onto what God's original design was for us that has become so eclipsed by thousands of years of obfuscation that it is now almost indiscernible.

What is helping me settle and feel comfortable about many of these things that have troubled me for most of my life is the separation and clear descriptions of each of these forms of “law” and the differences between them. As I see which side each element might belong to I then see how the mingling of these concepts has caused so much confusion in my mind and with everyone else. I see this very much also in some of your comments as well and I hope to be able to help maybe a little bit through our dialog to explore these together. I do not want to come across as dogmatic about these things but would like to have the freedom to look at life from different perspectives that may allow more of us to see things from a much more mature vantage point.

A couple days ago a friend told me that they had a discussion in their church about punishment and/or discipline. My friend asked the people what the difference was between the two and basically everyone there could not think of any; they believed that the two were pretty much the same thing. When he asked me the same question I immediately said there is a world of difference between the two. That is because I have been learning so much about the clear differences between these two systems of thought, these two views of reality that dramatically affect how we view God and His dealings with us.

Let me just present some basic foundational principles that must be in place before there can be any meaningful progress in one's understanding of this problem. First and foremost, we have to start with the absolute truth that Jesus put to the disciples that God the Father and Jesus were not any different in the slightest. Jesus said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” (see John 14:7-11) This has been a tremendous help for me, an anchor and a key that helps unravel many of the mysteries and questions that are raised about God throughout the rest of the Bible. If there is a discrepancy between something we read about God elsewhere in the Bible and what we see demonstrated in the life of Jesus, then the example and words of Jesus must trump every other notion or conclusion that we may have come up with in the past. I cannot emphasize the importance of this principle enough in seeking to understand the real truth about God.

Beyond that, it is going to take time to unpack piece by piece the issues and questions that arise that we don't understand or don't have enough background information to explain. I am finding that the more context I learn about the much bigger picture of the Great War going on since Lucifer revolted in heaven and is conducting in great detail here on earth, the easier it is to see from a bird's eye view so to speak what God's real intentions are and what He is really trying to convey to us. God's motives and communications have often become very garbled because of the sad shape of our mental and emotional receivers over the centuries, but the revelation of God in Jesus and the glory of truth that is being felt in these last days as prophesied in Revelation 18 I believe is leading to an unveiling of many things that have long been misunderstood or repressed.

As I have been shifting my own perceptions about this issue of the role of law lately, I also am starting to see much more clearly how many of the writers of the Bible were trying to convey this same message to us, especially in the New Testament. But because of our addiction to the legal model of thinking we were unable or unwilling to see these passages in this light and so missed the real intent of many of their writings. There are a number of texts that make this issue clear if we are willing to not skim over them lightly in favor of those that appear to support our traditional views.

Let me just mention a couple here. I know that this sounds very strange at first, but allow the Spirit of God to guide all of us as we allow our own minds to ponder things possibly new and strange and potentially more wonderful than we ever imagined.

For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them, "Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you." Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels, and looked backward rather than forward. (Jeremiah 7:22-24 NRSV)

It has been noted by this researcher that when God first brought the Children of Israel out of Egypt He did not want to take the route of bloody sacrifices which were the typical worship methods of all the nations around them. As is made clear in this text, God's original desire was for them to have a radically different relationship with this God quite opposite to the gods that the other cultures felt had to be appeased and placated. God did not want anyone to view Him as an angry, controlling god that considered his human subjects as his slaves to serve his every whim like many of the other imaginary gods were believed to want. Israel's God was exactly like what Jesus portrayed when He stooped to wash the feet of His betrayer just minutes before Judas sold his soul for a few pieces of silver. God desired a relationship of love, not of fear.

But what did the people do with God's offer? They refused it and turned around and built a golden calf representative of power, self-indulgence and oppression – the gods of their former Egyptian slave-masters. They rebelled and looked backward rather than forward and chose to view God through the lenses of appeasement rather than love and service. From that point on, God was forced to spell out what the nature of the sacrifices needed to look like as they choose to follow that model. God was not commanding them to offer sacrifices as is made clear in the above text but was obliged to at least give them directions concerning the sacrificial system that they insisted on following so that their sacrifices did not mimic the satanic views of God nearly so much as did all the other forms of sacrifices modeled by the surrounding cultures.

Let me offer another text from the New Testament. I realize that this is likely raising far more questions than it is answering, but at least it is a beginning of a study that I know can be very fruitful and enlightening if we are willing to follow on with it.

Examine chapter 10 of Hebrews very carefully in light of this new paradigm. It will be seen there that it is even more clear that God never desired the whole system of blood and sacrifices but all along wanted a relationship of love, trust and obedience. But as I was learning these new things myself one verse kept popping into my head that remained unanswered, one verse that I didn't bother to go read for myself in context or I might have seen much sooner the answer I was looking for. The phrase, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” kept coming into my mind and raising objections to all of these things I was learning. But on closer examination a very key phrase at the beginning of that verse explained it more clearly. What it really says is, And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. (Hebrews 9:22)

God is having to deal with humanity's obsession with law. Because our thinking is so wrapped up in legal offenses and penalties, the only way that we would ever come to believe anything about the real truth of God's feelings toward us was to do things in such a way as to satisfy our demands for what we think is justice. I have not finished following this line of thought completely yet, but I am becoming very suspicious that much of what we impose onto God's image as Divine justice is really our own human demands for satisfaction of our prejudices and beliefs more than the realities of God's own heart. Quite possibly, the only way God could get through our legal mentality that would accept no alternative was to shed His own blood to satisfy our twisted views of justice, not God's. But if that is what it took, then God was willing to do it to turn us around and take a more serious look at the real truth about His unsurpassable love for us.

Because God has made it clear that He never originally desired the sacrificial system but accepted it as a secondary arrangement because of the stubbornness of their evil will,it can began to be seen that the whole system of thinking from a legal model, which is what the sacrificial system is totally based on, is also greatly suspect. Let me offer yet another text that further indicts the system of law as a supplanter of God's original desire for our relationship.

But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. (Romans 5:20 NRSV)

What is very interesting in this verse is that when you look at the original word that was translated “came in”, it denotes an air of stealth. It could be more accurately translated that “law sneaked in with the result that trespass multiplied”. The more that I study carefully the many passages on this matter both in the Old and New Testaments the more clear this issue is becoming with all sorts of very interesting implications.

What is becoming more clear in my mind, especially in the light of the example of Jesus' life, is the unavoidable fact that God has a much better arrangement that He desires to operate His universe within that does not revolve around rules and dictates. This is made clear when we realize the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers. (1 Timothy 1:9) And the lawless and rebellious are soon going to be out of the picture in the near future after the final payment from sin is received. After that point there will be no need for imposed law whatsoever.

This may not clarify the differences between God's “laws” and man's invention of an arbitrary legal system, but it does help to begin to show that God's real purpose for creation did not revolve around a legal mentality and that is not the model He wished to have for His people. Through the glimpse we get into the heart of God through the life and attitudes of Jesus we can see that His real desire was to form bonds of loving relationships with His children and draw them into a life-giving intimacy with Himself.

For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near. (Hebrews 10:1) How much would you know about a tree if all you had ever seen of a tree was a shadow of one? And while it is admittedly necessary to have rules to restrain immature children from hurting themselves or others until they have learned by teaching and example how to live a healthy, inter-connected life within a community, that does not mean that the system of law is God's desire for the long-term. None of us wish for our children to remain immature and dependent on our restrictions for all of their life, that would be a travesty. In fact, healthy parents (where do you find those?) desire a relationship with their children from day one that would not require any restrictions if the child trusted the word and advice of the parents implicitly all along. And the same is true of God's desire for our lives. He wants us to grow up into the full maturity of Christ and no longer remain as children. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ. (Ephesians 4:14-15)

I have not yet fully addressed the issue of punishment verses discipline but I want to do that before too long. Keep reminding me. It is a very important concept to see but must be viewed in the light of the bigger picture so that it makes more sense. I also know this does not really directly address all of the questions about the place of law or the confusion about God's wrath that you raised. But it does give some background and hopefully lay some foundation for further thoughts to be built upon. It is very important to start with the right foundations, otherwise if we put the wrong things at the bottom the other things we place on top may not make sense and will cause continued confusion.

Continue to listen and ponder what God is revealing to all of us as we learn together the wonderful truths about Him that have been hidden or distorted for so long. As we learn these things about God the results will become clear in the way we treat our children, our spouses and all those in our circle of relationships. Thanks for your input and I am still praying for you and your family.

Sincerely,

Floyd