The law is good. Its regulations and sacrifices helped the Jews keep in right relationship with a perfect, holy God. However, keeping all of the commandments, regulations, special days, holy sacrifices perfectly exceeds man’s abilities and the natural order of things. What if someone decides to switch on an electric light, or to put out a house fire, or to sweep out a contaminant on the Sabbath? Does that work violate God’s command to keep the Sabbath holy? Where does holiness begin and end; is holiness a heart issue or an activity? Does obedience to the law stem from endearing love or from slavish behavior? Does picking up a leaf, sharpening a pencil, or brushing dried mud from boots constitute work? Can you walk on grass, crushing it with your feet, but not cut down a tree? Are there exceptions to the commands and regulations in a daily life? When does holiness stop and secular life start? Of course in today’s scripture, Paul writes about the hearts of the Israelites in their attempts to follow God’s ways. Their obedience came from control and monitoring, not from heartfelt commitment. In fact, we discover as we look back on the Jewish experience after they left Egypt that they were continually idolatrous. They carried two allegiances in their hearts: one to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the other to their preferred heathen gods. God often complained about their idolatry, their lack of fidelity to him. He repeatedly judges them for their failure to serve their Creator wholeheartedly. Jesus quoted Isaiah when He said, These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. (Matthew 15:8) They expressed religious zeal, attempting to serve God through the law and regulations they received in the Wilderness, but their own self-righteousness contaminated their hearts. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. They knew God demanded exactness, to do things exactly as he commanded. They built everything: the ark, the tabernacle, the temple items, exactly as God ordered. Nothing was to be too big or too small or as an approximation of what God ordered. No, everything had to be exact, conforming to his will. Also in their daily lives as individuals and as a community, they had to live lives of exactness, perfection, and holiness. Of course as with all humans born with Adam’s DNA, the Jews were rebellious in nature. To force them to come under the will of another, even God’s will, ran contrary to their human nature, their willful spirit. What they needed and what all men and women everywhere need is a substitute for their waywardness: an advocate before God. They required someone who could satisfy all of God’s expectations of mankind. Jesus Christ is that person. Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.
The Jewish people were chosen to bring to the world the answer to perfection, the answer to God’s exactness and his holiness. Nonetheless, their own efforts to please God failed miserably, for they were not capable of following God unreservedly from their innermost being. “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:36-39) Their attempts to follow the laws and regulations did not change the intents and purposes of their hearts. Their self-centered human nature dominated their everyday lives, their actions in community with others. Their Adamic nature was predominant, even in their repentance: “We will do it.” We will change; our efforts will prove that we can be like you God: holy and good. Even in the Garden of Eden when the devil tempted Adam and Eve, he appealed to their desire to be co-equal with their creator. He told them to eat the fruit. For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. (Genesis 3:5) In the beginning, humans were so foolish as to believe that if they received the knowledge, they could follow it. However, they could not follow the way of God’s rules and regulations, for their hearts were full of self: self-effort, self-satisfaction, self-correction, and the like. Their Adamic personality was present even in their repentance. They desired not God’s ways, his nature of love: they desired their will, their nature, their way. They held to the rebellious nature of mankind, even to the point of worshipping strange gods made in their own image of licentiousness, worldliness, sin. They sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness: loving God with their innermost being and loving others as themselves. Jesus said to Nicodemus to know God, to enter into his kingdom, to perform his will of goodness and love, you must be born again. Humans must experience a new birth, replace Adam’s nature in their spirits with God’s nature. Peter says, All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see. (1 Peter 1:3-5) Someday our true nature will be revealed to all creation. We are new creatures because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
How should we live now as new creatures, born again through our faith in Jesus Christ’s works, a holy replacement for our works? Knowing God’s marvelous work in us, our intentions should be to live lives of goodness by faith — seeking good rather than evil. We should live as obedient children to his nature of holiness. We should internalize the Spirit’s nature: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) Our actions should be governed by the attributes of the Holy Spirit as we live in holy reverence to God in this alien world where we find ourselves. Why reverence? Because God paid a high price to ransom us from this world and its nature. We read in the Word, He (Jesus) was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. (I Peter 1:20) At the beginning of time, God chose his Son, Jesus Christ, to be a ransom for the sin of humankind. His death bought our freedom. The price was the blood of Jesus Christ. He became the captive of death, allowing us to walk out of the captivity of death to eternal life because of the blood of Christ that paid for our sins. Sin always leads to death, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23) But He delivered us from the just consequences of sin. We are born again, not to a life that will quickly end in death, but to an eternal life in the family of God. Isaiah wrote that on Earth, we are like a flower that soon fades and the grass that withers. But through the works of Jesus Christ, we will bloom and flourish forever, never losing our beauty, our luster, always pleasing in God’s eyes. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. (1 Peter 1:23) The Israelites were blinded to this work of God that comes through faith. They tried to earn a place of honor through their obedience to his directives, his regulations; but their flesh, their self-will could never completely please the God who demands one-hundred percent obedience, perfection. In the final analysis, Paul says they needed to place their hope of salvation in the faith of Abraham and not their own works. They had zeal, they tried to be right before God, even in their self-willed nature, but they needed to function with a knowledge of the truth. God deserves complete obedience. His world, nature itself, is run on exactness. Without perfection, they could never please God. CHRIST IS THAT PERFECTION; HE ALONE PLEASES GOD. All of us who are hidden in Christ because of our faith in his works are pleasing to the Creator God. Therefore we follow Paul’s admonition: Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:2-4) Amen!
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