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Not under the Law
can anybody explains what 'not being under the Law' really means. can someone interprets Galatians 3 for me, i mean the Bible tells us that all who rely on doing the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not keep on doing everything written in the book of the law.” ( Gal 3:10)
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Permalink Reply by PJ Serrano on
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Hello my sister I can see why these Words of God would cause you to ponder. This is a good thing.
Paul has a way of writing that comes from every thought of reason. He usally proposes legalities of Gods laws or commandment vrs. the faith of God through grace.
First Jesus said He did not come to take away from any part of the law but to fulfill the law. You can read this in Matt. 5:17-20.
Now with that said the law of God is good, in the fact that with out it we would not know we are sinning or are sinners. In Romans 3:20, Therefore no one will be declared righteous in His sight by observing the law, rather throught the law we become concious of sin.
This is a question of faith and works.
To do the works or to observe or do the law of God with the thought of " I am not cursed and I will be rightoues and will please God and therefore I will deserve to go to heaven for the way that I lived" is a false doctrine. The law of God is good but it does not redeem, save, make clean a persons soul. In Romans 3:23 Paul writes for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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The law is good, but the law condems us to hell. The law is God's perfection of how we are to live. But the bottom line we can't live this way. It is not in us. We are sinners from the time we are conceived. We were conceived in sin the bible in Psalms 51:5 David writes Surely I was sinful aft birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. So my sister we were condemend to hell from the get go. It is not our fault, sin is like a disease that is inherited like some one who passes on HIV to there child when the child is conceived by a parent or parents who have the disease. So it was when Adam and Eve sinned, all of the human race has sin in our nature. And once the law is broken, it must be paid or attoned for and too the spirit of death. And the spirit of death only takes your life, like some stores only take visa. But God provided a way, and His way is a way of believing in Him and His Word. His Son.
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Permalink Reply by Carla on
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Hi tshepl,
The purpose of the Law is to show us our sin and lead us to repentence.
We are not under the law when we trust in Christ...we are saved by faith.
This does not mean that we do not have to obey the law... When God comes to give us new life, we begin to have a great desire to obey God's Law. We are not saved because we obey the Law, because we can never obey the Law fully to be saved! By God's Grace we are saved by faith. God knows our weaknesses, He knows we can never fully satisfy His Law...only Jesus did!
as PJ quoted Romans 3:23 --For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God's Glorious standard.--read further to verses 24 to 31.
You can read about the Glory of the New Covenant in 2 Corinthians 3:7-18 and continued in 2 Corinthians chapter 4.
hope this helps, Carla
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Permalink Reply by tshepi on
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Thanks Carla. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is present there is freedom.
I have heard some people interprets 2 Corinthians 3:15 to mean that the old testament should not be read for if it is read a veil lies over people's mind.
Excuse me for lots of questions sometimes i get so confused.
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Dear Tshepl,
Your questions are very welcome here.. always! :)
I appreciate the body of Christ...all of our brothers and sisters to contribute here, what a blessing God has given us to meet others all across the world.
It seems to me, that we should be studying all of scripture, I can't imagine why we would leave anything out and not study it. I believe that the enemy would want us to leave out the OT...especially Genesis, because Genesis reveals God as Creator..which disproves evolution. The OT is most certainly a powerful revelation. By reading it we learn to tie in the history of before Jesus' life to after He was here on earth... For example, we learn about his geneology by studying the lives of those who are mentioned in Matt 1:1-16.
It seems superstitious to me to say that we should not read it....kind of like 'don't walk underneath a ladder 'cause that is bad luck'.
It doesn't mean that their hearts will be covered with the veil if they read them.. it means that their hearts are covered with the veil because they have not turned to Christ. Verse 16 says this: But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.
It is the act of turning to Christ and trusting in Him that allows us to see. It does not make sense that a person would loose their ability to see Christ or loose their revelation of him just because they have read the OT. verse 17--For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
As a matter of fact.. When we study the OT, we learn fully of God's Providence in the lives of people who have gone before us.
I hope this helps.. perhaps some brothers and sisters here have something to contribute. :)
Blessings, Carla
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Permalink Reply by ScribeD on
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Carla, you make some great points here about the "veil" not being over those who believe and put faith in Christ, but is on those who do not.
One thing I would add, as a general principle is Romans 15:4, which Paul wrote to a New Testament audience who did not fully understand the relationship of the Old Testament to the new belief of Jesus the Messiah. It says:
"For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope."
By "written in the past" he means "in the Old Testament".
So, we can learn from it and find endurance and encouragement that leads us to hope. Just reading Hebrews 11 can build that hope, as we realize that most of the people spoken of there were under the Old Covenant (except Abraham and Sarah). So, there is much to gain from it, but we need not be captive to the Law of Moses as a rigid structure. Because we are not under Law, but under Grace.
Being "under Grace" means we don't have to tithe, but we actually want to give everything to God for his use and we seek ways to let everything be available to God. We don't have to seek an eye for an eye, but rather - we choose to love and bless those who make themselves our enemy. It is about the condition of the heart. We love Christ so much that we desire to live differently, not under compulsion - but our own choice.
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It is by believing in His Words of His Son Jesus the Christ, that we are found to be guiltless. For if you believe that Gods law is true and it is, then you must believe that you must pay the price for being guilty. And that price is your life. Now with this said, we must understand that God is a God that cannot lie, does not change, and is a just God, so He provided a way for us to be redeemed with out going against His Word of His laws. He said yes, you must pay for sin, so I will give you what you need to make this payment and then you will be set free from the hold that the law has on you. So He sent His only begoten Son to be our payment. The spirit of death is like paying your phone bill, they don't care if your or some one else pays your bill just as long as it gets paid. So Jesus paid our debt to death for breaking the law of God. Now when you have this new hope and new life, you want to please God by living in His righteousness hence the law is not what it was. Now the commandments of God are a way to learn how to please Him.
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Please read from bottom to the top. I started this disscussion 3 windows down. So you must read from the first part which is the bottom one then the second part which is the middle window etc...
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Thanks. I have always interpreted it to mean that those Laws which were given to the Israelites apart from the ten commandments do not apply to us Christians, I mean Laws in Exodus, Leviticus and some other books in the Old Testament. There are some churches which still practice those, i mean regulations about priests garments, food that should not be eaten, offerings, etc.
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Permalink Reply by Rick Kelly on
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Matthew 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.(cf. Luke 16:17)
"If this is true, why are you violating the law by eating pork and wearing polyester suits?"
This is indeed the substance of Skeptical objections I have seen, but behind it lies a valid question: What is the role of the Law in the life of the Christian today? Do we need to trash our polyester? If we are true believers, do we need to execute witches? And finally, is the covenant still "good" with Israel today?
To answer these questions we need to establish some frameworks, and to do this I will draw from some previous and related essays. Our primary framework has to do with the categories of the law.
* First, some laws are universal moral laws. This includes do not steal, do not murder, and others. There is no disagreement that these laws should indeed be continued to be obeyed today, so we need not discuss them further.
* Second, some laws are cultural universals. By this I mean laws geared to Israel's culture that have a universal moral law behind them. As an example, some have suggested the prohibition on trimming your beard [Lev. 19:27] relates to pagan practices that cut facial hair for magical purposes. So the universal behind this cultural would be, don't do the occult. But here is my favorite example, from Deut. 22:8-9:
When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.
One Skeptic says, "One would be hard-pressed to find home builders" who follow this rule. But actually they do follow the modern equivalent. In ancient Israel, the flat roof of a house would be used for many purposes, such as sleeping, household chores, and entertaining. These chores included drying and storage of produce; even today the roof is used for such things in modern Arab nations.
We don't use our roof the same way -- the modern equivalent is a balcony. Our builders certainly do make sure that they follow the point of this rule to the letter. At any rate, it would also be agreed that the universals behind these cultural applications should continue to be followed.
* Finally, there are ceremonial laws. Instructions for building the Ark of the Covenant, for example, are definitely in this, as are sacrificial laws. What else belongs in here? Most likely the dietary laws belong here, as their purpose was to make the Jews "different" and to serve as a testimony to their difference in the most intimate ancient setting, that of meal fellowship.
With these matters in mind, we may now address some issues of how the law is regarded in the NT.
Matthew 5:17-18 17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
One Skeptic objects that "the Law of Moses is nothing to be 'fulfilled' in any way....one cannot fulfill the law. One can only obey it." The skeptic is wrong, because he does not understand what "fulfill" means and is "fulfilling" it with his own meaning. To fulfill God's law was to confirm it by obedience; whereas to "annul" the law was to treat it as void.
This leads to our next passage:
Romans 3:31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
"But wait," the critic says. "Hasn't Paul just said that 'Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law' (v. 28)?"
Indeed he has. And this is where another concept skeptics living in the 20th century know nothing about comes into play: the Semitic Totality Concept. And now we plagiarize our own work again to explain our meaning, The Semitic Totality Concept means that "a man's thoughts form one totality with their results in action so that 'thoughts' that result in no action are 'vain'." To put it another way, man does not have a body; man is a body, and what we regard as constituent elements of spirit and body were looked upon by the Hebrews as a fundamental unity.
Applied to the role of works following faith, this means that there can be no decision without corresponding action, for the total person will inevitably reflect a choice that is made. Thought and action are so linked under the Semitic Totality paradigm that Clark warns us [An Approach to the Theology of the Sacraments, 10]:
The Hebraic view of man as an animated body and its refusal to make any clear-cut division into soul and body militates against the making of so radical a distinction between material and spiritual, ceremonial and ethical effects.
Thus, what we would consider separate actions of conversion, confession, and obedience in the form of works would be considered by the Hebrews to be an act in totality. "Both the act and the meaning of the act mattered -- the two formed for the first Christians an indivisible unity." [Flemington, New Testament Doctrine of Baptism, 111] And thus when Paul tells his readers that we "establish" (obey) the law by faith, he is saying no more than that it is our faith that prompts us to follow the law. And hence, a person who finds faith, but dies a moment later having done no works, is not condemned -- if such a theoretical possibility ever came to pass!
Hence also Paul's admonition here:
Rom. 6:15-16 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
A believer in Jesus will indeed follow the dictates of the law -- the universal morals, of course, not the cultural particulars -- because of obedience to Christ.
"But didn't Paul say in Galatians somewhere that the law is useless?"
Not exactly. Gal. 2:16 says, "Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." Some may read this and other passages in Romans (7:4) and Galatians (3:13) as referring to the law as ineffectual, or as something to be avoided, but it actually means we are ineffectual, and that is why the law is a "curse" and it is necessary for Christ to make us "dead" to it.
"No flesh shall be justified" by the law because none of us can obey it fully. Paul is stating a condition of fact, not making a statement about the veracity of the law.
"So that means that Christians would have us go out executing witches and homosexuals if they ever got in charge?"
Could we? No -- let's keep something in mind about the Law. Deuteronomy is laid out in the form of an ancient treaty between a king and his vassals. It is in essence a contract between God and Israel. They "signed on" and agreed to enforce the penalties.
What's the equivalent now? We now have a new covenant or contract between Christ and the individual and the believer. The sins are paid for by Christ's blood, and he takes on the punishment for the transgression of those who break God's law and accept his payment. The old covenant and our enmity with it is now abolished (Eph. 2:15). The non-believer, the witch, et al. aren't covered by this, but nor does our new contract contain specifications of enforcement -- that is now God's domain, with regard to each individual, on the basis of the new covenant terms.
It also suggests that those who wanted to can remain under the Old Covenant, which was never officially revoked -- and suggests in turn that modern Jews can make a case of sorts for still having "rights" to the land.
What of verses that say the law is "for ever"? The word used in the Hebrew is 'olam and means, not exactly forever, but "in perpetuity." It is used to describe as well the term of a slave (Ex. 21:6//Deut. 15:17). Unless one thinks that this means that the master would dig the slave out of his grave and put him to work, this clearly does not mean "forever" in the sense that covenant would always be kept, but implies that the Jews would keep these feasts and such as long as they maintained the covenant agreement and didn't break it. At the same time, it hardly indicates that God cannot sign a new covenant/contract with others on different terms.
If one then happens to ask, "On what basis do you then continue to say that these laws are still valid morally?" -- beyond the "all agree" level of things like murder, and in the category of things like homosexuality and adultery -- the answer is that when a superior writes a contract, even if you are not a party to it, the contract will still give you an idea what values the superior holds to. We no longer enforce the penalties, but we still know what actions displease God.
"Well, then, why aren't Christians out sacrificing animals and eating kosher?"
The reason is simple for this one: All of the ceremonial laws has been superseded by Christ. (Hebrews is the NT book that lays this out the best, though see Matt. 26:28.) They pointed towards Christ and the unified body. Thus also there is no need for the laws of diet and not wearing two types of fabric woven together (the latter of which may have been related to magical practice, but may also have been a symbol of purity and separation) -- there is no longer a case of a certain people reserved to God, for the new covenant is open to all.
Discussion may of course continue over what laws in the OT belong in what category. But it is clear that the law retains a certain application today, even if not in the same way for us, and even if the critics don't have the tools to grasp it.
GOD Bless You Sister
In JESUS
.Rick.
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Thanks Rick, the Law certainly has an application today. There's also this issue about tithing some Christian churches here say that it is compulsory some say it is a voluntary giving because Christians should give what they have purposed in their hearts willingly and not under compulsion,
In my previous church we did not give tithe but one gave what one's heart prompts one to give, I left my old church and at my new church they are emphasizing about 10%.
I need clarity about these issues.
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