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Exchanged Glory III: Wise as Serpents
We sinful human beings tend to misunderstand love. We think we are experts, and we assume that our view is God’s view, but we are often following our own ideas rather than His. …This is where we need the Law. It spells out in detail what love looks like.
When I was a teenager, God’s view of sex was a mystery to me. I could understand the basic rule – no sex outside of marriage – but the reasoning behind it was missing. Sex seemed too powerful and wonderful to fit into that restrictive little box.
Even as I read the New Testament, I couldn’t seem to break through my ignorance. I knew that stepping outside of God’s boundaries was somehow wrong, but I wasn’t sure why. It seemed strange that God would create us with such strong desires and then tell us not to follow them. When we are hungry, we eat. When we have a sexual urge, why shouldn’t we follow where it leads?
It was the Old Testament that finally drove the truth home to my soul. Earlier in this book, I shared some of the insights from Proverbs that helped with this.[52] In this appendix, I want to add additional insights from the following verses.
Remove your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house, lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the cruel one; lest aliens be filled with your wealth, and your labors go to the house of a foreigner; and you mourn at last, when your flesh and your body are consumed, … Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well. Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be only your own, and not for strangers with you.
It will take some work to explain these verses. I believe they only become clear when we consider them in the light of the Old Testament laws about sexual crimes. Unfortunately, Christians disagree about how we should interpret these laws, so in this chapter and the next two, I will lay out some theology to explain the approach I use. Then I will discuss the above verses.
First, I must point out that we can never earn our way to heaven by keeping God’s Law. The New Testament is clear about this:
Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.
I wrote a good deal about this in the first two books of this series.[53] The Scriptures teach that we are saved by grace through faith.
Having said that, however, the Bible teaches that the law is still valuable as a source of guidance. There are commandments in it that Christians should follow, for example, “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14). We don’t obey them in order to be justified before God, and we can only truly obey them by the work of the Holy Spirit, but they help us understand what He is doing. He is working to enable us to fulfill their righteous requirement.
…that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Many people think of the Law as a list of harsh rules. They believe that it automatically turns those who try to obey it into unloving legalists. They point to the Pharisees as examples of what can happen.
This wasn’t Jesus’ view. His complaint with the religious leaders of His day wasn’t that they kept the Law; it was that they were so far from its message that they didn’t even believe it.
If you believed, really believed, what Moses said, you would believe me. He wrote of me. If you won't take seriously what he wrote, how can I expect you to take seriously what I speak?
(John 5:46-47, The Message)
The people Jesus spoke to thought that they believed what Moses said, and in many ways they looked totally committed to it, but they were actually holding to a caricature of Moses’ writings. They had added so many man-made doctrines that they practiced a religious distortion.
Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying: "These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men." (emphasis added)
What the Pharisees taught wasn’t a reflection of the Law; it was a man-made substitute for the Law. They tried to make living for God a matter of keeping rules, but the original intent of the Law was love.
Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." (emphasis added)
These verses don’t teach that the two great commandments replace the Law. Instead, they teach us that the two great commandments are what the Law is all about. Love is the support on which all of the other commandments hang. It is the fulfillment of what they require.
… he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, "You shall not commit adultery," "You shall not murder," "You shall not steal," "You shall not bear false witness," "You shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (emphasis added)
We sinful human beings tend to misunderstand love. We think we are experts, and we assume that our view is God’s view, but we are often following our own ideas rather than His. That is why some of us believe that sex outside of marriage is acceptable. We figure that as long as two people “love” one another, God approves of their actions.
This is where we need the Law. It spells out in detail what love looks like. It helps us to see that sex outside of marriage only appears to be love because we are too ignorant to know better. By comparing our view with what God has commanded, we are able to see where we don’t understand what is happening. We find that we need to dig deeper, with the Holy Spirit’s help, to truly grasp how to love.
Jesus told us to dig deep. He said that we should pay careful attention to the smallest items in the Law and Prophets.
Trivialize even the smallest item in God's Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom.
(Matthew 5:19, The Message)
How do we reconcile Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:19 with the fact that there are Old Testament commandments which we don’t have to obey? For example, the Law commanded Israel to sacrifice animals, but we don’t have to do this.
Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering (an animal sacrifice) for sin. (explanation added)
I believe we find the answer by considering what Jesus meant when He said He came to fulfill the law (Matthew 5:17). He fulfills different commandments in different ways. With some, He does this by filling us with His Spirit so that we are able to obey them.
…that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
With other commandments, like the sacrificial laws, instead of calling for us to obey their Old Testament form, He tells us to obey the new form they have taken in Him. The sacrificial laws teach us that sins must be paid for, and a death must occur to free us from our guilt, but the animals sacrificed were never intended to be the answer for sin. Instead, they pointed to our need for a better sacrifice – the death of God’s Son. Now that we have the reality that the sacrificial laws pointed to, we are no longer under the Old Testament form. We have a fuller commandment to obey, to trust Jesus.
For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. … For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. …we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
(Hebrews 10:1; 4; 10)
How would we trivialize God’s Law concerning offerings for sin? We would ignore the teaching that we are sinners who need Christ’s sacrifice in order to escape God’s judgment. We would say that those smallest items don’t apply to us. Many in our culture are guilty of doing just that!
I will refer to laws that haven’t changed much from the Old Testament to the New Testament as moral laws. They include commandments like “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14) and “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15).
Laws that have changed I will refer to as ceremonial laws. There are a few different flavors. Some have to do with the temple, its animal sacrifices, and its rituals. Others have to do with Israel’s unique circumstances as a nation which God formed by delivering them from Egypt and helping them to conquer Canaan. Still others have to do with God’s desire to keep Israel separate from other nations.
The different categories are not important for this book. I am only trying to point out two principles: first, that Jesus called for us to study and obey the Law and second, that we should not try to keep every commandment in the same form that Israel did.
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