Friday, May 3, 2013

Cost of Discipleship Pt 52 - Satan doesn't want anyone to believe in God's moral law


Chapter 8 The Righteousness of Christ Continued…

Mat 5:17  Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
Mat 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.
Mat 5:19  Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Mat 5:20  For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Bonhoeffer- 'But there is a "better righteousness" which is expected of Christian. Without it none can enter into the kingdom of heaven, for it is the indispensable condition of discipleship. None can have this better righteousness but those to whom Christ is speaking here, those whom he has called. The call of Christ, in fact Christ himself, is the sine qua non of this better righteousness.'

(((Sine qua non (/ˌsaɪnɨ kweɪ ˈnɒn/; Latin: [ˈsine kwaː ˈnoːn])[1] or condicio sine qua non (plural: condiciones sine quibus non) refers to an indispensable and essential action, condition, or ingredient. It was originally a Latin legal term for "[a condition] without which it could not be," or "but for..." or "without which [there is] nothing".


My thoughts-  Without Christ there truly is NOTHING.

Bonhoeffer- 'Jesus manifests his perfect union with the will of God as revealed in the Old Testament law and prophets. He has in fact nothing to add to the commandments of God, except this, that he keeps them.  He fulfills the law down to the last iota. But that means that he must die, he alone understands the true nature of the law as God's law: the law is not itself God, nor is God the law. It was the error of Israel to put the law in God's place, to make the law their God and their God a law. The disciples were confronted with the opposite danger of denying the law its divinity altogether and divorcing God from his law. Both errors lead to the same result.

By confounding God and the law, the Jews were trying to use the law to exploit the Law-giver: He was swallowed up in the law and therefore no longer its Lord. By imagining that God and the law could be divorced from one another, the disciples were trying to exploit God by their possession of salvation. In both cases, the gift was confounded with the Giver: God was denied equally, whether it was with the help of the law, or with the promise of salvation.'

My thoughts- TRUTH! Such remarkable truth! So many today want to throw the law away, many more than I suppose want to keep it as their God, but truthfully I can see how that can happen as well, even today.

Continuing with Bonhoeffer- 'Confronted with these twin errors, Jesus vindicates divine authority of the law. God is its giver and its Lord, and only in  personal communion with God is the law fulfilled. There is no fulfillment of the law apart from communion with God, and no communion with God apart from fulfillment of the law. To forget the first condition was the mistake of the Jews, and to forget the second the temptation of the disciples.'

My thoughts- This is so true. We want to forget this truth in favor of the much touted - the old law it done away with. Far be it from people to comprehend that the ceremonial law and the moral law of God were separate. The veil in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, without hands, the temple where the rituals- where the ceremonial laws were carried out. Sacrifices were made upon altars, blood was shed all examples of the more perfect Sacrifice that was made by our Savior, Jesus Christ. His blood was not shed upon the altar of the temple, it couldn't be. That temple was a shadow, an example of the heavenly, it wasn't the true.  Christ was the true Sacrifice, the true ceremonial law realized. The sins that came into being after Eve and Adam fell in the Garden of Eden needed to be forgiven. A realization of the result of sin was known. A way was made to bring man and God back into communion. The sin existed and a way to find forgiveness created. The sin existed because man broke the moral laws.  Eve broke the moral law. Eve put another before God. Eve didn't break some mysterious law that none of can know about. Every single sin is a result of breaking God's moral law in one way or another.  So to say it was done away with means that there should be no more ability to sin and yet we've kept right on sinning, and sinning, and sinning.  The moral law has not disappeared it stands today and will stand forever because it is God's truth!

Bonhoeffer speaks truth when he says- '...only in personal communion with God is the law fulfilled.  There is no fulfillment of the law apart from communion with God, and no communion with God apart from the fulfillment of the law.'

How can anyone believe otherwise? How?

Satan has used great deception to get people to believe things that are not true. He could care less if you belong to a church, as long as it is a church filled with his deceptions. Make a stand for Christ, Satan is all for it, as long as it isn't based on Christ's truth, but rather Satan's lies. Truly Satan has made himself into an angel of light, people worshiping his lies over God's holy truth.

This isn't about us, it's about God, our Creator, our Redeemer.  Life means NOTHING without them, NOTHING! We can go about trying to say life is all about this, that, or the other thing, but that's what Satan wants. As long as he has us looking to ourselves and not to God, he has us!

REMEMBER and NEVER FORGET--  If you believe in God you HAVE to believe in Satan. You cannot believe in God, if you do not believe in Satan, because God tells us all about this battle between good and evil and it's real! We are evidence of its reality.  There is NO way this was how life was supposed to be for us, NO WAY. And if you choose to believe that this was how it was all meant to be, then I feel very sorry for you. To live believing that life simply is about suffering and pain, with some happiness thrown in, allows for no hope at all, none. We have hope in a world without any of this pain and suffering, it's not this world, not now. It will be in our world made new. Until that time, until Christ returns to take His people to heaven, Satan will be working as hard as he can to keep all he can from living the truth in Christ.

We simply cannot separate the law from God or God from the law, and to do so is to be under Satan's thumb, a slave to him and his lies.

By the grace and mercy of our Lord and Savior may we comprehend all His TRUTH! He wants us to know He is the all in all and the law He is Lord of it truth, His most amazing TRUTH!

All in HIS LOVE, ALWAYS, HIS LOVE!


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