New Covenant Communion
Between
Christ Jesus and His People
It is Written,
“Great peace have they who love Thy Law and nothing shall offend them
or cause them to stumble.”
(Psalm 119: 165)
Because so many have been taught not to love the Law of God or
to diminish it or that it is old-fashioned
and has been abolished in the New Covenant, there is a no way to write
this article without offending many people
who are constantly offended by and stumble over many things, large
and small. It can be clearly seen by all honest
observers and seekers of Truth that there is and has been little peace
in the world and in men’s hearts today and
throughout history because so many do not love God and His Ten Commandment
Law.
But self-indulgence is more important than peace to the vast majority
and so, “as it was in the days of
Noah” (Matt. 24:37), so it is today: the great majority of minds and
lives, even of church people, are on the
Broadway Street of self-indulgence that leads to destruction, and to
tell them the Gospel Truth of the Narrow-Way
Street that leads to life is to offend their sensibilities and their
lifestyles by which they gauge Truth.
God’s people “do not wrestle against flesh and blood” and they
never judge any man, but, at the same time,
God’s people, individually and collectively, must “judge all things”
(I Cor. 2:15) with “righteous judgment” (John
7:24) and they must wrestle “against spiritual wickedness in high places”
(Eph. 6:12) and against the spiritual
wickedness of churches and church leaders who teach that a Christian
can be justified and one with Jesus Christ
while knowingly and willfully breaking one of God’s Ten Commandments.
Though these churches and leaders
may have the greatest of sincerity in teaching such things, they are
Satan’s most successful agents in promoting and
furthering his cause of keeping mankind prisoners of and slaves to
their sins.
Sincerity cannot save us from being lost. We can think we are
the most sincere people on earth, but we still
could be sincerely heading in the wrong direction and taking others
along with us. The ridiculous and farout
teachings of many churches, who say that the Ten Commandments have
been abolished, can be likened to a pastor
and elders of a church in Kansas City sending their congregation by
bus on a trip to New York City and then giving
the bus driver instuctions to get on Interstate 70 and go west. The
bus driver and everyone in the congregation may
sincerely believe they are heading toward New York City, no matter
that, as they travel, they see the sun rising at
their backs and setting in front of them -- they are so stubborn and
full of pride and implicit trust in their church
and its leaders that they won’t even believe any of the plainest signs
along the way announcing the miles to Los
Angeles getting fewer and fewer and that they are lost and headed toward
the wrong destination. Almost the whole
world is travelling down the broad wrong road of self-indulgence to
destruction and this is why all who would be
saved must be nonconfomists. This is why God made salvation an individual
issue in which none will be saved as a
church.
So it is with so many Christians who put their implicit trust
in the church and its leaders and not alone in
Jesus Christ. While continuing to see lawlessness increasing all around
the world, they continue to teach others that
God’s Law is done away with and all the world needs is forgiveness
and love, but, in doing so, they redefine God’s
only true definition of Love and gut Love of its righteousness and
its authority. God says in His Word, “Love works
no ill to his neighbor: therefore Love is the fulfilling of the Law”
(Romans 13:10), but because of cherished sin and
cherished church traditions many pervert God’s only true definition
of Love into “Love is the Grace of God that
allows His people to trangress His Law without consequence” and in
doing so they are giving the world a false
love, a false grace, and a false god to worship. You don’t have to
imagine it, delusion is so strong in these last days
that this is really happening: many church people, in God’s name, are
teaching that “Love is the breaking of God’s
Law”!!! This prophecy is being literally fulfilled in our day (in prophetic
Scripture a woman is symbolic of a
church): “And in that day seven women shall take hold of one
Man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear
our own apparel: only let us be called by Thy Name to take away our
reproach.” (Isaiah 4:1).
Because there are so many professing Christians who teach that
the New Covenant has done away with our
need to keep the Commandments or, at the very least, they teach that
one of the Commandments, namely the
Fourth or Sabbath Commandment, has been changed from the seventh to
the first day by Christ’s death and
resurrection, any discussion of the New Covenant must include a discussion
of how the Law relates to Salvation. In
fact, true love for God in keeping all His Commandments is often diminished
or a pathetic, self-serving attempt is
made to entirely obliterate or obscure true love for God in order to
be relieved of the true Sabbath of the Lord.
Ironically, the many professing Christians today who do such things
put themselves under the Old Covenant
because, even though they profess faith in Christ, they do not wait
on the Lord, but, in their pride and
self-sufficiency, they take things into their own hands, as did the
nation of Israel at Mt. Sinai, and impatiently and
presumptuously go ahead of Him transgressing His Law in the name of
Grace. Despite the Lord telling us He will
“never leave us or forsake us”, God also tells us through His ‘Gospel
prophet’ that lawlessness takes away our
peace and righteousness: “I am th LORD your God, Who teaches you to
profit, Who leads you by the way you
should go. Oh, that you heeded My Commandments! Then your peace would
have been like the a river, and your
righteouness like the waves of the sea” (Isa.48:17-18).
Since the Scriptures tell us: “All things were made by Him, and
without Him was not anything made that
was made” (John 1:3), we know that Jesus Christ is the One who spoke
and wrote the Ten Commandments on Mt.
Sinai and He speaks to all today: “If you love Me, keep My Commandments”
(John 14:15). The apostles who
walked with Him and all His disciples who knew Him echoed His teachings
in all their writings: “Do we then make
void the Law though Faith? God forbid! On the contrary, we establish
the Law.” and “Shall we sin because we are
not under the Law, but under Grace? God forbid!” (Romans 3:31, 6:15)
and “Hereby we do know that we know
Him, if we keep His Commandments. He that says, I know Him, and keeps
not His Commandments is a liar and the
truth is not in Him.” (1John 2:3,4) and “By this we know that we love
the children of God, when we love God and
keep His Commandments. For this is the Love of God, that we keep His
Commandments and His Commandments
are not burdensome.” (1John 5:2,3).
When Christ spoke “the words of the Covenant, the Ten Commandments”
(Ex. 34:28) on Mt. Sinai, the
promise of Israel was: “All these things WE will do”, but the Jews
being imperfect, like all mankind, could not
keep God’s perfect Law and He found fault, not with the Law, but with
them since they lacked faith in the “Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world” (Luke 11:50, Rev. 13:8) whose
sacrifice and righteousness has always been
available to God's people by faith even from the very beginning in
the Garden in Eden.
Those who are able to fulfill the terms of the New Covenant are
those who will accept the “better
promises” of Christ to “work in us both to will and to do of His good
pleasure” (Phil. 2:13) and claim His victory
over sin. His promise is: “Abide in Me, and I in you....for without
Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:4,5). “Behold,
the days come, says the Lord, that I will make a New Covenant with
the House of Israel: I will put my Law in their
minds and write it in their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall
be My people.” (Jer.31:31,33, Heb. 8:10). “For
if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of
His Son, much more, being reconciled, we
shall be saved by His life.” (Rom. 5:10). Only by dwelling in Christ
Jesus and He in us can we fulfill the terms of
the God’s Covenant. The Love of Christ will never do away with the
Law of God, but He will write, with His
blood, His Law in our hearts that we, by beholding Him, will be changed
into His same image from glory to glory
that we may be translated into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son.
We will see from the whole
of Scripture that the Great Gospel Commission surely does not mean that
we are
to go and teach all nations to disregard any part of God’s “holy, just,
and good Law”. But we are to teach them
Christ’s Ten Commandments and that there is no freedom outside of His
Law. And we are to teach to all the
history of the Jews and their failure at Mt. Sinai and how, even the
Ten Commandments “engenders to bondage”
(Gal. 4:24) if anyone attempts to keep it, as the Israelites at Mt.
Sinai attempted to do--in their own strength apart
from Christ. We are to teach to all the Righteousness by faith which
Abraham failed to embrace in believing God
would fulfill His promise through his lawful wife, Sarah, and not the
righteousness by works he exhibited in going
ahead of God in trying to fulfill God’s promise illegitimately through
Hagar, his handmaid.
The Old Covenant, the covenant
fromj “Mount Sinai, which engenders to bondage, which is Hagar”
(Gal.4:24), then, is trying to fulfill the promises of God’s Law in
our lives illegitimately while separated from
Christ, the promised Seed, as Abraham did in attempting to bring the
promise of God to fruition through Hagar.
Righteousness by faith is our believing and abiding in Jesus Christ,
the Living Word, through His spoken Word
and Promises, and He in us through His Word. No man can be righteous
apart from Christ. “Sin is the
transgression of the Law. And you know that He appeared to take away
our sins and in Him is no sin. No one who
lives in Him keeps on sinning. No one who practices sin has either
seen Him or known Him.” (1John 3:6).
The Old Covenant included the Ten Commandment Moral Law of God
and the Law of Moses. Both were
given at the direction of God. References to the Law of Moses and the
Ten Commandments are interchangeable in
Scripture because the Law of Moses included the moral Ten Commandment
Law, the Civil law, the Health law,
and the Ceremonial law. Only the Ceremonial law, with its system of
worship and sacrifices, pointed forward to
and ended with the crucifixion of Christ and it was the Ceremonial
law only that was nailed to the cross of Christ.
“Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which
was contrary to us, and took it out of the
way, nailing it to the cross.” (Colossians 2:14). It is not the Ten
Commandment Law that is against us, for the
keeping of God’s moral Law brings us peace, but it is the Law of Moses
that is against us: “So it was, when Moses
had completed writing the words of this law in a book, when they were
finished, that Moses commanded the
Levites, who bore the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, saying: ‘Take
this book of the law, and put it beside Ark of
the Covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be a witness against
you.” (Deuteronomy 31:24-26). The
important distinction here is that the Ten Commandment Law was placed
inside the Ark of the Covenant to show
that it is eternal and central to God’s Covenants, while the Law of
Moses was placed at the side of the Ark to show
that it was only temporary and added because of transgression of God’s
Ten Commandment moral Law.
The Law of Moses containing the Health, Civil, and Ceremonial
law was placed at the side of the Ark of
the Covenant and was added because of the transgression of God’s eternal
Ten Commandment Law which was
placed inside the Ark of the Covenant in the Most Holy Place of the
earthly Sanctuary. The earthly Sanctuary was
“a copy and shadow of” the “Sanctuary... set up by the Lord” (Heb.
8: 5,1) in Heaven where Christ our High Priest
serves today in the Most Holy Place of the Heavenly Sanctuary before
the Ark of the Covenant containing God's
Holy Law, His Ten Commandments. God's Ten Commandment Law was the heart
and terms of the Old Covenant
and is the heart and terms of the New Covenant: “Declares the Lord:
I will make a New Covenant with the house of
Israel after those days, I will put My Law in their minds and write
it in their hearts, and I will be their God and
they shall be My people.” (Heb. 8:8,10).
A covenant is no more than a contract between two parties. If
I own a house and make a contract to sell it to
you, the terms are spelled out in the contract. If it so happens that
you lack the means to fulfill the terms of the
contract and I offer to lend you the means to purchase the house, but
you have too much pride to accept my help,
does that mean that I need to change the terms of the contract in order
to offer the house to someone else not so
proud?
The Lord has many mansions in His Kingdom available for His people
and He is wanting to make a
Covenant or a Contract with each and everyone of us to live in one
of those mansions. The terms of the New
Covenant are the same as the Old Covenant that was not fulfilled by
the literal nation of Israel and it is the keeping
of God’s Ten Commandments. The great majority of Jews of the Old Covenant
were too proud, too worldly, and
too carnal to accept the Lord’s outstretched hand of help in the performance
of the Covenant by beholding the glory
of Christ and being changed into His same image by beholding, and only
two out of the millions of Jews that began
the journey out of Egypt and out of unbelief entered into the promised
land--the rest died in the wilderness of sin.
The children of Israel did not look forward in faith as did Abraham,
“the father of us all” (Romans 4:16)
who rejoiced to see Christ's day and “he saw it and was glad” (John
8:56) and Abraham “obeyed My Voice, and
kept My Charge, My Commandments” (Gen. 26: 5) but the children of Israel
looked back toward Egypt, toward
false gods, and toward their own self-sufficiency. They were blind
and could not see that God's Carpenter had a
magnificent mansion on a sure foundation ready for them to inhabit
and the only cost to them was their sins and
their selfishness, but, in their pride, they preferred to try to build
their own spiritual houses themselves in their own
way on sand using sticks and stones and, when adverse winds came along,
their houses were swept away.
God's New Covenant people do not live by the Law or find life
through it, they live by Christ and Christ
lives through them and God’s people live by the Faith of Christ that
establishes the Law and, God forbid, does not
make it void. Those under the Old Covenant often quote, “The Law is
our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ
that we might be justified by Faith” (Gal. 3:24) and then they will
presumptuously tell you once you have accepted
Christ you have graduated from the school of Christ and no longer need
the Law. But they have no real under¬
standing of what true Faith is. True Faith is believing that Christ
will, at all times and in all ways, “work in us to
will and to do of His good pleasure” (Phil.2:13). Does true Faith bring
forth the fruit of obedience or disobedience?
God’s people abide in Christ and He in them and, in Faith, they claim
the promises of God and bring forth fruit in
obedience, otherwise they live by presumption rather than true Faith.
“Only he who has true Faith is secure against presumption. For
presumption is Satan's counterfeit of faith.
Presumption also claims the promises of God, but uses them as Satan
does, to excuse transgression. Faith would
have led our first parents to trust the love of God, and to obey His
commands. Presumption led them to transgress
His Law, believing that His great Love would save them from the consequence
of their sin. It is not faith that
claims the favor of Heaven without complying with the conditions on
which mercy is to be granted.” None who
love God will claim to have graduated, but will be delighted to forever
be in the school of Christ. “For I through
the Law am dead to the Law, that I might live unto God.” (Gal. 2:19).
In the school of Christ I am not under the
Law, but willingly and delightfully subject to God’s Law and in harmony
with it.
The Scriptures tell us that “where no Law is, there is no transgression”
(Rom. 4:15), but in Galatians 3:19
it tells us that the Law “was added because of transgressions” so the
Law specifically spoken of here in Galatians
3:19 can only be a Law other than the moral Ten Commandment Law of
God. If the Holy Scriptures establish the
Law of God through Faith in one place (Rom. 3:31), it most certainly
would not do away with it through Faith in
another, so that the schoolmaster specifically spoken of in Galatians
3:24,25 that we are “no longer under” can
only be the Ceremonial Law that pointed forward to and ended with Christ's
sacrifice; therefore the only reasonable
conclusion that we can come to about the Law that was added because
of transgressions in Galatians 3:19 and the
schoolmaster in Galatians 3:24 that we are “no longer under” has to
be that this Law Paul is speaking of in these
passages is the Ceremonial Law also known as the Law of Ordinances.
This is verified by the whole of Scripture that declare “For in Christ
Jesus, neither circumcision (of the Law of
Ordinances) avails anything , nor uncircumcision, but Faith which works
by Love” (Galatians 5:6) and “For in
Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision,
but a new creature” (Gal. 6:15) and
“Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping
of the Commandments of God”
(1Cor.7:19). Putting these three Scriptures together we read, “For
in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision avails
anything , nor uncircumcision, but Faith which works by Love avails
a new creature who keeps the
Commandments of God.”
Many who are imbued with Satan’s law-breaking spirit are fond
of quoting the apostle Paul’s “hard to
understand” passages about not being “under the Law” or not being saved
by “the works of the Law” and twisting
them to fit their own worldly lifestyles. This they do, as God says,
“to their own destruction” (2Pet.3:16) and to
that of others. As we are all “carnal, sold under sin” (Rom. 7: 14),
no one can possibly be saved by “the works of
the Law” in their own strength without being spiritually born anew
from above with Christ dwelling within. The
elect of God will not be deceived by the presumptions of the lovers
of sin and will always remember that “without
Christ” is always implied whenever Paul speaks of not being saved by
“the works of the Law”. If our Lord and
Saviour always kept the Law of God and, although tempted in every way,
never sinned or transgressed His Father’s
and His own Ten Commandments in any way, how is it possible for anyone
in whom He dwells to sin or transgess
His Law? Sin or transgression is only possible when we separate ourselves
from Christ. Will the Holy Spirit of
Christ which dwells within all those who are saved, manifest a Righteousness
by Faith that establishes the Law or a
presumptuous righteousness by unbelief that transgresses the very moral
Law of His Being?
To be “under the Law” is not the same as being “subject to the
Law”. Those who are “under the Law” are
those who are transgressing the Law and under the Law’s condemnation,
while those who are “subject to the Law”
are in harmony with all His Commandments and willingly so because of
the Love of Christ. No one is saved by the
Law, for no one, of themselves, can keep the Law. “Without Me, you
can do nothing” (John 15:5) our Saviour and
King says, but we “can do all things through Christ who strengthens”
us (Phil. 4:13). Only those who know God
can keep the Law, for “God is Love” and “Love is the fulfilling of
the Law” (Rom. 13:10). Only those who know
Love can keep the Law.
Many who have lifestyles that are contrary to the Ten Commandments
would have you believe that the New
Covenant has redefined Romans 13:10 to say “Love is knowingly transgressing
the Law without penalty because of
the Grace of God”. God forbid that any should continue to believe that
it is God’s Will for His people to continue
in transgression of His “holy, just , and good” (Rom. 7:12) Commandments!
The only Godly response to Grace is
that of Love and obedience, for obedience coming out of a heart filled
with the Love of Christ is the highest form
of worship. To those who know Love, their King’s Ten Commandments become
promises fulfilled in their lives.
Any misunderstanding of man’s relationship to the Ten Commandments
is not on the part of God’s people,
but on the part of those who are alienated from Jesus Christ: “Remember
that at one time you were without Christ,
being aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the Covenants
of Promise, having no hope, and
without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were
far off have been brought near by the blood
of Christ.” (Eph. 2:12,13). Notice in verse 11 who Paul directs verses
12 and 13 to and who Paul says now in
Christ Jesus is brought near to the Commonwealth of Israel and Covenants
of Promise: it is the those who were in
the time past uncircumcised Gentiles. Paul is directing this those
who were uncircumcised Gentiles in the past,
but who now are Spiritual Israelites and children of the Commonwealth
of Israel and of the Covenants of Promise
through the blood of Christ. Here from the inspired word we learn that
by the blood of Christ we are reconciled
with God and are brought near to the Commonwealth of Israel and to
the Covenants of Promise and it is in union
with Jesus Christ that we enter into the Covenants of Promise and into
the Commonwealth of Israel where all
Gentiles and Jews who believe in Jesus Christ and accept Him as the
prophesied Messiah become Spiritual Israel.
To all those who enter in, Jesus is crowned King of Israel and King
of our lives and, while we must live and work
in this world, we no longer are of this world, nor do we live for it:
“My Kingdom is not of this world.” says King
Jesus.
In Love with Jesus, our Saviour and King, and as faithful citizens
of Spiritual Israel, we are at peace with
all and are delighted to be in subjection to the King’s Law for we
understand that: “to be carnally minded is death,
but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal
mind is hostile toward God: for it is not subject
to the Law of God, neither indeed can be.” (Rom. 8: 7,8). Even though
we may many times trip and fall over the
enemy’s stumbling blocks placed in the road and on the way to New Jerusalem,
it would be abhorrent to us to
remain lying in a fallen condition clinging to lifestyles and beliefs
that are contrary to our King’s Ten
Commandments to which all those who are Spiritually minded are subject
as God’s Word tells us above.
We have a High Priest, made not after the order “of a carnal commandment,
but after the power of an
endless life” (Heb. 7:16). Except for the two books written by one
who became a Spiritual Israelite, the entire Bible
was written by born-in-the-flesh Jews who became Spiritual Jews. Even
Jesus Christ was a Jew and is now our
Spiritual High Priest who ministers the Atonement of His own blood
in the Most Holy Place of the Heavenly
Sanctuary where rests the Ark of the Covenant containing the Lord’s
Holy Ten Commandments over which rests
the Mercy Seat, which symbolizes God’s forgiveness of “sins that are
past” (Rom. 3:25) and where Christ Jesus
sits on the right hand of God. (See Hebrews Chapters 8, 9, 10). Says
Jesus, our King and High Priest, “Salvation is
of the Jews” (John 4:22) but those who love their lifestyles more than
God’s Law would have you believe that
“Salvation is of the gentiles”.
The most important aspect of the Law of God that Satan and those
imbued with His spirit of law-breaking
cannot understand is that the Law defends Love, it does not take it
captive. Does God break His own Law when He
acts in a redemptive, loving way? God forbid that any should ever think
it so! When Jesus poured out a message of
healing forgiveness to the guilty woman brought before Him by the scribes
and Pharisees who were trying to trap
Him claiming that the Law demands such women should be stoned, Jesus
was acting entirely in harmony with the
Law of Love because God is Love. Again, no one can keep the Law without
knowing God, without knowing Love.
To know God is to love God and if one loves God, he will love His Law.
If one does not love God’s Law, he
cannot love the God who proclaimed it, for the Law is a written transcript
of God’s character. If one does not love
God’s Law, neither can that one love his brother or sister whom God
created, for “all the Law is summed up in this
sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no
wrong to a neighbor;” and if summing up the
Law in Love were to do away with the individual Commandments no one
would know right from wrong,
“therefore Love is the fulfilling of the Law.” (Rom. 13:9,10).
God’s people love the Law because it came from the very mouth
of their King who wrote it with His very
own finger on tablets of stone and His Majesty says He would not “alter
the thing that is gone out of My lips.”
(Psalm 89:34). The Ten Commandments came out of God's very own lips,
so the Ten Commandments could not
and cannot be done away with or altered in any way! Our King came into
the world to save us from sin which “is
the transgression of the Law.” (1John 3:4) and if the Law were to be
done away with, there would be no sin, and
without sin, there would be no need for a Saviour.
It is prophesied of our King and Saviour: “He will magnify the
Law and make it honourable.” (Isa. 42:21)
and He did just that very thing in His life, in His death, and in all
His teachings, for thus He taught: “If you will
enter into life, keep the Commandments.” (Matt. 19:17) and He says,
“I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth
pass away, not the smallest letter or the least stroke shall pass away
from the Law until all is accomplished.
Anyone who breaks one of the least of these Commandments and teaches
others to do the same will be called least
in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these Commandments
will be called great in the
kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:18,19).
Our King asks of those who cherish, more than Him, lifestyles
that are contrary to His Law: “Why do ye
also transgress the Commandment of God by your tradition?” (Matt. 15:30)
and “Full well you reject the
Commandment of God, that you may keep your own tradition” (Mark 7:9),
and saying of those same ones: “But in
vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of
men” (Matt. 15:9) and, in answering His
disciple’s questions about the end of the world and the sign of His
coming again, Jesus tells all His disciples: “Take
heed that no man deceive you....but pray that your flight be not in
the winter, neither on the Sabbath day” (Matt.
24:4,20) which, of course, He never would have said if He knew that
the Sabbath would be changed to another day
by His death and resurrection. Never once did He say or intimate that
the Sabbath day would be changed to another
day of done away with, but says “The Sabbath was made for man” (Mark
1:27) and Christ, Himself, in the Garden
of Eden, 2000 years before the first Jewish person existed, “blessed
the seventh day and sanctified it” (Gen. 2:3)
and He shows us how to keep the Sabbath that we all might be renewed,
refreshed, and healed by spending the day
with Him and not burdened by hundreds of man-made ordinances such as
the scribes and Pharisees added to the
Sabbath Commandment.
In Isaiah 58:13, Jesus, who is “the same yesterday, today, and
for ever” (Heb.13:8), calls the 7th day “My
Holy Day” and it would take much more than all the greatest preachers
in the world calling a meeting, breaking
bread, and taking up an offering to change the Sabbath to a day other
than the 7th day, it would take a plain
Commandment of God to change it, but God and His Son never have uttered
such a Commandment, nor even
hinted at such a change. Of the many times recorded in the Book of
Acts when Paul went into the synagogues on
the Sabbath day, it was to reason and persuade both Jews and Gentiles
that Jesus was the Christ and never once is it
recorded that he tried to persuade them that the Sabbath was changed.
It is written in Acts 18:4 that Paul
worshipped on the Sabbath with both Jews and Gentiles and, in Acts
16:13, it is written that Paul and his disciples
went out of the city and kept the Sabbath by a riverside!
Just before our King comes again, Revelation 11:19 tells us that
the Ark of the Covenant containing the Ten
Commandments will be thrown open in Heaven as a testimony against those
who have corrupted the earth with
their false doctrine of transgressing God’s Commandments with impunity:
“God ‘s temple in heaven was opened,
and within His temple was seen the Ark of His Covenant.” Abraham was
the father of the Jews and Galatians 3:29
tells us that the true Christians are Abraham’s children: “And if you
are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and
heirs according to the promise” and, Abraham’s true spiritual offspring
through faith are the children of Israel who
are keeping all of God’s Ten Commandments today.
In Col. 2:14 and Eph. 2:15 we learn that it was the “handwriting
of ordinances” pointing forward to
Christ’s life and death that were abolished at His first coming and
nailed to the cross, not the Law of His Kingdom,
The Ten Commandment Law of Life. Does God still expect us to sacrifice
lamps, heifers, and other animals today,
to atone for our sins? No, these sacrificial and ceremonial laws ceased
to be in force when the Lamb of God was
sacrificed. Does God still expect us not to steal, murder, lie, and
commit adultery? Yes! Therefore, this simple fact
that God does not expect us to obey the sacrificial and ceremonial
laws of the Old Covenant, but does expect us to
keep His Law of Ten Commandments, prove that they are not part of the
same law which was fulfilled by the death
of the One who spoke and wrote out His Will for all to know and understand!
The Jews, without faith in Christ, could not be a blessing to
other nations, but, even then, God assured them
that He would make a New Covenant available to them through One greater
than Moses, who would help them and
us out of our fallen condition and enable them and us to be a channel
of Divine Blessing to all peoples by our
sharing with all a knowledge of His Law which would lead them to Christ.
God's people under the New Covenant have always and will always
say “I am crucified with Christ,
nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life
which I now live in the flesh I live by the Faith of
the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20).
If a generation is accounted as 40 years of
life, there have only been 150 generations since God created Adam and
Eve in the Garden of Eden, so we see that
we are well within the thousand generations up to which Deuteronomy
7:9 tells us that God’s people will be loving
Him and covenanting with Him to keep His Commandments: “Know therefore
the Lord your God, He is God, the
faithful God, who keeps covenant with them that love Him and keep His
Commandments to a thousand
generations.”
“Without Faith it is impossible to please Him, for he that comes
to God must believe that He is and that He
is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” (Heb. 11: 6). It
is not just any faith that will please God but the
“Faith of the Son of God”. If we do not aspire to the Faith of Jesus,
we will never please God. “Now the just shall
live by Faith: but if any draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure
in him.” (Heb. 10:38).
What is the faith of Jesus that we need to attain? “For the Law
of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has made
me free from the law of sin and death. For what the Law could not do,
in that it was weak through the flesh, God
sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned
sin in the flesh: THAT THE
RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE LAW MIGHT BE FULFILLED IN US, WHO WALK NOT AFTER
THE FLESH, BUT
AFTER THE SPIRIT.” (Romans 8: 2-4).
Jesus speaks to us out of the Old Testament: “Lo, I come: In the
volume of the Book it is written of Me, I
delight to do Thy Will, O My God: Yea, Thy Law is within My heart.”
(Psalm 40:7,8). Clearly, here it is revealed
that God’s Will for all is found in unbroken union with the Holy One
of Israel that the Law that is within His heart
would become promises fulfilled in our lives.
God has a church, it is not the national cathedral, it is not
the various denominations, neither is it the
national establishment, it is the people who love God and keep His
Commandments. “Where two or three are
gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt.
18:20). Where Christ is even among the
humble few, this is Christ's church, for the presence of the High and
Holy One who inhabiteth eternity can alone
constitute a church.
A Wilderness Call, P. O. Box 327, West
Baden Springs, IN 47469
Jon Zwayer, writer and editor; Jesus Christ, Supreme
Inspiration, Provider, and Sustainer;
Published by Heart Communications; Phone: 812-936-9305, E-mail: heartcom@bluemarble.net;
Web Page: www.bluemarble.net/~heartcom