New Covenant Law

When I was a kid, I used to love to watch the old Perry Mason TV show. This was the original black-and-white show, before Raymond Burr turned into Orson Wells. I always got a kick out of Perry trying to explain to the jury the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. The Apostle Paul knew the difference: "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." In the following paragraphs, I'm going to attempt to "rightly divide", that is, cut a straight line between, the letter and the spirit, between law and grace. Come on; it'll be a hoot.

I'd like to begin by saying that Paul, the great Apostle, spent his entire ministry trying to drag the New Testament Church into the New Testament. Kicking and screaming, from the sound of it. And behold, here we are, two thousand years later, still grappling with Moses and the Ten Commandments. Now, before we plunge headlong into the New Covenant, let's take a moment to reflect on a few aspects of Moses' law, to wit:

* The Israelites, to whom the law was given, were not, and could not be, born again. They were, as we say on this side of the Resurrection, spiritually dead.

* Neither the keeping of the law, nor the blood sacrifices offered for breaking the law, could "save" them. The blood of animals provided atonement, or covering, for sin; it could not take away sin.

* There's a lot more to the law of Moses than just ten commandments. For example, if a man died childless, his widow was required to marry his brother, and their first child was accounted to the dead brother. It was the law.

* When God had mercy on the Israelites and sent Moses to rescue them from Egyptian slavery, it had nothing to do with their keeping of the law, for the law had not yet been given.

Consider this: God entered into a covenant relationship with Abraham, and Abraham was to pass this covenant on to his descendants, until, as Paul says, the seed (Jesus) should come to whom the promise was given. Less than five hundred years later, every member of that covenant was in bondage to Egypt. God sent Moses to do two things: rescue Israel from bondage, and set behavioral boundaries, in the form of laws, that would prevent such a situation from threatening the covenant again.

By the time Jesus arrived on the scene, the Israelites were under a new bondage. They were a nation occupied by the Romans, but more importantly, they were lorded over by the Scribes and Pharisees, who kept adding laws and traditions until obedience was well-nigh impossible. The people were so stressed under the burden of a law they couldn't keep that they lost sight of the fact that the covenant was meant to be a relationship with God.

Jesus came to, as He put it, fulfill the law. In other words, He was to bring the Abrahamic covenant to its expiration date, as it were, and institute a New Covenant in its place. I'm sure you've noticed that when asked which of the commandments was the most important, Jesus answered with two commandments: love God, and love each other. He knew that what was important to God was not obedience to a set of dos and don'ts, but rather, our relationships, both with Himself, and with one another.

I want to talk a little about loving your neighbor as yourself, but first, I need to give you my own personal definition of "love". Obviously, loving your neighbor doesn't mean hugging and kissing and complimenting him on his tie. The Greek word agape refers to an attitude, not an emotional state. If you're taking notes (You are taking notes, aren't you??), write this down:

LOVE (Gr. AGAPE): An attitude of willingness (or readiness) to give of yourself or your resources to meet the needs of another.

That's it. Love, in the New Testament sense, means meeting needs. Think about it: If you were, for instance, sick, wouldn't it be nice if someone offered to drive you to the doctor's office? or pick up your medicine at the drug store? or babysit your kids while you took a nap? What if right now, while you feel good, you find someone who could use a hand, and help them out? That's what loving your neighbor as yourself really means. It's another way of saying "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This theme is repeated over and over throughout the New Testament. Paul said to the Galatians, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ." James called it the Royal Law. And don't even get me started on the first epistle of John.

Before this turns into a book, there's one other thing I want to bring up. A while back we were discussing the One Commandment of the New Testament, and someone asked, "I know we're supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves, but what about the people who don't love themselves?" My razor-sharp mind came up with a response a few days later. I said, "If you're cold, do you put on a sweater?" "Sure." "Well, if the guy next to you is cold, give him a sweater."

Many people say they don't love themselves; I've been known to say it myself in times past. But we don't really hate ourselves like we think we do. We hate our jobs, our boss, our miserable lives; we hate the decisions we've made that have gotten us to this point. But even when I thought I hated myself, I didn't stand out in the rain trying to die of pneumonia. I ate food I liked, slept in a comfortable bed, in short, I took good care of that same self that I claimed to hate. Loving your neighbor is no more complicated than that. You see someone in need, you do what you can to help.

So where does that leave Moses? If I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love my neighbor as myself, am I going to steal, cheat, lie, or kill? Of course not. I don't need Moses to tell me that stealing is wrong. The police will tell me that. Saying that we're not under law but under grace doesn't mean we can break the commandments with impunity. If you're looking for a way to sin and get away with it, stop calling yourself a Christian! Just remember that keeping the law isn't what got you into God's family in the first place, and less than perfect behavior won't exclude you from it. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is saved because they deserve to be. And nobody who wants in is turned away.