Walking with Jesus from Incarnation to Ascension - Day 7 - The Law Was Temporal

• "Christ is the end of the law.."    (Rom. 10:4)
  
  This is a hard thing for me to write about because I feel I don’t fully understand why the law came about. That is my honest feeling. I can see how God used it to highlight the problem of lies that Satan had trapped us in (which brought about sin - unbelief in who we really were and unbelief in who God really is), that through the law was the knowledge of sin, so we could see the damage sin was doing and how it was so foreign to our nature and needed to be dealt with and eradicated from its hold upon our minds. I can see how it was a protective measure, to keep people from doing tons of harm to others (for example, I think of how a murderer is put in jail and that stops him from killing more people, so it protects those people from the effects of his confused mind). I can see how it was a temporary measure that was only in place till the real solution to the sin problem, Jesus, came! I can see how what the law failed to do – restore the spontaneous and life-giving relationship with God that was always our birthright and always still there, though not accessed or enjoyed by people in their confusion over their identity – that how what the law failed to do, Jesus did, for He wiped away the lie and its effect and we could see the union we’d always had with God again, we could feel comfortable approaching Him, seeing that we really WERE the beloved of the Father all along! I can see all that at least a little bit. But I do feel that there is so much more to understand about the law. At least I am beginning to understand that I am truly free from the law, free from obligation, requirement, penalty for messing up, having to earn my way, etc.!
  Right now I will just focus on the new law, the law of liberty, the law of Christ, knowing that this law tells me I am free, tells me who I really am, never condemns or pressures me, doesn’t highlight sin but instead highlights my innocence, shows me Jesus’ face and makes me realize His face is a mirror and I am reflected there, so I am just like Him! This law tells me I am just like Jesus and can do as I please, for all I really want to do deep down is love people, just like Jesus wants to do! What a relief to find out one’s heart is good and pure and lovely, just like the heart of Jesus!
• I feel so peaceful, and I know it is because of Him teaching me me closeness to Him and identity in Him, that of beloved child, and that He is taking care of everything. I need do nothing and no effort of mine is required, what a relief. I read a post on Facebook recently, “God is going to materialize your new creation identity without your help.” So often in the past I tried to help God and it was just futile and exhausting! How good to know my ‘help’ isn’t needed, and that by simply BE-ing myself, I am naturally living the supernatural life of a new creation – He just oozes out! I realized that God NEVER meant us to be under law and effort, hard work and labor, He designed us humans to function from a position of constant rest! It amazes me that He simply shines forth when I just AM me! He is so wonderful the way He has designed us. Law was never the focus, the tree of knowledge of good and evil (hard work and labor – isn’t what how Francois du Toit says is the meaning) was never our true way to live. We were designed as so ONE with God, with Him being part of our very being, so that He effortlessly shines forth by just us simply being! Didn’t Nelson Mandela say we were made to express the glory of God that is within us – that is so beautiful, all is already within each person, just waiting to be discovered and enjoyed and expressed – Love is a Person, in us, as us, through us! HE is truly ‘who’ we are!!
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• Thinking more about why the law was given, I read somewhere an idea that has been percolating within me and wanted to share it here. I thought of how, when a person does wrong to someone else, they can feel guilt and that they ‘owe’ the other person or need to somehow make it up to the other person, they may feel a ‘debt’ to that person, and the one who can release and help them is the person they have wronged – if the victim is able to forgive and sort of ‘let them off the hook’ so that they owe them nothing to make up for the wrong, then the person feels really released from the burden of guilt and is freed.
  
  So maybe God gave those many laws to cover as many sins as He could as officially being against HIM and now it would be that when a person sinned, they sinned against not themselves or others or just vaguely did something wrong (so that it was difficult to find release from the pain and guilt they felt), but they sinned against God Himself. (I think of David saying, “Against You and You only have I done this sin.”) If the sin was against God, then God could be the One to help them and release them from the guilt and feeling of ‘debt’ caused by the sin. Jesus came and even summed up all the law under “love God and others” and thus swept up every sin in a lump under those commands, thus making everything ever done wrong as something done against God, so that God in Christ could take away the feelings of guilt from sin and set men free! It brings to mind the verse “He has shut up all in disobedience that He might have mercy upon all.” He made every single act of inferior identity a sin against HIM through the law so that HE, being the one wronged, would be in the position to forgive and could free us from the guilt and condemnation and shame we’d feel, free us from the feeling of ‘owing a debt’ to make up for the wrong.
  
  I don’t know if I even shared that clearly. But it is a thought I had about why the law might have come about, as an act of mercy to ultimately bring about release and forgiveness – the sacrifices were the shadow of this release that ‘covered over’ the sins till ultimately and finally they were obliterated through Christ as the true release from our sins, feelings of shame, and feelings of needing to ‘owe’ something to make up for sin.
  
  It is like He saw that sin would bring these feelings of separation and inferiority to the extreme and He in love and mercy devised a plan to sum up every sin under the umbrella of being ‘against God’ so that He could take care of them all at the cross! He let Himself be the victim of all our crimes, so that He could take the powerful place of the one who could release us from guilt and set us free! The victim of our cruelty is the one who can set us free by releasing us from any ‘debt’ we feel to him or her. Jesus as the victim of our crime brought total forgiveness! I love the picture Andre gives of Jesus rising from the grave and walking out of the tomb with His arms stretched out to embrace His killers! He said on the cross, “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” – Wow! He realized that we had lost track of our identity and didn’t know what we were even doing! He never lost sight of who we were and drew us into His embrace, getting rid of all the shame and unworth and guilt we felt. He didn’t see us as bad and guilty and dirty, but we did, and He came and submitted Himself to our messed up ideas and deeds so that He could show us who we really were and banish the guilt and thoughts of unworth and ‘owing a debt’ forever! We were living by performance, so He kindly entered into a performance based system with us in order to pay off any ‘debt’ we thought we owed and forgive any sin that we felt so guilty of, and he even kept all the performance requirements for us on our behalf so that our need of perfect performance was satisfied by Him on our behalf! And through dying to that law way, He freed us from the performance system and laid it to rest in the process!