2004-10-08
Good Morning Faithful Ones,
Because we are all experts on the events of our lives, it is necessary to start from there. God knows this and asks us to look back on our lives, not to evoke guilt, but instead, to see where we stand with regard to something He is teaching us. We can say that’s a work He is doing in us. His task is to get us to cooperate in His work of transforming our perspective on our lives and what is around us, as He transforms our hearts. Today, we will look at 2 COR 3: 2-9, a passage which helps us to understand the relationship between the Law and Spirit in our lives. It also gives us perspective on what we can do and what only God can do. I find a jumping off point to be seen in RO 7: 5-6, “For when we lived according to our human nature, the sinful desires stirred up by the Law were at work in our bodies, and we were useful in the service of death. Now, however, we are free from the Law, because we died to that which once held us prisoners. No longer do we serve the old way of a written law, but in the new way of the Spirit.” By no means does this mean that the Ten Commandments no longer matter; they still do as they always did from the time God, through Moses, gave them to us. However, the legalism of the ancient Jewish system is what must be discarded in favor of being Spirit-led. The old legalism led people away from the heart of God’s teaching to a life of ritualistic behavior. The Spirit is God and dwells, by God’s grace, in the heart of each person who has repented of his sins and accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior.
As servants of the new covenant, we will now look at 2 COR 3: 2-6 first. “You yourselves are the letter we have, written in our hearts for everyone to know and read. It is clear that Christ Himself wrote this letter and sent it by us. It is written, not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, and not on stone tablets but on human hearts. We say this because we have confidence in God through Christ. There is nothing in us that allows us to claim that we are capable of doing this work. The capacity we have comes from God; it is He Who made us capable of serving this new covenant, which consists not of a written law but of the Spirit. The written law brings death, but the Spirit gives life.” We must realize that Paul’s critics in Corinth were Judaizers, men who sought to mix law and grace. That is what led Paul to spent time demonstrating the superiority of the new covenant over the old one. The main point here is that while the old covenant depended upon works and had no power to produce salvation, the new one was the only one which could produce salvation through God’s grace. It is clear that nothing mankind can do will save themselves; salvation is wholly a product of God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. All of this is forever connected to Christ’s assertions in the Sermon on the Mount [MT 5: 3-12], which cause us to understand that we can’t gain eternal life without His intervention. This notion of our need for grace is illuminated in GA 3: 11, “Now, it is clear that no one is put right with God by means of the Law, because the Scriptures [RO 1: 17; HB 2: 4] say, ‘Only the person who is put right with God through faith shall live.’”
2 COR 3: 7-9 shows us how the new covenant is superior to the old covenant. “The law was carved in letters on stone tablets, and God’s glory appeared when it was given. Even through the brightness on Moses’ face was fading, it was so strong that the people of Israel could not keep their eyes fixed on him. If the Law, which brings death when it is in force, came with such glory, how much greater is the glory that belongs to the activity of the Spirit! The system which brings condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the activity which brings salvation!” When lived as the Lord intends, those in the Covenant of Grace bring God more glory to Him by their lives than they ever could by the Law alone. It is the realization of the often repeated goal God has- that He will be our one and only God, and we will be His people [JER 31: 33-34, for example].
Why is this important to us now? We can have confidence in God through Christ. Our real life is “hidden with Christ in God” [COL 3: 3-4]. We were born to please God and to give Him glory [EPH 1: 4-5; IS 43: 7; JN 17: 4]. Jesus honored God by fulfilling His purpose while He was on earth. Since Christ is our Ideal, then we need to do the same thing, thus bringing glory to God. We can’t do that without the Covenant of Grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit. We must remember that we were created in God’s image [GN 1: 27], and thus, God loves each of us dearly. It was a bitter disappointment to Him that we were born into sin, but He loves us enough to sacrifice His only begotten Son, so that we may not perish but have everlasting life with Him [JN 3; 16]. HE 10: 17 tells us that God will not only forgive the sins of believers in Christ, but He will forget them too!
PRAYER: O Lord, each of us knows the sins we have committed before we came to faith and come before Your mighty throne to confess them, asking for forgiveness. We couldn’t do that if all we had to anticipate was condemnation. It is because of Your Spirit living in us that we can face the painful truths about ourselves and place ourselves at Your mercy. You are a loving and compassionate God, Who wants nothing more than to bring His children back to His side for eternity [JN 6: 39-40]. You have said in IS 43: 7, “They are My own people, and I created them to bring Me glory.” Without the new covenant, we can’t bring You glory; with it, we can. There is still the issue of our obedience and willingness to submit to You, Dearest Abba. It is that issue that we bring before You today. Our performance in obeying and submitting to You since our repentance and coming to faith has been quite short of Your expectation. We understand from the new perspective you give us that being mired in guilt is also a sin. So, once again we stand before You in need of Your patience and help. We want more than anything to please You and because of Your Son, You have made this possible. What is in our hearts is expressed by Paul in 2 COR 5: 5-10, “God is the One Who has prepared us for this change, and He gave us His Spirit as the Guarantee of all that He has in store for us. So we are always full of courage. We know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord’s home. For our life is a matter of faith, not of sight. We are full of courage and would much prefer to leave our home in the body and be at home with the Lord. More than anything else, however, we want to please Him, whether in our home here or there. For all of us must appear before Christ, to be judged by Him. Each one will receive what he deserves ,according to everything he has done, good or bad in his bodily life.” The new perspective that You give us allows us to utter these words from EPH 3: 12 as a part of this prayer, “In union with Christ and through our faith in Him we have the boldness to go into God’s presence with all confidence.” We dedicate ourselves to obeying and submitting to You, knowing full well that it is the only way to eternal life. This will sometimes cause us pain from recognition of the depth of our sin, or it will be very difficult for us, because it takes us out of our zone of comfort. But, Dearest Abba, we rest in the comfort of knowing Your love for can’t be matched. You deserve nothing less than our eternal thanks and praise for all You are and all You do. In Christ’s name, amen.
Next week as we continue to quench our thirst for more understanding of how the new covenant solves the problem of the deceitful human heart, we will examine JER 32: 38-40 and all its ramifications. I stand in awe as week after week the Lord takes me to places in the Scriptures with messages I simply didn’t recognize or fully understand on previous visits to them. No other book I’ve ever read has this same capacity to reveal new truths that the word of God has. I hope you are discovering the same thing as you study it and read these messages. God is building each of us into beings that are perfected, give him glory, and please Him. No other being has the power or the profound love for His creation to do this. No other people are blessed to the extent that believers in Christ are. We can have confidence to approach God’s throne with every aspect of our lives. We can worship Him by how we live our lives. We can choose not to sin. We can know that God cares about our sorrows, our pain, and our victories. We can know that He will protect us and provide for us. We can know that He will offer us comfort and encouragement. Yes, Dear Fellow Believers, we are the children of an awesome God Who brings goodness and love into our lives. What greater blessing can there be than the grace and salvation He brings us through the new covenant?
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn