I see it almost every day in one form or another. Whether it be a Christian on the internet, a teacher on the radio or a televangelist, they all preach obedience, obedience, obedience. And of course what is it that they say we have to be obedient to? The Ten Commandments. Or, as a Christian friend of mine said, God helps us to be obedient to "His Word." In my opinion, that is the same thing just said in a different way. Imagine you're walking down the sidewalk in your average neighborhood. Suddenly, you notice a hole cut out in a fence and written above it in bold letters, "Do not look in this hole!" What is your first response going to be? It will be either to ask "Why can't I look in the hole?" or "What happens if I look in the hole?" If it is not one of those responses it will be something similar. I doubt you will say, "Okay, I won't. Thanks for telling me." Most likely, you are going to walk over to that hole and peer directly into it. My point is that telling people not do something never stops them from doing it. In fact, it will lead to them to do exactly what they are instructed against doing.
Take for example the apostle Paul. Paul, prior to his conversion, was a Pharisee. And in his own words said he was a "Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless (Philippians 3:5-6)." His legalistic righteousness was faultless! This means that, at least by the standards of the Pharisees, he was faultless at obeying the law. Therefore, you would think Paul would be proud of this. Yet, in the context in which he made this confession, he was trying to convey the message that his lawkeeping amounted to nothing, "dung" according to the King James translation, when it came to knowing Christ Jesus. Well, if Paul's obedience to the law amounted to nothing, then why do so many Christians promote their own form of obedience to lawkeeping as though it is the goal of Christian living? It is because they don't know the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer.
In order for a Christian to be obedient they must have something to be obedient to. Basically, they must have a defined set of laws that tell them what is good and what is evil. Once those are defined then they set about the task of trying to obey what is right and repent of what is wrong. This, they somehow believe, will lead them to being sinless and pleasing to God. Yet, what they don't realize is that they will never be obedient enough or repent enough because there will always be a sin to repent of and a law to obey. Even still, they don't realize that God did not create mankind in order to be obedient to laws designed to modify our behavior. God created mankind in order to be our very life and guide us from within. If we look at just one of the Ten Commandments we are supposed to "obey" we will see that we cannot obey it at all. The tenth Commandment warns against coveting. Coveting is a "hidden" sin because it is the desire to have that which belongs to someone else. Ask yourself how you are doing obeying this one Commandment. Again, we can turn to Paul as an example of our ability to not covet.
"But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead (Romans 7:8)." The commandment not to covet actually produced coveting within Paul. Knowing that it was a sin to covet did not stop Paul from coveting. And that is exactly what the law is supposed to do. First, the Bible tells us that the "sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law (1 Corinthians 15:56)." So, the law is actually the power of sin. That is the exact opposite of what is proclaimed from the pulpits today. Secondly, "the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith (Galatians 3:24)." The purpose of the law is to reveal our sinfulness, as it did in Paul, so that we would turn to Christ by faith. So, you must ask yourself one question:
If the purpose of the law is to stir up sin, which leads us to Christ, then how is it that people teach that we are to live under law after we are saved?
I don't think Christians realize the hypocrisy of what they teach. Many of them will say that the goal of the Christian life is to stop sinning. Then they teach that in order to do that you must live a life of obedience to laws designed to stir up more sin. It is a vicious cycle that will only lead to frustration and anger because you will have committed yourself to a life you can't possibly live. The end result is that you will never stop sinning, never receive the love of God and never get to know God. When you're focused on yourself and what you are doing, you will never be focused on God and what He has done for you in Christ. The law, whether it is the Mosaic Law of the Old Covenant or our own personal laws taught from within each individual church, will never yield the results they seek to achieve. And they never were supposed to. Paul counted his legalistic righteousness, as a Pharisee, as basically worthless in comparison to knowing Jesus. And Jesus said, during His ministry, "that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:20)." So, none of us can claim we were as faultless as Paul. And Jesus said we had to be better than Paul in order to enter heaven. This is not encouraging. And it wasn't meant to be.
Jesus was trying to get us to realize that we cannot live a life worthy enough to grant us entrance into heaven. A truth Paul wrote about in his letters. The lesson we are to take from this is that a believer doesn't live a life of obedience to outward laws geared towards changing our behavior. Rather, a Christian yields to the guidance of the indwelling Holy Spirit which changes our behavior from the inside out. That is a huge difference! We cannot live the Christian life. Only God, in Christ, can live the Christian life through us. If we could live the Christian life then there would have been no need for Christ to have come. A Christian lives by faith in the Holy Spirit to guide us in our daily lives. And if we are depending on the Holy Spirit to guide us He is not going to lead us to sin. And when we do sin, and we will, we are secure in the knowledge that God no longer is counting our sins against us because of the eternal redemption purchased for us by Christ's one sacrifice. God is the one who put that whole in the fence and told us not to look. It was an act of love on His part to reveal to us our need for salvation. My prayer is that Christians stop putting confidence in their flesh and start putting faith in Christ who has brought us to God.
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