Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: davidbu@tekigm2.men.tek.com (David Buxton) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: TWO SIDES of the $10 BILL - Further Discussion Message-ID: Date: 13 Oct 89 06:50:14 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or. Lines: 180 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu (Continuing my $10 Bill discussion) Not until the Holy Spirit gets through to people do they understand that they are sinners; not until they come to Christ and know Him are they wil- ling to be schooled by the law of God; not until they come to Jesus are they capable of discovering that they are truly condemned by the law and not until they come to Jesus can they understand that they can be freed from their bondage to sin. Until then, they see nothing to be freed from and cherish their freedom to "do their own thing". ----- Freedom from God and His Commandments was the siren call of Lucifer in heaven. Freedom from God and His Commandments was the siren call in the Garden of Eden. Freedom to "do your own thing" is what we want to do today. Before coming to the cross we think of this as freedom. But is it really? Satan's claim has always been that no man can keep the command- ments of God. Under the first dispensation he is right. But there is the free gift of salvation that anyone can choose. Satan is eager to show us why he thinks this is a total loss of freedom and bondage to God. This was Lucifers delusion in heaven and 1/3 of the angels bought his neat ideas and left with him to "do their own thing", free from God's Law in heaven. Did they gain the freedom that they so eagerly sought? No!!! Compare the freedom of the angels in heaven with God, under God's loving law, with the 'freedom' of Satan's host to "do their own thing" here on earth with Satan who is eager to convince everyone that true freedom is freedom from the obligations of God's commandments. Those on a free for all do your own thing trip are the ones most likely to be on suicide trips. Those who get involved in doing things for others are soon cleansed of this affliction. Doing your own thing is really not freedom after all. Whose definition of freedom do you wish to choose? The Bible makes it clear that we cannot choose both. We must choose one or the other. The ultimate choice belongs to each one of us. The Holy Spirit strives mightily with each one of us, but we alone must choose between Jesus and Satan - between God's law vs man's ways and traditions. ----- What stands between the two sides of the Ten Dollar Bill? The answer is simple. It is the cross of Calvary. It is Jesus Christ our Saviour. Until we come to the cross and lay everything at the foot of the cross of Jesus who died for us; until then we are under the dispensation of law which condemns us to an eternal death. Believing in the Lord Jesus and coming to know Him, brings us to an understanding that we are sinners in need of the cross. Until we bring everything to the cross, we are under the Old Dispensation which does condemn us. This condemnation is just as much in effect today as it was before Christ came to die. But the gift of salvation is free. It does not call for good works, it does not call for a pure life, it does not call for victory in Christ. We simply come as sinners and we leave our impossible burden of guilt and sin at the cross. All we have to do is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and we will be saved. We can be delivered from our burden of sin and we can indeed be saved. Jesus can do a mighty work to change our hearts if we will only let Him. Let us say that we have someone here before us who finds that coming to the cross is asking too much. It calls for believing in Jesus and Jesus is someone he does not know yet. So he balks at the cross and turns back. But this person is eager to go to heaven, if it turns out there is a heaven he says to himself. And so he determines to keep the commandments. And let us allow that he does indeed refrain from breaking any of God's Ten Commandments. Do we all know why such a keeping of the commandments does not save? It is because this fine young man stands under the wrong dispen- sation. He has been a sinner all his life until this date. Let us allow that he breaks no commandments the rest of his life. He is proud of the fact that he has not broken a single commandment since a specified date. And yet he is a sinner and is condemned because of what he did before that date. It should be clear that we cannot save ourselves by anything that we can possibly do. It is the cross yesterday, today and tomorrow that stands between the two dispensations of law and grace. I firmly believe that the central essence and theme of salvation is eternal and has never changed and did not change on the day that Christ died. I do not teach that one dispensation is in the Old Testament and the other in the New Testament. No! Each of the two dispensations stand on each side of the cross in a much more personal way. There is the date on which each of us should be able to say we first came to Jesus and believed and left our burden of sin at the foot of the cross. That is the date on which we accepted the new dispensation. But let us also remember Paul saying "I die daily". We must each come to the foot of the cross each day. How quick and easy it is to revert back to the Old Dispensation. How easy it is to be smug in our own abilities to save our- selves. How quickly we do revert to our own ways and means and the Old Dispensation. ----- The New Testament is full of statements that the Commandments are to be kept and that only those who keep the Commandments will find their way to heaven. Do we condemn these texts as legalism and discard them? If the NT law is Love then why don't these texts say 'Love' in stead of 'Law' or 'Commandments'? How do we reconcile these texts with the free gift of sal- vation? Jesus gave us the answer - "If you Love Me, Keep my Commandments". It is the 'Placed in the Heart', 'New Heart', the 'Born Again' experience that is the answer. The New Testament is clear that the law of God was not done away with. Here is one line of reasoning: If it was done away with then every sinner since Christ died is released from the condemnation of the law regardless of whether they come to the cross and to Christ or not. Those who say God's Law was nailed to the cross are in effect claiming that the need for Christ, in terms of salvation, was also nailed to the cross. This teaching basically says that because Christ died there is now no longer any need for Christ - in other words Christ died so that we no longer need Him. But do read these texts: Where no law is, there is no transgression. (Rom. 4:15). Sin is the transgression of the law (1 John 3:4). Jesus pointed to the Mishna keeping Pharisees and said their man made rules were all to no avail and that anyone who did not do better at keeping God's succinctly stated law would not find his way to the kingdom. Because the law remains, we need a Saviour. It is also clear that there is Grace to be found in the Old Testament. The Old Testament looks forward to a Messiah who would come and the New Testa- ment tells us about a Jesus who came. The essence of salvation stands the same in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. ----- Anyone who claims to be a born again Christian claims to have brought everything to the foot of the cross. They have surrendered completely to Jesus. This is what the Bible means by believing in Jesus: they have come to know Him; they have come to Love Him; they believe in Him, they have surrendered all to Him. The born again Christian is eager to do what the Lord would have him/her to do. This calls for keeping the commandments and obeying the Gospel Commission. But let us be careful here. We do not do these things in order to prove anything at all. We do not do these things in order to be saved, as salvation is an already accepted free gift. We simply do these things out of the fulness of our hearts filled with the Love of Christ. Jesus is the one who gives me a 'New Heart' and that 'New Heart' desires to do what He would have me to do. The 'New Heart' is wherein lies the secret. It is Him in us that keeps the commandments. If we lack the desire to do all that He wants us to do then we do not solve this problem by psyching up a greater determination to do right. That does not mean we give up the battle because we neglected the relationship. It means the relationship is what will restore our motivation. We seek to tap ourselves deeper into the true vine that is our Lord Jesus Christ. We turn to Him in prayer and plead for the victory and we go forward in Faith, we purpose in our hearts that we will be victorious - as Daniel did and so many other's in the Bible did - they each made their simple statements of Faith. With the true heavenly motivation of Jesus Christ in our hearts it is per- fectly ok to do His bidding in all things that He asks of us to do. It is Jesus in us that gains the victory over sin. It is Jesus in us that keeps the Commandments of God. With Jesus in us we keep God's Law in a spiritual and loving way instead of trying to keep the letter of it legalistically. We do what we do out of the fulness of our hearts full of Love for our Saviour which fills us with love for our neighbor. Does this make us the judge of what is the 'spirit' of the law - the Christ filled keeping of the law? No, not at all. Sinful man is always eager to find new ways to do his own thing. Don't trust your own reasoning on how to keep the law spir- itually, the 'spirit' of the law. Read carefully the example that Jesus provided for us. This is one key reason why He came to this earth. He showed us how to keep the law in spirit and in truth. Come to a thorough understanding of His example in order to understand what is meant by the spirit of the law, the spirit filled, Christ filled keeping of God's Ten Commandments. He provided testimony and example on all ten commandments and made it clear that He had not come to do away with any of them. If there was no need of His example He could have simply come to die. But He came as a baby, as a boy, as a teenager, as a man. He was in all points tempted as we are and He kept God's law as we should keep it. Keep God's law and not a new Mishna of man's devising. Keep it out of a new Christ filled heart and not out of any attempt to prove anything before God or man. Do not counterfeit my ten dollar bill. Both sides must be authentic or don't try to give me one of them. I will happily provide supporting texts at your request. \\///// 8-) (-8 Dave (David E. Buxton) | .-. davidbu@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM . . Smile! Its a beutiful day! \_/