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From: emery@fluke.UUCP (John Emery)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: fulfillment of the law
Message-ID: <1502@vax3.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Oct-85 21:45:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: vax3.1502
Posted: Tue Oct 15 21:45:55 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 17-Oct-85 19:11:17 EDT
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Xref: tektronix net.religion.christian:01485 







     God did not create man to place him under the law with its
rules and regulations.  He created man so that He could share
His glory with him and that man might experience God's unending
love, joy, and peace so that man might worship and love Him 
throughout eternity to His glory.  He created us in His image
so that we might love each other the way He loves us and graciously
gives us everything.  God is love!  God's nature is not forceful
so He gave man free will to love Him and each other and thus
make love perfect.  But Satan used this gift of God to tempt Eve
to break the one simple command not to eat of the tree of life.
Well, we all know what happened next and to make a long story
short, man became murderer, adulterer, hater, liar, etc.  He
exalted himself above God and God hid his face from man.  So
where did the law come from?
    In order to show His majestic glory to all nations, God raised
up a nation to be His chosen people so that through them all
nations might praise God and fear Him.  He delivered this nation 
out of bondage with great miracles and drove out all nations 
out before them.  He did this not because of their righteousness,
but because of His mercy and to fulfill the promise He made to
one man, Abraham, who against all odds trusted God through faith.
This nation, however continually refused to trust God and have 
faith in Him regardless of all He had done for them.  And although
He demonstrated His great patience and mercy, they continued to
disobey Him time and time again, unlike Abraham.  Instead of destroying
this rebellious nation, God chose to show His fairness and give
the nation a set of commands, known as His law.  This law put 
rules on just about every aspect of their life.  And God promised
that if they obeyed all His decrees, they would prosper in their
land.  To break any part of the law was to sin and to make provisions
for their mistakes God allowed the slaughtering of an inocent animal
in their place.  Although Israel promised to obey all the laws, they
soon fell into sin.  
     Then, in a moment in time, the perfection of God's grace appeared.
The revelation to the world of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Although
he shares perfectly in His Father's nature and is like Him in every
way, he was humiliated in the form of a servant to come to us.  He
became flesh as we are and was born into the Jewish nation under the
full reign of the law.  Although he was weakened by his humanity and
faced all the trials and sufferings of the flesh, he demonstrated
his glorious love for his Father by living a sinless and obedient
life under the law.  He glorified his Father by his words and actions
unlike any human in all history.  He showed his love among men
with a love that could only come from God.  Rather than losing us
forever because of our stubborn sin, Jesus loved us enough to
become our sin and die the death we deserved so that we would turn
to God's mercy and receive eternal life and be with Jesus and his
Father forever.  This was not because of anything we did.  In fact,
when Jesus died for the sins of the world, we were God's enemies.
It is a gift to us that God counted Jesus' death as ours.  He did
this so that we would fix our eyes upon Jesus and surrender ourselves
to him.  The Father's love for his Son is unconceivable and he
gave to Jesus all of us so that he could be our Lord and Savior and
that we could become God's adopted children through him.  And
Jesus did not die and leave us on our own but when we receive him
as our Lord and Savior and surrender ourselves to him, he comes
and lives with us united with our spirit.  He pours out on us
God's Holy Spirit.  Through the Holy Spirit we experience the
Father's love for Jesus and Jesus' love, joy, and peace.  The Spirit
actually transforms our sinful nature into a nature of love for
God and others and a will to serve the Lord.  He helps us to stand
strong in faith and to trust in God for everything in our lives.
Through the Holy Spirit, we grow more and more into the image of
Jesus because he lives in us and shares his nature with us.  Unlike
the law, this does not depend on our righteousness or good deeds
but is a gift from God.  It depends only on our will to surrender to
God and his power to perform the miracle inside us through Jesus.
How perfect!  We become as God originally intended us to be.  Why
is there any need for the law?  What good would it do?  The law was
given because of sin.  It was added so that sin would increase 
because of man's sinful nature and man would become aware of his 
sin and repent to God.  It served to demonstrate that only God
could take away sins.  And Jesus takes away our sinful nature.
He nailed it to the cross.  
     Why did Israel fail?  Because in order to live the righteous
life God called us to, there needs to be a change of heart.  Because
God is love, those who live for him must walk in love.  The law
itself has no power to change one's heart but through Jesus we 
experience God's love deep inside our hearts because he gives us
his love.  Therefore with the love of Jesus inside us there is no
need for the law because Jesus himself fulfills the requirements
of the law inside us.



In His Name,

John Emery