You can choose to disregard or dismiss the laws of gravity, telling yourself that you don’t believe they exist today, if you want. But surely you realize that just because you scoff and refuse to accept that the laws of gravity exists…does not nullify or cancel that law which Isaac Newton explained in the late 1600’s. Step off the roof of your house, and then get back to me if/when you can so we can discuss further.

I would submit to you for further study that God’s law is far more relevant today than any of us professing believers would dare to admit, let alone believe. And just like with previous generations that we read about in our beloved Bibles, we are seeing history repeat itself, again, in the fact that God’s law…’has been lost’. Our failure to understand why and how God’s law still stands today, is probably the number one reason why there is an absence of the ‘fear of God’ which Paul wrote about in Romans 3:17-18.

If you are like most NT ‘Christians’, you probably share a similar mindset that whenever the ‘law’ is mentioned, you immediately assume that the law had to do with the ‘old testament’, and that “we are no longer under the law, but under grace”…simply because of our faith in Jesus. Paul even alludes to that in Romans 6:14. May I encourage you to jot down, next to that passage, another verse which would be Galatians 5:18. It’s in that text that we find more clarification as to ‘who’…is not ‘under the law’, and that would be those who are ‘led by God’s Spirit’. You might want to take a moment with that one.

I want to share a number of passages with you now that I would highly recommend you look up and maybe even write out somewhere in a notebook (when you have time), so you can easily reference and give some thought to them. Think of these verses/passages as missing ‘puzzle pieces’ that will bring more clarification and understanding to a ‘picture’ that could radically change your walk with the Lord, and in a good way. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about here.

IF…God’s law was going to be set aside, or dismissed as ‘irrelevant’ today, which Jesus made clear it was not being ‘done away with’ in Matt. 5:17, then why would we find some of the following passages in our Bible, scriptures like the one in Ezek. 36:24-28. That’s when it was prophesied that a day was coming when God was going to “put His Spirit within us and cause us to walk in His statues and we would keep His judgements (law)…and ‘do’ them.”

And what was all this talk about how God was going to ‘write His laws on our hearts and minds’, that we read about in Jeremiah 31:33 and Hebrews 8:10 and 10:16?

If the law was going to be set aside and ‘repealed’ or made irrelevant, than why would Jesus have responded in the way He did, when pressed on several occasions by people who came to Him asking what was needed in order to receive this ‘eternal life’ that He preached about? Do you remember how He answered the rich, young ruler, telling him he would need to “keep the commandments…if he wanted to enter into life”? (Matt. 19:16-19). Or that lawyer in Luke 10:25-28, who was told by Jesus to fulfill God’s law and he too could ‘live’.

What are we told about who the ‘saints’ are, and what they do, in Rev. 12:17 and 14:12; does it not say they ‘keep the commandments of God’?

I know 2 Cor. 5:17 is a favorite verse for many, the one that declares that “IF anyone is ‘in Christ’, he is a new creation’…, but you might circle that word ‘IF’, because it is very telling. How can one know if they are truly ‘in Christ’? Is a person truly ‘in Christ’ because they ‘walked an aisle and prayed a prayer to accept Christ as personal Savior’, like so many of us were taught and led to believe? You might want to take a look at 1 John 2:3-6, and underline those two phrases that state- ‘by this we know’. And let those ‘marinate’ in your spirit.

Can you imagine the sad irony, back in the days of Noah…if those people who lived near him just assumed they were ‘in the ark’ because they ‘talked to Noah’ from time to time, and maybe lived under the shadow of that giant boat, only to discover after the door had been shut that they were actually not ‘in the ark’. Friends, did you know that to be ‘in the ark’ is to be ‘in Christ’? May I refer you to Matt. 7:21-23, 25:1-12, and then 24:36-39.

Here’s a thought: After Jesus declared in Matt. 5:17, where He made it known that He was not there to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, He then proceeded to explain some hard truths, pertaining to God’s law. Jesus begins to cite various examples found in the law, telling the people: “You have heard it was said…you shall not murder or commit adultery…But I’m telling you…if you are angry with a brother or call someone a fool, or look upon a woman and lust in your heart for her…you are in danger of hell fire…and are guilty for already ‘committing the act with her” (Matt. 5:21-28).

It sounds to me that not only does Jesus enforce the existence and relevancy of God’s laws, but He seems to be ‘raising the bar’ to a new level that should cause all of us to despair; sort of like what Paul lamented in Romans 7; ‘Oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death’, basically saying that despite his desire to do good and keep the law…he finds himself incapable of doing so and knows he is doomed (7:13-24). And there was a reason he was not able to keep the law, which we’ll address later.

This…is where so many sincere ‘believers’ take the wrong 'exit', and just assume that since we are incapable of fulfilling such a law…that we come to this supposed ‘revelation’ that our ‘faith in Christ’ (whatever that means) is our ‘free pass’; meaning that since we can’t keep the law, and Jesus did…that if we just ‘put our trust in Him’, we will receive the benefits of Jesus’s accomplishment of ‘fulfilling the law’. That would be like a class of college students taking a final exam, which they all failed miserably, except the one student who was the nerd and always aced the exams. And because the professor was in a gracious mood one day, he decides to extend a merciful offer to those who failed, telling them if they will be nice to the one student who passed the exam, and start hanging out with him, that the professor will give his passing grade to all those who failed. Are we supposed to believe that is what God did with Jesus…and us?

So where does ‘faith’ come in to all this, you might be asking? Well, many people think that ‘faith’ and ‘the law’ are in conflict with one another, which Paul disputes in Romans 3:31. That's where he makes it known that 'faith' does not 'make void the law', but actually confirms or upholds it. And for all who are adamant when they say they are ‘justified by faith’, how does that line up with Romans 2:13, that clearly states: “For not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified.”

I know, sounds so confusing, does it not? Please hang with me…there’s some good news on the horizon, but it might be different than what you have been led to believe. Meet me here tomorrow?