Faithbase

Good morning and welcome to Thinking About the Bible. Today, of course, we're continuing to think about God's law. One of the things we need to talk about, of course, is how the Christian relates to the Word of God, excuse me, relates to the law of God. If we are now, of course, in Christ, our relationship to the law is different. So what is that relationship? Well, Paul in Romans 3.31 says, he goes through the whole process throughout Romans, talking about how it's not behaviors, it's not obedience, but faith that saves us. And then the question might be, well, what do we do then with the law? Well, Paul says, do we then discard it completely? But in Romans 3.31, he says, of course not. In fact, it's through faith that we truly fulfill the law, that we truly establish the law as the behavioral standard for those who are in Jesus Christ. But the difference is that it's no longer something that is on the outside putting pressure on us, but it is on the inside giving us the impetus to do what God would have us to do. It's Jeremiah 31, and I don't want to read this entire passage here, but I'm going to move this over where I can see it a little better. But Jeremiah 31 is where it talks about the new covenant, and talks about how God in this new covenant writes the law on our heart so that it is as a new creation, as those who are made new in Jesus Christ. We now express that character of Jesus Christ, who was perfect, who fully fulfilled the law, not just as we talked about earlier, but the ritual and so forth. But he fulfilled the moral commandments as well, those things that are required of the people of God. He fulfilled them completely, and so it is the power of God within us. We touched on this before when we looked at what Paul says to the church in Philippi, that he asks them as much as when he was there, it's even more important when he's away, to work hard to show the results of their salvation. So one of the results of our salvation is to have the law written upon our heart, so it's no longer on the outside but is on the inside. And we express that, not as a means of gaining salvation at all, but as a means of expressing what has happened to us through the process of salvation, that Jesus Christ lives within us, that we are a new creation, and out of love and gratitude for him, and indeed out of an expression of this new character, this new creation, what we are now is something completely different. So the law, the relationship is different. Now it's really more of a, it defines for us what is the kind of behavior that we are working hard to express. It tells us what it is that God wants us to do and how we should behave. So no longer, in fact I would even say that in the past it wasn't so much that it was the means of gaining acceptance before God as it was part of this covenant relationship, as we talked about before, during the Mosaic dispensation, that set the people of God apart from the rest of the world. For us today, we are still set apart by our behaviors, but those behaviors arise from the new creation that we are. It is an expression of what we are in Jesus Christ. So that's what the Bible means when it says the law is now written on our heart. That's what Paul means when he says that now it is only through faith, actually through faith, that we are only then able to do truly what the law expresses, what the law tells us. We truly fulfill the law as followers of Jesus Christ. Bless you. I'll see you again tomorrow. And this today, as we think about the law, think about how it is that the law, having been written on your heart, needs to be expressed as an example or as evidence of your salvation in Jesus Christ.