Happy New Year! Today is the first day of the Hebrew month Nisan (also called Abib), and the first day of the sacred year on the Hebrew calendar (Rosh Hashana starts the civil year). This means Passover is exactly 14 days away. As we draw nearer this important holy day, I wanted to shift our focus onto why Passover is so important for Christians today.
As I started thinking about reasons to keep Passover, I realized I’d either have to make this a series of posts or be much more concise than the subject deserves. Instead of a series (though there will be other Passover posts coming up), I decided to just write a brief overview of some reason to keep Passover and then invite you to join me in exploring them further. If this post inspires any of you to study Passover, I hope you’ll share your thoughts in the comments. And if you write a blog post about Passover, please share a link here so we can all read it.
Exodus chapter 12 describes the events of the first Passover in Egypt, when the children of Israel were protected from the plague that killed all Egyptian firstborn. After delivering instructions specific to that Passover, the Lord reveals that Passover celebration will continue forever among His people. Read more →
What should your heart be set on once you give your life to the Lord? Is it keeping the commandments? going to church? an active prayer life? acts of service? Those are all good things, but they should be a side-effect of our primary focus. In other words, they’ll happen because we want to keep the Law, fellowship with other believers, pray, and serve when our hearts are in the right place.
In Christopher West’s book Fill these Hearts, he quotes mid-twentieth century artist and writer Caryll Houselander as saying, “If instead of using the expression ‘spiritual life’ we used ‘the seeking,’ we should set out from the beginning and go on to the end with a clearer idea of what our life with God will be on this earth” (56). Our conversion isn’t a static state. It’s a continuous search for closeness with God. Read more →
I recently finished reading, and then immediately re-reading, Fill These Hearts by Christopher West. It’s a powerful rebuttal to the lie that Christianity is a joyless religion of laws and suppressed desires. West touches on many points regarding marriage and the plan of God that I hit in my book God’s Love Story, a subject you know is dear to my heart. I could probably write half a dozen posts inspired by Fill These Hearts (I already quoted from it in last week’s post), but here’s the part I want to focus on today:
Christianity is the religion of desire — the religion that redeemseros — and its saints are the ones who have had the courage to feel the abyss of longing in their souls and in their bodies and to open … all their desires for love and union to the Love and Union that alone can satisfy. … the saints have learned to open eros (their yearning for love) to Eros (God’s passionate love for them).” (p. 39)
Seeing God’s love described as Eros might make you a little uncomfortable at first (it had that effect on me). Eros is the Greek word for passionate or sexual love. This word doesn’t even appear in scripture, although erotic love is alluded to. The word we usually associate with God’s love — and rightly so — is agape.Read more →
There are a few verses in the New Testament that tell us we “are not under the law” (Rom. 6:15; Gal. 5:18). Though some use this as permission to act however you want so long as you’ve confessed Jesus, most Christians realize that God’s commandments are still in effect. Jesus did not come “to destroy the law or the prophets … but to fulfill” (Matt. 5:17, WEB), and Paul said his own writings “establish the law” rather than repeal it (Rom. 3:31, WEB).
So why do these passages tell us we’re not under the law? I’ve heard many explanations, and touched on some myself, but none of them really answered the question of why Paul would use this phrase. They focused more on trying to say “that’s not really what he meant” than on trying to figure out why Paul chose these words to argue his point. Recently, though, I came across the best analysis of the phrase “not under the law” that I’ve ever seen. It was just a short passage in a little book called Fill These Hearts: God, Sex, and the Universal Longing by Catholic writer Christopher West.
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Freed from Bondage to Sin
In Fill These Hearts, West writes about our desires, saying that we can either deny them and go on a “starvation diet,” indulge them in this life like “fast food,” or direct them toward God and partake in His “banquet gospel.” When addressing the idea of freedom in relation to desire, he says,
The Apostle Paul writes that those who “are led by the Spirit .. are not under the law” (Gal. 5:18). They’re free from the law — not free to break it (that’s license); they’re free to fulfill it because they don’t desire to break it. Christ didn’t come into this world to shove laws down our throats. He came into the world to align the desires of our hearts with the divine design so we would no longer need the laws
West, Fill These Hearts, p. 140
This isn’t just West’s own particularly theory; it’s a solid reading of the Biblical text. Basically, he’s just summarizing in modern English what Paul was explaining in Galatians 5 and putting the phrase “not under the law” in its proper context.
This verse in Galatians is preceded by a discussion of two covenants. The Old Covenant is described as one that “gives birth to bondage” (Gal. 4:24, NKJV). When the people broke that covenant, they bought a death penalty on themselves. Jesus paid the price of that broken covenant and freed us from sin with His sacrifice, then mediated and established the New Covenant (Heb. 8:6).
Stand firm therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and don’t be entangled again with a yoke of bondage
Galatians 5:1, WEB
Paul is telling us that if we go back to studiously keeping every aspect of the law as if that will save us “Christ will profit you nothing … You are alienated from Christ, you who desire to be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace” (Gal. 5:2, 4, WEB). We can’t treat the Old Covenant as our way to salvation. That does not, however, grant license to sin.
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh,but through love serve one another.For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, namely, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.”
Galatians 5:13-14, NET (bold italics mark a quotation from Lev 19:18)
“Love” in this verse is agapao–the divine, selfless love of God. When we start becoming love as God is love, we will keep His laws from the heart instead of by compulsion to an external system.
But I say, live by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.For the flesh has desires that are opposed to the Spirit, and the Spirit has desires that are opposed to the flesh, for these are in opposition to each other, so that you cannot do what you want.But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Galatians 5:16-18, NET
That is, we’re no longer held in bondage to a cycle of sin and death. Christ pulled us out of that and set us on a path of walking in the Spirit. If you keep reading verses 19 through 21 you get a list of the “works of the flesh.” All these works are sins under the Old Covenant and under the New Covenant “those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God!” (Gal. 5:21, NET). Someone walking in Jesus won’t act like this. They will shun things prohibited by God’s law because those things are anathema to God’s character. We get a list of God’s character traits and the “fruit” He’s looking for in our lives in verses 22 through 25.
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Freed to to Fulfill the Law Through Love
The early chapters of Romans discuss this same subject with slightly different wording. First, Paul sets up a connection between sin and the law. He explains that “all have sinned” (Rom. 3:23), but we wouldn’t know that without the law to tell us about sin (Rom. 4:15; 5:13; 7:7). The law let us know we were enslaved to sin.
We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. … So you too consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires.
Romans 6:6, 11-12, NET
When Jesus died, He paid the penalty for all sin, which was exposed by the law. When we accept Him, are baptized, and commit to walking in relationship with God, we also “die” in a figurative sense. We’re freed from sin. It’s not supposed to shackle us anymore, and we don’t have to obey its pulls.
For sin will not have dominion over you. For you are not under law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? May it never be!
Romans 6:14-15, WEB
Here’s Paul saying the same thing West was about freedom not being license to sin. Those who are “not under the law” still aren’t allowed to break the law. In fact, the more we become like God the less we’ll want to break His rules.
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In Romans 7, Paul draws an analogy between being under Old Covenant law and a marriage. Marriages end when one of the married people dies (Rom. 7:1-3). The Old Covenant represented the first marriage between God and His people. That Covenant ended at Christ’s death and, through Him, we died to it as well.
So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you could be joined to another, to the one who was raised from the dead, to bear fruit to God.
Romans 7:4, NET
Now, we are betrothed in marriage to Jesus Christ. We’re being transformed on the inside to become like Him and our heavenly Father. We’re not “under the law” because we’re becoming like the Lawgiver (Is. 33:22; Jas. 4:12; 1 Jn. 3:1-3). We’re marrying the One who fills the law to its fullest extent.
God is love. As we become like God we learn to “be love” as well, and that leads us toward fulfilling the law (Rom. 13:8-10). We’re not freed from the law so we can do whatever our fleshly nature urges, but rather so that we can live-out the fullest expression of God’s divine law by imitating His character. The law isn’t how we receive eternal life, but because we love God we still keep His law on our way to eternity.
The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. “It’s rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,” I said. “But I suspect it comes down to not removing one’s clothing in public.” (Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day)
This quote comes from a delightful little book about a British butler looking back on his life. Much of his reminisces center around this idea of dignity. He connects dignity with “a butler’s ability not to abandon the professional being he inhabits.” A butler who cannot do this is “like a man who will, at the slightest provocation, tear off his suit and shirt and run around screaming.” In short, a good butler keeps himself covered in the role he is committed to no matter how trying the circumstances.
I would probably not have connected this with the Bible if not for a message I heard on the same day I was taking The Remains of the Day back to the library. The Rabbi at my local Messianic congregation taught on the priestly garments and how we choose to “cover” ourselves with either good or bad actions, words, and character traits. Read more →
In the beginning Adam and Eve had a face-to-face relationship with God. They they sinned, creating a gap between them and their creator that was renewed each time a human broke God’s law. God was still there, but we kept moving farther and farther away.
Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear. (Is. 59:1-2)
Throughout the time period covered by the Old Testament books, it appears few people had a relationship with God. In every case, that relationship existed because God stepped across the gap and initiated the relationship. He called Abraham, Isaac and Jacob into covenant with Him. He spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. He chose David as king over Israel. He called the prophets individually.
Today, God also has to take the first steps in any relationship we have with Him. Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6) and also, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44). To have a relationship with Yeshua we must be called by the Father, and to know the Father we have to go through Yeshua.
Several months ago, there was a handout at my Messianic congregation with a “Thought Of The Week” printed on the back talking about just this topic. It started out discussing Jacob’s ladder, then human attempts to bridge the gap between God and man by building things like towers. Such attempts are futile, but
The same might be said of all our religious impulses. The stars are always beyond our reach. God is far distant. Man’s best attempts to bridge the gap fail. … If we are to ascend to God, we must ascend upon a ladder that He Himself has extended to us from above.”
We can’t do anything that will make us worthy of God’s attention. All our “religious impulses” — going to church every week, singing worship songs, preaching, or even doing works like healings — aren’t going to make Jesus let us into the kingdom (Matt. 7:22-23). The only thing we can do is respond when God extends us a way to know Him.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed (Rom. 3:23-25)
Jesus is the ladder “extended to us from above” by God the Father. He “came down from heaven” (John 6:38) to pay the price for our sins and “draw all men to” Himself (John 12:32). Because we could not reach Him, he came to us.
The Hebrew word for “bless” also means to kneel. No matter how many good works we climb up on or how hard we stretch toward heaven, we won’t reach God. Yet He blessed us by kneeling down to our level and welcoming us into a relationship through Jesus Christ.
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Rom. 5:1-2)
Because of what Jesus has done and is doing, we can reach God. Through Him, we “have access by one Spirit to the Father” (Eph. 2:18). We can come to Them with absolute confidence that They love us and want a relationship with us. They’ve proved that time and again throughout history by making covenants with people, building friendships with men like Abraham (Jas. 2:23), pleading with Their loved ones to come back, kneeling down to die in our place, and now living and walking with us.
Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb. 4:14-16)
Jesus bridged the gap once and for all with His sacrifice that “perfected forever those who are being sanctified” (Heb. 10:14). He gave us access to God and “boldness to enter the Holiest” by making us holy (Heb. 10:19-22). “Now we are children of God” (1 John 3:2), and we can come to Him just as a child who knows their loving Father always has time to pick them up and listen to their concerns.
Like An Anchor 