The law of Moses is called the law of sin and death.
The reason it is called the law of sin and death is because it was God’s law that ruled spiritually dead men and women.
Romans 8:2: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.”
Paul could say, “I had been under the law of sin and death ever since I was circumcised as a child.”
On his way to Damascus, he met Jesus and was circumcised in his heart or born again. In other words, he received eternal life, became a child of God, and came into the New Covenant that Jesus established when He had fulfilled the Old Covenant.
The New Covenant has a new law, a new priesthood, new sacrifices, and a new walk with God.
It is vitally important that we understand that the Ten Commandments were not written for Christians, the New Creation; neither is the law of the New Covenant written for men and women outside of Christ.
Let us notice that Scripture again; for the law of the newborn spirit of life in Christ Jesus is love.
Love is the nature of the Father, so when Paul received eternal life, the new law of love entered into his spirit and became a part of his very nature.
Now we will read it: For the law of love of the newborn spirit is the life that Jesus brought to us from the Father, and this new life made Paul free from the law of sin and of death because the Ten Commandments could not rule or govern the New Creation.
As long as he was a Jew outside of Christ, he was under that law, but now he is born again. God has become his Father, and he has come into a New Covenant under another government.
THE LAW OF THE NEW COVENANT
John 13: 34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
The word “love” here is agape, the new word that Jesus evidently introduced. While the verb form agapaō existed in classical Greek literature, the noun was rare in ancient Greek texts and gained its authoritative, selfless, and theological meaning in the New Testament.
The New Covenant came into being in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. He had fulfilled the Old Covenant with its laws, ceremonies, and priesthoods, and had laid it aside. That is, when He said on the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
Now God raises Him from the dead, the Head of a New Covenant race of people. He Himself is the High Priest, and we are the holy priesthood and the royal priesthood.
The rules for our daily walk are found in Jesus’s teachings and in Paul’s revelation.
John 15:9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
This new law of love is interpreted in a special way in 1 Corinthians 13. It is a revelation of the grace of God. It is a revelation to the sons of God.
You are to walk, not as the son of Abraham walked in the realm of the physical senses, but as a new creation you are to walk in the spirit.
Galatians 5:16: “But I say, walk by the spirit [the newborn spirit], and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh [senses].”
This newborn spirit is to dominate the physical senses and to govern the individual.
Romans 5:5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
We have become partakers of the divine nature. That divine nature is love.
2 Peter 1:4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
1 John 4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
And we have received this love nature into our spirits. This love nature now is to govern us as the Ten Commandments governed the Jew.
The Old Covenant was a covenant of death; the New Covenant is a covenant of life.
The Old Covenant commanded man to love God, but he could not. The only thing that a Jew could give to God was fear and reverence.
The New Creation gives us real love. We can’t help but love. Our spirits are filled with the love nature of God.
BELIEVING IN LOVE
1 John 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
Satan has governed men and women because they choose to walk in hatred and selfishness. Now a new authority has taken us over in the new birth, and our daily life is to be lived in love.
Ephesians 5:1Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Walk in love is an imperative, that means it is a commandment.
We shall follow God’s example and walk in the way of love. And lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
In John 14: 8 Philip says to Him, Lord, show us the Father at once, and it is sufficient for us. Jesus says to Him, such a long time I am with you, yet you have not come to have an experiential knowledge of me, Philip? He who has discerningly seen me has seen the Father with discernment.
As we see Jesus walk in His earth walk, we see love walking. Love healed the sick. Love fed the hungry. It was love at work; it was God in Christ unveiling Himself. Love is the dominant law of the New Creation.
Romans 13:10 Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
Jesus is the love that fulfilled the old commandment and set it aside. Love established now another commandment of love. If we walk in fellowship with the Father we will love like Jesus loved.
This is the solution of the human problem. If love governed, there would be no more wars; there would be no more lawsuits; jails and prisons would cease to be. What an object for us to aim at, to bring this old world to a knowledge of Jesus Christ, and the love he has for us and imparts to us!
Jesus is a many member body now in the earth.
1 Corinthians 12:23 And those [parts] of the body which we consider rather dishonorable are [the very parts] which we invest with additional honor, and our unseemly parts and those unsuitable for exposure are treated with distinction (modesty and dignity), 24 Which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so adjusted (mingled, harmonized, and subtly proportioned the parts of) the whole body, giving the greater honor and richer endowment to the inferior parts which lack [apparent importance], 25 So that there should be no division or discord or lack of adaptation [of the parts of the body to each other], but the members all alike should have a mutual interest in and care for one another. 26 And if one member suffers, all the parts [share] the suffering; if one member is honored, all the members [share in] the enjoyment of it.
1Corinthians 10:24 Let no one seek his own, but each one the other’s well-being.
Verse 33 just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.
IMITATORS OF GOD
In Ephesians 5:1–2, he told us that we are to imitate God. Now Paul says to “imitate me.” Paul could not say that unless he was an imitator of God.
What does it mean to imitate God? It means to walk in love.
1 Corinthians 13 4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails.
Physical Sense knowledge has failed, but here is something that cannot fail. Children brought up in the atmosphere of this new kind of love never become criminals. You cannot find a criminal in any of our penal institutions today whose father and mother walked in this new kind of love before that child was born and in its early years; for this Jesus kind of love does not produce criminals. Hatred and selfishness produce criminals. Love produces beautiful people.
Ephesians 1:4–5: “Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself.”
You see, the believer is a love creation. Away back before the foundation of the earth of heaven were laid, love said, “I will have a family.” And then love said, “Whosoever will may come into that family. That is going to be a new kind of folk.”
God was unhappy over His first creation, so He brings in a new creation created in Christ.
The failure of Christianity is not the failure of the nature of God in man, but it is because man has substituted church organization for the New Creation.
Physical Sense knowledge has gained the supremacy in the church, and Jesus is no longer Lord or Head of the church. Worldly-minded men rule most of the churches.
2 Corinthians 2:17: “For we are not as the many, corrupting the word of God [or, as it reads in the margin, making merchandise of the Word of God].”
Conybeare’s translation says, “For I seek no profit (like most) by setting the word of God to sale [or by selling for retail], but I speak from a single heart, from the command of God, as in God’s presence, and in fellowship with Christ.”
It must be fully understood that the Ten Commandments were never given to the new creation, and that the new commandment was never given to natural men. This, if it were known, would save much confusion among those who are teaching the law today.
LAW OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS
1 John 2:9 He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. 10 He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. 11 But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
There is no place for hatred in the new creation. We are born in love; we are to walk in love; we are to speak the new love language; we are to bear the burdens of the weak.
11 But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
The moment we step out of love, we step into darkness. All those “out of fellowship” are out of love. All the unseemly and wicked things that people do, who once walked in fellowship, are done through selfishness. Physical Sense knowledge rules them. Satan governs through selfishness.
1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death.
That is, we live in the realm of spiritual death, and we are ruled by the prince of the powers of the air. Spiritual death is when our spirit is locked in prison, because our flesh is ruling.
Ephesians 2:1And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.
1 John 3:15 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has (present tense) eternal life abiding (present tense) in him.
The moment we step out of love into hate, our spirit is no longer ruling but our flesh. That union of soul and body acting independently of God. Our soul-flesh has control of us in that moment, and our spirit is blocked from its restraining power, of self-control.
You cannot commit a murder when we are walking in the spirit. Murder would be stopped if men and women would abide in eternal life, where the flow of the Spirit is flowing through their spirit into their mind.
Here is God’s solution for the human problem.
1 John 3:16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?
LIVING THE NEW LAW
He laid down His life for us. We are to live for our brothers and sisters in the Lord. He poured His life out for us. We are to pour ours out in love to our family in God.
1 John 3:17 But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? 18 My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. 19 And by this we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before Him. 20 For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things. 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. 22 And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. 23 And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.
In verses 22–23, it says, “If our heart condemn us not, we have boldness toward God; and whatsoever we ask we receive of him, because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight.”
The commandments here are not the Ten Commandments, but New commandments of loving one another and bearing one another’s burdens.
Galatians 6:2 Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
Do you want to be a soul winner? Do you want to be a teacher of the Word? Let love rule your life. You can never amount to anything unless you do, for you can never be a blessing to the world until love dominates you.
1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.
HOW MUCH DO YOU REMEMBER?
- Give Scripture and show how the law of life set man free from the law of death.
- How does the law of the new covenant rule man’s life?
- Tell why God does not command the man in Christ to love Him.
- Explain why children who are brought up in the new covenant never become criminals.
- Tell how Christianity has failed.
- Explain 2 Corinthians 2:17 and tell what Paul means by corrupting the Word of God.
- How have we become burden-bearers?
- What is God’s solution for the human problem?
- What gives us boldness toward God?
- How does one become a teacher of the Word and a soul-winner?