The Law part 1
Don't get turned off by the title. I don't think this Rant series is going to be about the Law of Moses. Which, by the way, is a law that was given to the people of Israel, not to... you know... you. I'll just leave that there. What I want to talk about for the next few days is simply Romans chapter 8 verse 2. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." And the reason I want to talk about it is because it seems to me that religious folk are only (or at the very least mostly) fixated on sin and death. What happens after we die. We've taken a verse like Matthew 7:14, "Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it," and we take that to mean some eternal prison called hell is bursting at the seams with sinners... and heaven is for the elect few. When neither heaven nor hell are mentioned by Jesus in that verse. He said straight is the gate and narrow is the way that lead to LIFE. Jesus wasn't concerned with what happened after we die. I think He was comfortable with absent from the body being present with the Lord. Jesus said, "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). Jesus was concerned with LIFE. Becuase Jesus (God in the flesh, love in a body... God in OUR flesh, love in OUR body) was concerned with love. And you can't have one without the other. You can't do one without the other. To live is to love and to love is to live. They aren't just connected. They are the same thing. So this idea of struggling all your life to make sure you have more good than evil in order to take the cosmic elevator up instead of down... really isn't Biblical. We waste our entire lives trying to assure our afterlives. That seems nuts to me. We were given this life--this gift--in order to enjoy it. In order to LIVE while we're here on this earth. We were created to be loved by God and to love Him back by loving each other. That's our purpose. That's what this life is for. That's what it's all about. It's not about sin and death. Jesus took away the sin of the world. Done deal. He died and then came back to life, defeating death (the last enemy). Done and done. The law of the Spirit of life in Him is what has made me free from all that other nonsense. The book of Hebrews speaks of how it is appointed unto man ONCE to die. That happened on the cross. In the person of Jesus. Who was lifted up from the earth and who drew all men into Himself. When He died, we all died. Now we can live. Now we don't have to focus on all of that other stuff that used to drag us down. We can use our past to learn and grow. We don't have to be trapped by it. We can set aside the sin (unbelief) and the weight that so easily besets us. We can walk by faith and not by sight. Run and not grow weary. We can let the Holy Spirit (the Spirit of truth that leads and guides us into all truth, the truth that God is love and He loves you) fill us to overflowing with the love that we have already been filled with and then we can let that love come out by knowing and believing that it's in there. That's the true law. The law of love. Owing nothing to one another but love. Living... by loving!