There are other ways the law is used in the bible then just the condemning voice in bringing someone to salvation and a guide to live by. It is not taught in the bible that the law speaks obedience. So to put obedience as in the comparison to the curses is just bad hermeneutics. The law only speaks death. When we are talking about the law producing change as is an instrument that disarms the flesh because it kills any desire to meet its requirements. Rom 7 9 Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.What this is saying here is when we are saved we died to the condemning power of the law. We no longer are under the voice of the curse. The law no longer condemns us to death. Because we stand in grace we died to the law.
And by this we are no longer related to each other as a school master. We are only in the position of counselor who is only as successful as the closeness of the relationship. The law guides us because it deals with us on how we are related to God and man. Not really on whether we burned the dinner.
James 1 27
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.2 5Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?
6
But you have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court?
The scripture is both simple ...speaking the gospel and rather complicated...learning and applying doctrine. There really should not be a problem in understanding the gospel. And really it doesnt take very long to learn the basics of the whole counsel. All of the problems that arise are from what we focus on as important and how we apply it. One of the purposes of the Psalms was to use it in the worship service. You will find a specific order of teaching and how the words from the teaching are used to describe the two groups of men. When you read the historical accounts they are written as an example of what is taught in the Psalms. The historical accounts are not really a time line of events but they are for Theological teaching. When you come to the nt the Psalms are the most quoted book because they are a little bible within the whole bible.
The Psalmist uses the law in other ways than a guide or a source of conviction. He uses the law as a weapon of war. And you find this paralleled in the NT when it says that the word of God is a sword. So there are ways to use the law in meditation and prayer that teach us about the laws power that we would not know if we did not apply ourselves to using the Psalms in prayer. It could be said that if we are not skilled in understanding the voice of the curse that we would be childlike in our understanding of our using the law correctly. After many years in the Psalms I find that the law is not an instrument to be taken lightly.
This is why the curse of the law is really directed at anyone who uses it in a violent way. A person who does not understand his own authority. This is why I make the distinction about the law being our guide as having full authority and not the teacher. Because the bible is self authenticating. It really is a book in which we focus on the gospel and that provides us with the only successful way to obey. It frees us and we obey. There is no man who has this kind of authority.
No comments:
Post a Comment