MURDER SHE WROTE
Religious observance of the law is slavery because human laws understate the seriousness of slavery. Right from the times of Moses, law in the narrowest sense has been the basis for the administration of justice by human efforts. God handed down a set of rules to give them a prescription of behaviour and guide; the guides against sin pending the fulfilment of the covenant of justification by faith which led to adoption into God’s family. No human effort ever led to perfection in obedience, so this created a system that led to the strengthening of several codes in the law. The codes transform to rules governing slavery, murder and theft together with various provisions concerned which are mere rituals.
The adherence to the law was wrongly interpreted to be conditions of the covenant; to break the law meant the violation of God’s will. However, the coming of Jesus was not to stop the law. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave a comprehensive reinterpretation. Apostle Paul did not so much, oppose the Jewish perception of law but did reject the view that its observance was the means of salvation for Christians. “If you seek to be justified and declared righteous and to be given a right standing with God through the Law, you are brought to nothing and so separated (severed) from Christ. You have fallen away from Grace (from God’s gracious favour and unmerited blessing)” Galatians 5: 4 (AMP). The law was basic to membership of the Jewish community. Observance of the law was not in the real terms to gain favour with God but to remain faithful within His covenanted people, so Paul’s aim was to detach the Churches from this belief.
The problems popular in the world today traces back to the consequence that wrong choices produce long-lasting regrets. Abraham had first been given a covenant promise by God that regardless of his old age, a generation as numerous as the stars in the sky would start from him. After waiting keenly for the fulfilment of God’s covenant, he got convinced by Sarah his wife that an inheritance could start from a child that Hagar bore him. The result of this was Ishmael, a son born outside God’s covenant promise. Even before the fulfilment of the promise child, Ishmael had also been given a commission. “And He (Ishmael) will be as a wild ass among men; his hand will be against every man and every man’s hand against him, and he will live to the east and on the borders of all his kinsmen” Genesis 16: 12 (AMP).
For every manifestation of sin are the works of death. The human nature cannot stop committing sin outside total dependence on God’s help. Here, the works of the flesh strives continuously against reliance on God’s grace for obedience. Ishmael represents our human efforts at pleasing God; our conceived idea of “pass-mark” in God’s eyes; this reveals human working for self righteousness. Ishmael translates into murder! The workings of the Egyptian slave girl meant to replace God’s promise of life with its counterfeit! It tried everything to qualify for the promise; even when the legitimate son (Isaac) came, Ishmael hated him; he was in a contest to replace him, so does our human nature fight our reliance on God’s Spirit to please God. “Yet (just) as at that time the child (of ordinary birth) born according to the flesh despised and persecuted him (who was born remarkably) according to (the promise and the working of) the (Holy) Spirit, so it is now also.” Galatians 4: 29 (AMP). Replacing faith in Christ with rules and regulations is murder of the soul, we cannot be justified (pardoned by God) for observing the law. The deeper a person has consciously mastered the procedures of rules and regulations, the more the seriousness of the danger of spiritual slavery and death. The result of a human struggle at pleasing God is “For I fail to practice the good deeds I desire to do, but the evil deeds that I do not desire to do are what I am (ever) doing” Romans 7: 19 (AMP). But God had aforetime prescribed the covenant as the only means to reach Him. Isaac had been a promise of eternal reward; ultimately, Jesus Christ is our link to God. In practical terms, He requires that we receive Christ in faith so that we become justified for adoption into His eternal family.
Beloved, a practice of rules and regulations is good in that they serve as guides to proper conduct as Christians but that cannot secure a relationship with God- this is achievable only by faith through Christ. This covenant brings life- the sure way out of the grip of sin and ultimate death. ...“for God’s nature abides in him (his principle of life, the divine sperm remains permanently within him) and he cannot practice sinning because he is born (begotten) of God” 1 John 3: 9 (AMP). Faith in Christ is superior to a legislated life because the more our efforts at keeping the commandments, the more the reality that sin still prevails in our lives, thus the result of sin-guiltiness. The same law still condemns the fellow because the law writes out murder. The promise of Jesus is to set us free from the entanglement of the law and our faith to make us heirs of God through Christ.
This is a parallel. There is an eternal conflict between Isaac and Ishmael. “But what does the scripture say? Cast out and send away the slave woman and her son, for never shall the son of the slave woman be heir and share the inheritance with the son of the free woman” Galatians 4: 30 (AMP). Let us not again be burdened by the yokes of slavery for the need to obey rules is a state of slavery because it is for true freedom that we receive Christ. Rest in the benefits of “sonship” through Christ; maintain the rights of sonship. This is not a freedom to take satisfaction in sin that God’s grace may “rescue” us; it is a drive into deeper relationship with God which results into eternal rest!
ayanfeLAMPROS.
NOTE:
TNCBC- The New Covenant Baptist Church, Agege Lagos.
AMP- Amplified version of The Holy Bible.