By Rick Lange
http://bibleprophecybyricklange.blogspot.com/
Posted with authors permission
Should we leave out the book of Genesis? Many Christians, (something over 50%) have embraced the theory of Evolution and some Christian colleges and universities teach evolution as an alternative to Creation. But then we have to ask, who is our Creator and what right does He have to guide our lives and what power does He have to save us? If Genesis is not true then why should we believe the rest of the bible? If there is no Eden lost, then there is no Eden to restore.
Should we leave out the Old Testament? After all, we do live in a New Covenant, why spend time in the Old Covenant? Today some Christian preachers are preaching like that, saying that the Hebrew Scriptures have become irrelevant to us. But Jesus, Beginning with Moses and with all the prophets explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures. Luke 24:27.
Without the Old Testament, the New Testament has no foundations. The deity of Christ was not something the church made up at some point in history. His deity is unquestionably and firmly established in the Old Testament on both prophecies and in types and shadows. Isa. 9:6, 7 as an example…. And there are hundreds more.
Well, should we leave out the four Gospels then? There are some radical dispensationalists who say that the four Gospels are irrelevant to us as Christians because they came before the cross. What on earth are they thinking anyway? Without the four Gospels we have no New Testament As Perry Stone points out, before there was doctrine there was experience. Before there was a doctrine about demons, Jesus was casting them out of people. Before there were doctrines about Jesus He was here living among men, blazing a trail to His kingdom, demonstrating the powers and purposes of the Gospel that would come afterward. Experience comes first and then a doctrine to explain it.
Well, then should we leave the writings of Paul out? There are some, who because of his treatment of the Law, believe that Paul should be ignored or left out. But we have to ask ourselves this question. Was Paul a self-appointed maverick who came on the scene to make a mess out of God’s well- ordered Law, or was he actually appointed by God to explain to us how God intends for the Law to be applied to our lives in the New Covenant? What changed after God sent His Son and His Holy Spirit into the world?
Did Paul explain to us the true purpose and function of the Law as God has intended for it to be fulfilled in the New Covenant, or was Paul teaching heresy?
Is the Holy Spirit, that Jesus sent to us intended to be a weak mascot that can only affirm the Law, but do nothing to help us, or was the Holy Spirit sent to be the dynamic power of God to do in us that which the Law could never do… to make us like Jesus?
Well then, what about the book of Revelation? There are those who believe that the book of Revelation was nothing more than the ruminations and hallucinations of a deluded old man and should not be included in the Scriptures. But if we should do away with the Revelation of Jesus Christ and His coming kingdom, and if we should do away with the book of Genesis, we will no longer know where we came from or where we are going. We will not know what it means that we are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to promise… nor would we have a vision of the end of things that will usher in the coming kingdom.
The church was first made up of Jews who had accepted Jesus as the true Messiah. You might say that the first church was a Messianic Jewish Church.
It was a hard transition to make from Law to grace…from flesh to Spirit. Many early Christians believed that the Law should be carried over into the new faith. They pushed for physical circumcision and for many of the temple laws and rituals. They wanted to continue keeping the New Moons and Sabbaths, not fully understanding that Jesus Christ was the substance and fullness of these things. But God sent Paul to explain how to make the transition.
Both Jesus and Paul told us that the Law is holy and righteous and good. Both told us that the Law could never be done away. As long as there are sinners in this world, the Law will be here to condemn that sin and to lead people to the foot of the cross. But Jesus came to bring us a New Covenant and Paul was appointed to show us how the New Covenant works and while the Law can never be done away, it is not for the righteous man who is in Christ, but for the sinner who has not yet received Christ.
It is a matter of understanding the true purpose and function of the Law as well as the true function and purpose of the New Covenant. This is what God appointed Paul to teach us. He tells us that what the Law could not do, weak as it was because of our flesh, God did, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh so that the Law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
When Jesus sent His Holy Spirit then, He sent us something infinitely more powerful than the Law and it is in living by that Spirit that the Law is fulfilled in us. We have entered into a living and powerful dynamic relationship with Jesus that is transforming us in ways that the Law had no ability to do.
And yet today there are Christians who are still under Law. They are obsessed with it. They cannot comprehend the infinite power of God unto salvation apart from the Law. Romans 3:28. They find it impossible to make the transition simply because the Law is much bigger in their minds than is Jesus.
Paul said in Romans 3:21; “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the prophets.”
This is a tough one for both Jews and some Christians. They cannot fathom that the Law is actually fulfilled in us as we bear the fruit of the Spirit… that all of the Law is fulfilled through love for God and for our fellow man. There is always this “Yes but” clause. After all, the remnant people of God pictured in the book of Revelation are identified as those who keep the Commandments and have the testimony of Jesus. Neither can they figure out any way out of what Jesus said saying: “If you love me, keep My Commandments.” It has never occurred to them that Jesus was giving us a new commandment to love one another even as He loved us.
Jesus said it very clearly: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I have loved you, that you love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples if you have love one for another.” John 13:34, 35.
Is not Jesus here introducing the truth that Paul will later pick up on and explain to us? Did God appoint Paul to bring us a New Testament theology or did He not? Did God appoint Moses? Did God actually send Jesus to demonstrate how the Law is to be fulfilled? Did God appoint John to show us how this whole sinful situation will finally be wrapped up and brought to an end by the reappearance of Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords? What part can we leave out without destroying the truth altogether?
There have been times in my life when I have struggled with these questions. I grew up in a situation where our doctrines were bigger than the Bible. We picked the bible texts that fit our beliefs and ignored the rest and yet we claimed to believe and follow the whole Bible. But at a critical time in my life I had to go through a baptism of fire and suffering. I had to go through a no-man’s- land of complete doubt about all of it and when the Lord led me out of that dark place, it was by the power of the Holy Spirit and the Truth…Gospel of our salvation in Christ alone.
When Jesus actually entered my life, He kicked the devil out and took up residency in me. He literally walked me out of all my doubts and fears, my legalism, my pain of failure to live up to everything that God had commanded. I died at the foot of the cross and Jesus became my new life.
In the Law’s place I discovered the power of God unto salvation. It is not by an external Law on stone, but by the dynamic life of Christ in me. It was not by the letter of the Law, because I knew full well the power of the letter to kill. But if we live by the Spirit we will not carry out the deeds of the flesh and we have become sons and daughters of God through faith in Jesus Christ. In the realm of the Spirit filled life the Law is fulfilled in me to a far greater extent than the Law on stone could have ever comprehended.
When Bonnie and I attend church now, we are filled with an overwhelming and supernatural sense of love for the Body of Christ. We experienced that love first at our Messianic congregation in Vancouver Washington where God sent us to love and to serve. We went there to learn about the feasts, but ended up learning much, much more and the friendships we established there are ongoing and eternal.
We have experienced it again here in Tennessee because we are united with each other by something much stronger than a common doctrine. We are united with each other by the Holy Spirit of Christ who has made us brothers and sisters of Christ and of each other. These feelings of overwhelming love for both our brothers and sisters in Christ can be emotional at times and Pentecostal people know how to allow the expression of emotions… but it is much more than that. It is the fellowship of the saints, for we have not come to a mountain of blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a whirlwind and to the blast of a trumpet and words that they begged not to be spoken. Hebrews 12:18-19.
Instead, we have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven and to God the Judge of all and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect and to Jesus, the Mediator of a New covenant and to the sprinkled blood that speaks better than the blood of Abel.” Heb. 12:22-24
God has become a consuming fire in us that is daily burning away the chaff in our lives. Jesus is on the inside, cleansing His temple and that is what we are. The Law could not do any of this… but only the living and dynamic power of the Holy Spirit. Heb. 4:12
In the end we do not know what we shall be, but one thing we do know. We will be like Jesus for we will see Him as He is. 1 John 3:2
So you see, we do not need to do away with any part of the Bible, we simply need to know how to rightly divide the word of God. We need to rightly understand the function of the Law as our tutor to lead us to Christ, for once it has led us to Christ… once it has taken us to the death and resurrection of Jesus… once we have died to the Law and to the world and to the flesh, then we are born again and raised up by the power of His resurrection to live in the newness and power of Christ.
I can already hear the “Yes but” clause kicking in, but there really isn’t a “Yes but” clause for:
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I, who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.“ Gal. 2:20, 21. Do we get this?
If we truly want to fulfill the Law, then we must fully embrace the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and when we do that, we will have entered into the Rest that only Jesus Christ can give.
There are two mistaken Gospels being taught in the world today.
One gospel does away with the Law, which cannot be done, because it has a continuing ministry of identifying sin and bringing sinners to the foot of the cross.
Then there are those who teach that we must keep the letter of the Law and that is not right either, because the letter kills, but the Spirit brings life. It is those who live by the Spirit and not by the flesh that are the sons of God… and according to both Jesus and Paul, the Law is completely fulfilled by our love for God and our love for each other. Jesus taught it by repeating the Sh’mah of Israel on which all of the Law and the prophets hang, and Paul taught it by showing us the fruits of the Spirit that fulfill the Law as God intended it to be fulfilled.
The Bible stands as the world’s only paragon of truth. It is our only authentic and original Source, telling us who we are… where we came from and where we are going. It tells us the plans and purposes of God and how He absolutely had to establish a foundation of Law before He could establish a foundation of grace. When the Word of God is rightly divided and understood it all works together in an infinitely marvelous and wonderful way.
Jesus is the Word of God, who took on human flesh both to demonstrate the means and power by which our Father wants us to live as well as providing a passage way into the New covenant which He forged for us by His death and resurrection. Jesus is now the High Priest of a New Covenant and where there is a change of priesthood there is a change of Law also. Heb. 7:12.
This is why we need to take everything that the Bible has to say and not just the texts that support our traditions. If we pick and choose what we believe then we will end up with something less than the whole truth. The truth shall set you free… because the truth is in Jesus. He is presented to us from Genesis to Revelation. We cannot leave out any part of Him, but just as surely we need to fully understand the progressive nature of truth, we need to understand how the Law becomes the foundation of a greater truth to which the Law and the prophets testify and Paul explains. There is no need to do away with any part of the Scripture. When rightly understood, it all works together as one body of truth.
At one point in my life I thought that Paul was in conflict with the Law, when in fact he was showing us how the Law is fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
The Law continues to this day fulfilling the purpose for which it was given… that of identifying sin and leading sinners to the foot of the cross. Have you found that true walk of faith yet, or are you still struggling on one side or the other of these issues? Are you living by the flesh or by the Spirit? The truth is we cannot truly understand the Gospel until we fully understand the book of Galatians, for it is here that the seeming paradoxes of Law and grace are solved.
There is probably no harm in observing the Sabbath or the Feast days, but we must remember that they point to a greater truth, for the substance of all these things is Christ. They are shadows and we can learn a lot from biblical types and shadows, but we must also embrace the realities to which they point. Our true rest is in Christ and the spring feasts were fulfilled by Jesus at His first coming and the fall feasts will be fulfilled by Jesus at His second coming. So we do well to learn from these things, but the substance of them is Christ.
But neither should we judge others according to these things for: “One man regards one day above another and another regards every day alike…One man is a vegetarian while another eats meat, one man dresses one way and one many another way. Romans 14:5, 6. One group obeys the bible in singing and dancing before the Lord , in clapping their hands and lifting holy hands up to God in joyous celebration ( Psalms 140, 150, Ps. 47:1, 1 Tim. 2:8) while others have traditions of somber conservative music. So we definitely need to understand the difference between tradition and actual truth. The Body of Christ is largely divided by traditions, even as many in these last days abandon the truth to believe a lie. Let us remain steadfast in our faith and obedience to God and let us do it by the Spirit and not by the flesh. It is time to embrace the entire Word of God and all that it says concerning our salvation.