Keep My commands

Sons and Daughters of God in God’s Son Jesus

Part 1

I live to see the spirits of people glow. I have friends whose spirit is larger than their body and whose inner man is younger and more healthy than the body that carries them. With such people Jesus is their resurrection and their life. They are sons and daughters of God and as such represent His Kingdom and authority.

This morning as I lay in bed, my wife called out, ‘It worries me, you know that the people I work with think that Jesus’ command, ‘keep my commandments’ means the Ten Commandments.’ It worries me too because it doesn’t and it concerns me because they live much smaller than they are.

I would have believed the same before I got to know the scriptures and the power of God. My wife’s concern reminded me of what I had seen recently on a white board in an Adventist church. Someone had written the words:

‘Hebrews – rest = Sabbath.

Strange, since the message of Hebrews is that Jesus Himself is our Sabbath and that we find rest from every law of Moses by living in the Son of God.

Jesus did say, ‘If you love me, keep my commandments.’ The commandments He was referring to where the commands inherent in His teaching about Himself. Specifically are these commands the teaching that He is the way the truth and the life.

The teaching that no one comes to the Father but by Jesus.

The teaching that He is life in itself and  the teaching that those who walk (live) in Him will never walk in darkness but have the light of life.

It is this life, light and security that Jesus was referring to when He said,

‘Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand’ Matt 7.24-26 NIV.

We can build on Jesus and have a house on the rock or build on Moses and all kinds of performances and build a house on sand.

Adventists along with quite a few others assume that the commandments Jesus is speaking of here are the commandments of Moses. But if this is so Jesus is confusing us when He says,

‘For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven’ Matt 5.20 NIV.

Again Paul would seem to be a heretic for writing, ‘If righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing’ (Gal 2.21).

The writer of Hebrews must surely be in error for penning an epistle that plainly teaches that eternal life is not found in Jewish law or temple but in Jesus: ‘The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming-not the realities themselves’ Hebrews 10.1 NIV.

Did Paul get it wrong by he stating emphatically that the written code and its regulations ‘are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ’ Col 2.17 NIV.

No. None of the above are in error, which should prompt us to consider the possibility that we may have attached ourselves to false doctrine and another gospel. If so we have bound ourselves to live in religion rather than in the authority and power of Christ the King. Our call is to live in reality not shadows. Reality is Christ because the Kingdom of God is Christ incarnate in His people through the Holy Spirit. Paul declared that the magnificence of God’s Plan is CHRIST IN YOU. It important to grasp this because the reality of Christ in us is the reality of the Kingdom of God in the world. We either promote shadows or we multiply reality.

Adventism is an identity driven religion. Whether aware of it or not Adventism interprets the Bible through the Sabbath and Jesus through the law. Given this it should not surprise us that Adventism transplants Moses into the New Testament. It has a hidden curriculum motivated to establish its adherents in the certainty, safety and identity of its beliefs. Adventism is about your identity as an Adventist. Adventism is about Adventism. But the Kingdom of God is about your identity in Christ.

Since adherence to the Saturday Sabbath is the core of Adventist identity, its ground of being  has to be the Mosaic law. Adventism needs the law to be Adventism. But for the abundant life we need is Jesus.

Adventism cripples itself because it interprets the New Testament through Moses rather than Jesus. Adventism has a small jesus [sic] because it believes in a Jesus who is smaller than the law. In the Bible Jesus lives from His Father. In Adventism Jesus lives from the law. A small jesus produces small people. But the sons of God live in God’s Son.

Jesus said that when He is lifted up he draws all people to Himself. Jesus does not lift up the law or draw people into the law. He draws people into Himself and by so doing draws us into the Father. Jesus declares that He is our life and His command is that we eat Him to be filled with Him.

‘And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself’ Eph 4.10 NLT.

Genuine holiness is a product of the Spirit. Genuine holiness is a manifestation of Jesus by the Spirit. Authentic wholeness is personal because it is a manifestation of the Person of God transforming believers into sons and daughters of God.

You can’t mix Jesus and the law. The Kingdom of God is not a law and Jesus sandwich. It is He who fills the entire universe with His Presence. The one who is supreme in all things. His desire is to fill you with His Presence. You can rob God and rob yourself by living from Adventism or you can be a son of God by living in God’s Son. When Jesus is the life of God in you, you are the Kingdom of God in the world.

‘I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ’ Gal 1.6-10 NIV.

Part 2: Identity in Jesus

You have unlimited worth. The Psalmist said ‘You are fearfully and wonderfully made because your being is formed in the image of God. You are a daughter or son by creation and by redemption. We are twice Fathered. Once when the Father breathed Himself into the earthen Adam and once when the resurrected Jesus breathed Himself into the disciples.

‘Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person’ Genesis 2.7 NLT.

‘And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit’ John 20.22 NIV.

The most important thing about any person is their identity. Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Who do people say that I the Son of Man am?’ Peter replied, ‘You are the son of the living God!’ Jesus asserted that His identity had been revealed by the Father and that knowing Jesus as God’s Son is the authority of the sons of God over all the power of the Enemy.

We see the Father’s identity expressed in Jesus. Jesus is the son of God and son of man in the Father. We are sons and daughters of God to the extent that Jesus is our life. Authentic personhood, genuine identity and completeness of personality is found among those who are found in Christ. When we are found in Christ with the roots of our being extended into His Person, our being is in God and we are formed into the likeness of His sons. Sons produce righteousness but the law does not produce sons. As sons we are never cardboard cut-outs, robots or crippled in our person. We are complete. We are growing into the fullness of Christ.

‘In the Kingdom of God the person who rests in Jesus lives a holier life than the one who is striving desperately to please God.’

Under the knowledge of good and evil many live under the delusion that our identity is the sum of what we do. So we do good things and avoid bad things. We work hard, are honest, help the poor and have the right positions on doctrine. Having done these things we feel righteous and accepted by God. Some will say that we are Christ-like. But we are not. In God’s Kingdom identity is found in who you are.

‘Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’ John 6.53 NIV.

Jesus lived in His Father and from His Father. He was a son. He and His Father were one. His words and actions were ignited with life because Jesus lived from who He was: He was His Father’s Son. Jesus actions were the fruit of His person and He was whole because He lived in God. Every thing Jesus did was the fruit of the fact that He was the Son of God.

‘Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me’ John 6.57

You have an identity. Your real identity is not found in what others think of you or what you think of yourself. It’s not found in what you do. The identity of the sons of God is not found in your membership of church or denomination. It is found in Christ.

You are the kind of person that is a son of God to the extent that you live in the Person of God’s Son Jesus without dilution. Jesus is supremely personal. It is His Person that rejoins you to yourself and joins you to others in healthy relationship. So important is it to live in Jesus that He commanded us to eat Him – the living bread who came from heaven. He said, ‘Feed on Me and you will live because of Me.’

‘Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him’ John 6.56 NIV.

Keith Allen, September 11, 2011.

Isaiah 61 Ministries, North Ringwood, Melbourne Australia.

Who do you say I am?

We can see God as a The Law Giver or as Our Lover. The way we know God will dramatically affect our lives and the lives of those connected to us. It will determine whether we make those we love smaller of larger. How we see God will determine if rivers of life or rivers of sand flow from our being. The complete definition of God is Jesus. Jesus is the love of God for us and with us.

‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven’ Hebrews 1.3 NIV.

Unconditional love makes its way into us and possess us by supernatural means. This ‘means’ is the Spirit of Christ entering our being so that He becomes us and manifests His life through us.  Thus we are filled with the Spirit of Life and we love.  As Christ grows within us we become love. Well is that cool or is that cool?!

There are enough glimpses of the Father in the Old Testament to reveal that God does more than judging. However an old testament view of God is a most incomplete view of the Father. It is incomplete because we see Him through the lens of the knowledge of good and evil. We received this lens from Adam. But we have a new lens in Jesus. Until the appearance of Jesus there was no accurate way to perceive the Father. Now anyone who sees Jesus sees the Father.

‘Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?’ John 14.9 NIV.

We make a terrible mistake if we attempt to interpret the New Testament through the Old Testament. Jesus is the lens through which the Bible should be read. We cannot do better than interpret life through Jesus. Don’t reverse what God has done in His Son. We neutralize the Father’s Gift of Jesus if we view Jesus through the law. And only through the looking glass of Jesus can the Father be seen as He is. Only in Jesus can we see that GOD IS LOVE, because GOD’S LOVE IS JESUS.

Only in Jesus can the New Testament be interpreted in a way that reveals the Father as He is and His sons and daughters as they can be. In Him we have the ability to love themselves, other people and the world. It is Jesus alone who is God and represents God in His completeness. To see the Father is to see Jesus. To know God is to know Jesus. To love is to have Jesus love in us. Gregory Boyd writes, ‘The revelation of God in Christ ought not to be qualified by other previous or subsequent revelations … Christ is “above all.”

 

Keith Allen

Your life is Christ

The Lord calls us to do the good and steer clear of evil. But from the very beginning we have been forbidden to live in it. Our place of living is God. Since the cross our place of living is Jesus. The Father commanded us to worship His Son. Jesus’ testimony is that He is our life. Jesus in us is quite different to the ‘christianity’ that is the mind-set and world view of many of God’s people. To the extent that we live in this we rob God and rob each other since we remain robbed in the robbery of the regime initiated by Satan.

Do not eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil or you will die. That’s God’s command. Satan’s contradiction of this is, ‘Live in the constructs of good and evil and you will be Godly.’ The catastrophic result of living in the laws of sin and death has been wickedness and death on a grand scale. Wickedness seen in the perversion of good things by greed and lust; nobility and heroism degraded by war and much that is good about human life reduced to money. Then there are the many forms of death manifest as disease in the physical sphere and the multitudes of emotional diseases in the personal and social sphere.

When we live in Jesus by the Spirit of Sonship we are living in God. When we attempt to find life in Christianity, churchianity, morality and personal ethics we are no further ahead than those whose version of the knowledge of good and evil takes a secular rather than a religious form. We are in death. But our place is in Christ with resurrection, life and light.

‘When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’ John 8.12 NIV.

The present economic/social chaos is the result of eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. The scandals, corruption and vice in parts of the church, together with the obvious weakness of Christianity in the face of Islam is the result of the steady diet of the fruit of the forbidden tree. And all this after the tree of knowledge on which Jesus died, has been turned into the tree of life by His resurrection and inauguration at the right hand of power beside the Father! You would have to wonder what it is about the vision, ‘The Torch and the Sword’ we don’t understand.

Satan’s ploy in the personal sphere is ‘Live in the constructs of good and evil and you will have a sense of inner satisfaction.’ What is not revealed is that this satisfaction is parasitic in nature. It is based on self-righteousness and putting down others.

‘Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ Romans 8.1 NIV.

There is no condemnation for those who live in Christ Jesus. But should we have an internal criteria by which we attempt to live and expect others to comply, we ourselves live in condemnation and worse. We are incapable of modeling the love that distinguishes those who take the name of Christ.

Gregory Boyd writes, “We either live by God’s righteousness or by our own. Which way we live ultimately comes down to this decision: Shall we eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or not? Shall we live in grateful dependence on God or not? Shall we let God be judge, or shall we try to be judge? Shall we live in God’s mercy and thus give God’s mercy, or shall we pass judgment as though we were God and thus live under God’s judgment?”

‘I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me’ John 17.23 NIV.

It is Christ in us that is the Kingdom of Heaven in the world. We were made to live in God. The evidence of living in God is that we love ourselves and each other. But we have no righteousness like this of our own. This is accomplished as Jesus lives in us and loves through us.

We have been redeemed to live in God’s Son. By the Spirit, God dwells in us. By the blood we dwell in God (John 17). The Father not only planted His Son in the earth (the cross). He has planted Him in us and among us by the Holy Spirit. The glory of life, love and light in our circles today is CHRIST IN YOU!

‘And [to] be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith’ Phil 3.9 NIV.

Keith Allen, Sepetember 2011

An adventurous and fruitful life

Worship is a life. There’s quite a difference between having Jesus as an add-on and worshiping Jesus as the Son of God. God literally is in us and goes about with us when Jesus is worshiped for what He is: The Son of God. In this position of worship, we are never alone, always secure and always equipped for any eventuality.

‘If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God’ 1 John 4.15.

The Roman officer was about to kill himself. That’s what you did if you were derelict in your duty. Or could be seen as such. Paul shouted, ‘Don’t kill yourself! Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you and your house will be saved!’

‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?’ The officer was saved from a lot more than imminent death. He was saved into eternal life. From that time on, eternal, infinite, life lived in Him in the Person of Jesus Christ.

It was easy for this man to believe. Paul was uncommonly honest with Him. There was an innocent power about him. The prisoners were all there. And the earthquake had followed the singing of songs about Jesus. There was the smoke of authority and the fire of freedom hanging in the air. Revelation and conviction targeted the Roman officer.

Paul had not fellowshipped with the physical Jesus as had John and Matthew. But he had met Jesus in the spirit, knew Him well and took delight in being His servant. Jesus was not just a construct to Paul. Jesus for Paul was the Son of God and as Son of Man who was rightful ruler of the earth.

It was in Jesus that Paul found his life and purpose. For Paul, Jesus was more real than the prison in which he was bound. It was because Paul believed that Jesus was the Son of God and His God that the walls fell down and the jailer and his family were saved. The physical structure and the spirit that had imprisoned Paul, was no match for the Spirit that was in him.

Paul loved Jesus with his body and his life. He put himself on the line for Jesus. God was clearly where Paul was, as Jesus had said, ‘If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him’ John 14.23 NIV.

Paul did not have an easy life. He had an adventurous and a fruitful one. He did what Jesus planned for him to do and in this quest overcame many outposts of Satan’s domain, expanding the Kingdom of God.

‘Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God’ 1 John 5.5

 

Keith Allen, August, 2011

 

Relinquishing the false-christ for the Son of Man

The Kingdom of God is Jesus planted among men and women. False gospels are the plantings of the Enemy in the hearts of men and women.

The Kingdom of God is not double talk. It is not yes and no. It is yes and amen!

HTML

or pdf.

Do you get the Spirit by keeping the law?

Life in the knowledge of good and evil has ended. Life in God has begun – quite some time ago.

All died in Adam. But in Christ all have been made alive. To represent the Kingdom of Heaven we need to be living in the resurrection life of Jesus. If we are in Jesus and He is in us, we are resurrection and we are life!

Sadly, many Christians do not know that the fallen, perverted, life that began with Adam came to end at the cross. They need to know that resurrection life began when Jesus came out of the tomb to re-creates us from one degree of glory to glory to another.

‘Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds’ John 14.24 NIV.

The Kingdom of heaven is a yeast, a mustard seed and a tree of life. Life in the new Tree of Life that has been planted in the ground began at Jesus’ resurrection. The cross, marked the death of Adam as us. The resurrection marked the beginning of Christ as us. Here was the genesis of the one new man, or the man/woman who is one with God, one with herself, one with each other and one with the creation. Here is a union that occurs as all things are relentlessly brought together in Christ.

So the question is, are we still living in the fall or are we live in the resurrected Jesus? Are we living in the knowledge of good and evil or in God? Are we still in Moses or are we in Christ. Are rites, times and dates our life or is Christ our life? Have the books of Galatians and Hebrews done their work with us or have we let them go through to the keeper? The bottom line is, are we sons or are we slaves?

Anyone can have a Sabbath, but the notion of a Spirit-filled Sabbath is more problematic. Why? The law leads to Jesus, but Jesus does not lead to the law. Jesus leads to Himself and the Father – never to anything else. Jesus draws us out of dependency on rites and prescriptions to the life of the Spirit.

Those who come to the Father come by Jesus and those who come to Jesus are ignited by His life. This is life in the Spirit. The law of the Spirit of Life in you is Christ in you but it is not the law of Moses. The law of Christ is not an ‘it.’ The law of the Spirit of life is a Him and a spirit. He is Jesus who stands opposed to the law of sin and death and who multiplies spirit and life.

‘Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death’ Romans 8.2 NIV.

Life in the Spirit is not the gifts of the Spirit added to the old covenant or the gifts of the Spirit layered over a base of the law.

‘And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!’ 2 Cor 3.11 NIV.

Life in the Spirit is a life in Jesus. Totally. It’s a life in which Jesus imparts Himself to you and you become His life.  It is not a life lived from the constructs of good and evil. It’s not lived out of morality or ethics at all. It is the manifestation of Christ as you.

Such a transformation can only happen by the Spirit of God. The real meaning of the new birth is not giving up drink, drugs and fornication. The new birth is the Person of Jesus progressively transforming your life from within by the Spirit. Life in the Spirit is a life that is contrasted to Moses’ laws, which are designated by Paul as the law of sin and death.[1]

‘The ministry that brought death … was engraved in letters on stone’ 2 Cor 3.7 NIV.

Can you have a Spirit-filled Sabbath? Can you create a square circle? Can you make an up that is down? Can you make the old covenant the new covenant? Well, certainly we can, if we choose to go in the opposite direction to God.

We may choose to use all kinds of things to mediate God. But God is our only real mediator. Jesus mediates all of God to us. His infinite life is with us and in us. He is more than enough. But if we do use things to represent God; if we rely on things as substitutes, tokens, we weaken ourselves. We become the weaker brothers because we are weaker than those for whom Christ is their life entirely.

We either live Jesus or we live in something diluted – a concoction of our own. We are either free in Christ or we are bound in Moses. In Romans 8.2 the law of the Spirit of Life and the law of sin and death are contrasted in the same sentence. One is death unto death and the other life unto life. One is a life  in Adam, the other a life in Jesus. One is a life in the fall, the other our life in the Resurrection and the Life.

We either live in the Spirit or we live in the law. We either live in death or we live in life. So take off your grave clothes and let yourself go!

‘Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me’ John 6.57 NIV.

We live in the Spirit when Christ and only Christ is our life. The law of the spirit of life is a Person, not a list or set of constructs. Jesus, the logos and living Word is not a list or a matrix of abstractions since it is not an it. The logos is He in which we and the entire universe lives, moves and finds our being. Why? Because we were made to live in God. The creation was made to live in God. We harmonize with God and His creation by living in Jesus.

Through Jesus and the ministry of the Holy Spirit we are once again united with the Father as His daughters and sons. Thus the definition of a whole and holy person is not the keeper of lists but something more profound and comprehensive. The definition of a holy person is SON OF GOD. Only in Christ are we sons. Should we live in the law we are slaves.

‘Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children’ Gal 4.25 NIV.

There’s no such thing as Spirit-filled law keeping. The law leads to Christ but Christ does not lead to the law, bring attention to the law or glorify the law. The law points to the One who is life and who makes people and things alive.

‘He has enabled us to be ministers of his new covenant. This is a covenant not of written laws, but of the Spirit. The old written covenant ends in death; but under the new covenant, the Spirit gives life’ 2 Cor 3.6 NLT.

The idea that the Holy Spirit sanctifies law or any aspect of it is contradictory to what God has done in Christ.

‘I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!’ Gal 2.21 NIV.

You are alive because Christ lives in you and He is your life. The Holy Spirit multiplies the life of Christ – not the law and its regime of staleness, torpor and death.

The Father’s purpose is to fill all things with His Son, because all things are made through Him and for Him. You have a life that is filled with Christ!

‘And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself’ Eph 4.10 NLT.

When we live in Jesus our confusion (veil) is taken away. The idea that one can have a Spirit-filled Sabbath is as preposterous as the notion that we can have a Spirit-filled knowledge of good and evil or a Spirit-filled law. Why not just settle for a Spirit-filled you and a Spirit-filled life? Jesus really is all and in all. When He is lifted up He draws us all into Himself. Why not agree with the Father that Christ in you is not only the hope of glory. This is the current reality.

 

Keith Allen, August 3, 2011

---

[1] Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was 2 Cor 3.7 NIV.

A False Christ produces crippled people

Can we ever rob people in the name of god [sic]

More than once I have seen young people who have begun to rejoice in the life and freshness of Jesus enter a season of decay. Maybe they have lived and acted in the Spirit with authority and power beyond themselves, only to lose that life in exchange for a numbness of the letter that they have picked up when they have gone to train at law-based institutions. People with great potential to witness for Jesus through His Spirit-life in them can enter institutions of the letter and emerge at the other end like sausages with dead hearts and confused minds. What do I mean?

‘Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit’ John 3.6 NIV.

‘I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable’ 1 Cor 15.50 NIV.

The kingdom of God not only produces love, but power. When a new person comes into the world they come with the expectation that they will be loved, esteemed and valued for themselves and the unique person they are. While they do find degrees of love, they also find that the love that their heart expected to hugged with, is too often not there for them. Their value as a person is siphoned off to meet the needs and lessen the fears of those already struggling in a world of conditional love.

As a result, their heart draws back and their expectations shrink as the heart realizes we are not very much valued for ourselves. We are more often valued to the extent that we make the system work and serve the expectations of others. We become bruised-wounded, perpetrators of conditional love. Many allow their hearts to die in exchange for the love they hope to get from a system. As a result what we become is very much smaller than who we actually are. We wield a very small sword.

The innocent heart sustains wounds, grows scar tissues, fears to love and in its bid to heal its own mortal wound, learns to love conditionally. Such a heart builds a false persona and begins to wound those with whom it interacts. Thus we have the perpetuation of pain, misery and death known as the mystery of iniquity. The self so produced is a lie.

We cannot love ourselves and cannot give love – not unconditionally outside of Jesus, who abolished the law and the system that was against us (Col 2.14) and nailed it to the cross. Jesus abolished the system of conditional acceptance, meaning that He did away with the system of conditional love that is based on the knowledge of good and evil with its laws of sin and death.

‘Having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross’ Col 2.14 NIV.

Unless we can live in love, be loved and love, we cannot become truly alive or truly ourselves. We cannot become who we are which in spirit and truth is to be sons and daughters of God. This is why we must live in and be filled by the Jesus who is the Son of God and not be hostage to some false jesus [sic] that is the lackey of a denomination or who has been patched together by the spirit who lives in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The easiest way to deform people is to get them to surround a christ who is not actually The Christ.

Any person whose being is grounded in the knowledge of good and evil can never be themselves and can never truly love.

To love we need to be absorbed in a Jesus who abolished the law rather than immersed in a false jesus who lives to support the law. The former Jesus is the Son of God. The latter is a false christ and a fabrication made by man to build his own identity and enhance his status. The real Jesus, the Jesus who is the Son of the Father and the son of man has healed our mortal wound. This is the wound that came from our separation from God. This wound can only be healed by God’s unconditional love. Love that has a Name: Jesus Son of God. Only in this name and in this Person can we be loved and be alive.

Entry into the knowledge of good and evil split our hearts. It made us slaves of conditional love. Our love of others came to be based on their value to ourselves. We built walls; walls that kept others out and walls to hide behind. We walled our true selves in and walled God out. Our love of ourselves was based on the extent to which we felt we ‘measured up’ and our hearts came to be filled not with love but with rules and scripts to be followed. This is to say our hearts came to be  divided and filled with stones. But by His Cross and resurrection Jesus took away the stones. Jesus’ death buried the stones. His resurrection abolished such stones forever and began a new life in the Spirit.

‘By abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. [The purpose of Jesus] was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace’ Eph 2.15 NIV.

Jesus heals broken hearts, divided hearts and loveless hearts. It is Jesus Himself who lives in our hearts imparting His life and His ability to love without conditions. It is Jesus in us who is life without limit and who enables us to multiply unlimited life.

Don’t participate in any culture, form of belief or denomination that kills people’s hearts. Have nothing to do with the filling of hearts with the law and gravel of performance. Laws make stony hearts stonier. They can never impart the flesh of human kindness, make a heart of flesh and thus produce the ability to love. Law produces judgment and smothers love. In this age Jesus writes no law of Moses on people’s hearts. This is where He breathes Himself.

‘You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human heart’ 2 Cor 3.3 NIV.

The Person of Jesus is written into your being by the Spirit of Christ. But the theft of your being can be carried out by the flesh of man. Robbery can be institutionalized as religion. Religion can manifest as a false christ. A life in law kills people’s hearts. A religion based on law kills our hearts in the name of God in and the name of a false jesus [sic]. A regime that chops off the arms and legs of its citizens is rightly called an evil regime. A religious system that defaces the image of God in people and which makes men and women far less than they are is no less evil. The real Jesus multiplies sons of God who love as God loves. Never let it be said that we rob God, ourselves and others for the sake of promoting an identity based religion.Why? Such a religion is evil.

Keith Allen, June 18, 2011

To Reign on the Earth

The image of the invisible God, visible as you!

I knew a man once. He had an administrative position in the organization. He was vain, critical and performance driven. He judged himself like he judged others. When his moral indiscretions became known he acted as judge and jury on himself. He drank a bottle of weed-killer and was no more.

To live under law is to live under a curse. It’s like drinking weed-killer when we could have been eating the Son of Man. This is another way of saying, ‘I’m consuming life!

‘Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’ John 6.53 NIV.

It’s not that God breathes a breath of weed killer over people. It’s not Him that curses people. But by living from law we place ourselves outside His Presence and outside the life-giving Spirit that ignites the spirit in the sons of God. In union with God we shine incandescently. But in the law we are a smoking wick.

Law-keeping separates people from their inheritance which is to be a son of God with authority; to have the Spirit without limit and to reign in the earth, over nature and over demons. Any brief spurt of life that comes from law is only that – a spurt. It dissipates and fades. It is innately a fizzle because its nature is DEATH. It’s very sad that some people have built a religion around death. But Jesus, the righteousness of God in you, is unlimited life that multiplies exponentially because it has an eternal weight of glory.

The life found in Jesus is not only eternal. It has unlimited potency and is supremely powerful to advance righteousness and demolish every work of the Enemy.

‘What was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts! 2 Cor 3.10.11.

Any  gospel that propels the law of  Moses into the New Testament age is no gospel at all. Many if not most Adventists love God. But they need to consider the possibility that their religious culture stems from a false gospel. Paul condemns anyone who would pervert the gospel given to Him by Christ. It appears that Adventists read the entire New Testament through the lens of the Sabbath rather than through the Person of Jesus Christ. Thus the gospel is not only made powerless but Christ is subordinate to the Sabbath and the law. The entire new testament is subverted to the project of Adventist identity formation and status.

Typically Adventists will pass over the things that Paul says such as, ‘If righteousness could be gained through law, Christ died for nothing,’ to land on a verse in Hebrews which says, ‘I will write my laws on their hearts.’

Is this a proof text? Not really. Jeremiah, who first penned the words, could not have understood the nature of an incarnate Jesus who imparts Himself into our hearts by the Spirit. We must be consistent with Paul’s assertion that the ministry that brought death was engraved on letters of stone – a clear reference  to the laws of Moses – otherwise known as the law of sin and death. These are the laws that mandated Jesus’ death and will ensure YOUR DEATH if you insist on living in the instead of making Jesus your life. We either live in law or live in the Kingdom of God.

The law of sin and death in its religious and secular forms has its source in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fruit of this tree causes chaos in the world and putrefaction in the church. The sum of this is in the religious and secular spheres is Babylon.

In contrast to this we have Jesus, the Son of God, Son of Man and last Adam who is the personification of life and the order that is God. He is the one in whom all things hold together. Jesus is THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE. Live in Jesus by the Spirit and ‘togetherness’ will grow in your life and among those connected to you. Life in the Presence, with the reality of Jesus in our hearts gives us hearts not of stone but of flesh. Not flesh in the carnal sense but hearts that are human filled with the love that is God. We are made truly human by the Son of Man breathing into us the spirit of life. We become able to love because the One who is love fills our being.

‘I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh’.11.19 NIV.

In Christ our separation from the Father is healed. Our divided heart is healed. Our divided being is made one because we have been delivered from the body of this death through Jesus Christ. Now we not only pursue righteousness but WE BECOME RIGHTEOUS because Jesus releases Himself within us. Having been made one with Christ we are a new man/woman. The law is not outside us. Christ the law of the Spirit of life is in us. He becomes us.  We are the one new man who lives in unity with God and ourselves. The old dualism has gone. We are one with God (John 17). The new and living way who has taken us into the Presence of God is the Way that the Spirit of sonship is multiplied in us.

Let’s not beat about the bush. Only those who live in Jesus by the Spirit are capable of living a holy and whole life. More to the point, only by living in the Spirit can we represent the Kingdom of God. But wait, there’s more. Only by living from the new covenant can we live in the Spirit.

‘He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant–not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’ 2 Cor 3,6 NIV.

Why live in the Spirit? Because that’s how sons and daughters of God live.

Sons of God are not perfect and they rely on Jesus’ blood, but they are able to grow consistently in holiness and wholeness. Why? CHRIST IS THEIR LIFE.

They take on the dignity and authority of sons and daughters of God who live in freedom and authority over their affairs and the schemes of the Enemy.

Living in Christ ‘sons’ are able to advance into doing what Jesus did. But best of all, by LIVING IN JESUS the sons of men are sons of God.

Adventists who ‘come into the Spirit’ understand the role of the Holy Spirit in imparting the life of Jesus to our person. Yet many remain locked into the notion that through the Holy Spirit, Jesus enables us to ‘keep the ten commandments.’  In the minds of many Christians, commandment keeping defines righteousness. But that fact is Jesus defines righteousness. He is righteousness and more. He is the Son of God. All who live as sons live in Jesus!

Hebrews 1.1-3 shows that righteousness is defined as the Son of God. The Ten Commandments do not define righteousness for believers. They are there to hold sinners to account. Their purpose was to lead people to Christ. For the believer, Jesus is our life in every way.

‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word’ Hebrews 1.3 NIV.

‘Righteousness’ in the New Covenant has a Name: Jesus. The righteousness of God is a Person and is defined as a Person: Jesus. The lifted-up Jesus draws all people to Himself. Jesus never draws attention to the law. Why? Because He is the beginning and the end. He is the One in whom all things hold together.

‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. All the fullness of God lives in Him.’  Jesus sustains all things by His powerful word because He is law personified. He holds the cosmos together.

Jesus is the law of the Spirit of life. But this is not the law of Moses which was only a shadow of the reality – your wholeness is Christ. Why sit in a classroom under the school master of the law, like so many elementary pupils, when God through Jesus has graduated you into the Presence of God and union with Himself? Why be a slave when you can be a son? Why try to make a righteousness of your own when Jesus is the righteousness of God in you. Righteousness that is by faith from first to last is Jesus who lives in you!

‘For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith’ Rom 1.17 NIV.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross’ Col 1.15-20 NIV.

 

Keith Allen, June 1, 2011

 

 

Authority superior to the scribes

LAW BASED OR KINDOM BASED? Son of the slave woman or daughter of the Free Woman?

What would you do if your daughter was living in poverty and degradation when she was actually a princess with a huge fortune and privileges? What would you do if your son was paralyzed from the waste down and you knew that his paralysis was entirely due to the way he saw himself and had nothing to do with an objective physical condition? I hope you would restore them to who they actually are. You would do all in your power to set them free. This is the mandate of all in whom Jesus lives.

‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed’ Luke 4.18

To bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor’ Isa 61.3.

The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is released to ensure that every member of the House of God reflects the glory of God and multiplies the authority of Jesus Christ. You have been given authority to expand the Kingdom of God. The spirit of anti-christ exists to oppose these plans by robbing people of their humanity and authority as the sons and daughters of God. Anything you grow without such authority may be church – but it will not be the kingdom of God  and hence no threat to the Enemy.

‘The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law’ Mark 1.22 NIV.

Three unclean spirits like frogs (Rev16.13) are seen coming out of the mouth of the beast. These spirits are an apt figure of spirits who have robbed Adventists of their inheritance in Christ. They have been robbed of their identity as sons because they live in the law. Adventists have imagined themselves under law and hence under condemnation.  As a consequence they live in fear of deception and of the Second Coming. They have been separated from the Body of Christ because their law based life separates them from Jesus, from themselves and from other people. Adventists have the cross and they have jesus [sic] but their cross is robbed of its power and their jesus [sic] plays second fiddle to the Law as will be seen below.

These unclean spirits are the progeny of the chief religious spirit who is the Father of Lies. They are lying spirits who gain their power from false doctrine – doctrine that sounds believable but which is really a distortion of the truth. The result of these lies is that God’s people are made to be like frogs rather than be what they really are: Sons and daughters of God.

Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet Rev 16.13 NIV.

Adventists live in horror of being deceived. This because their denomination began in deception. A spirit of deception releases an influence that makes people so afraid of ‘being deceived’ that many have developed an ‘immunity’ to the truth. It’s not uncommon for sincere and usually Godly people to live inside silos of belief that effectively excludes the ability to perceive the glory of the Truth that is Jesus.

Adventist beginnings explain why those who are so sure they have the truth actually live in deception and fear deception. The initial deception was that Jesus was coming in 1844. Despite the fact that the Bible clearly says that no one knows the day or the hour other than the Father in heaven, it was steadfastly claimed that Jesus would come in 1844.

The first lie was then compounded by another deception – the notion that Jesus, instead of doing the second coming, went into the most holy place in 1844 to begin a work called the investigative judgment. He was engaged here in an ongoing enquiry to establish who keeps the commandments and who does not. Those who do not of course get the kybosh. This of course is not sound doctrine. Those whose life is Jesus get eternal life.

The Bible says sinners were acquitted for every sin at the cross. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus  Again, Jesus took His Place beside the Father on His ascension to heaven. His installation at the right hand of authority and power beside the Father was marked on earth by the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Now the Son of Man would multiply Himself by living by the Spirit in the sons and daughters of men. Jesus Christ would become the life of all who ate His flesh and drank His blood in the Spirit.

Christ’s message is that we are forgiven by His blood and restored to the glory of sons by His life. We have been seated in Christ since He took His place beside the Father on His ascension. While there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus this is not so for those who live in themselves and their self-effort through keeping the law.

The third lie is related to the second, with its implication that he old covenant has not passed away but is in fact perpetuated by jesus [sic] who empowers people to keep the law of Moses. ‘Jesus lived out of the law and kept it’ so the it is claimed. Now by Jesus’ strength we can keep Moses laws just like Jesus did, the argument goes. The idea became inculcated into Adventism that Jesus helps us keep Moses. But doesn’t the book of Hebrews emphasize that Jesus is above Moses and above angels and that in fact all things are under Jesus’ feet?

According to the scriptures, Jesus lives to impart to us Himself. This is because the highest entity in creation is being or person – not abstractions and behaviors. In other words NOT LAWS. Significantly God is ‘I AM’.  Not ‘I DO.’ We become human doings by living in behaviors. We are sons of God by living in God’s Son. We are sons because in Jesus we are placed in the Father.

According to scripture Jesus did not live in reference to law or live out of law. He lived in union with His Father. His was not a law-centered life. It was a Father centered life. He lived as a son in union with His Father. Jesus’ righteous life exceeded the finite righteousness of the law to the extent that a mountain exceeds a grain of sand. But Jesus’ wholeness, holiness and authority over demons, disease and death was entirely the result of living in the Father – in the Father as son, with the authority not like the teachers of the law.

Jesus lived as a son in the manner in which Adam had not. Significantly Adam was told to keep away from the tree. But trusting in the Father Jesus advanced relentlessly towards it and was crucified on it. Thus through the genius of God the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was turned into the tree of life. Life in the knowledge of good and evil was put to death on the cross and life in God through His Son became ours at His resurrection.

Let’s embrace what really happened. Through the crucified Jesus, Adam and the regime of the knowledge of good and evil (law of sin and death) was put to death and a life in God was made the possession of the sons and daughters of God. That’s you.

‘For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!’ Gal 2.19-21 NIV.

Once the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was dead the law was dead. Now you are alive in Christ to live as sons of God in God’s Son. The righteousness sent from God is Jesus who lives in you to conform you to Himself. Jesus is the righteousness of God in you and the One whose resurrection power in you steadily raise you up in conformity with Himself. It that good or what!?

It seems that the plain teaching of scripture has never been a barrier to Adventist ideology which is a religion of law and letter confining people to the limitations of the old Adam and his body of death. In contrast genuine Christianity is lived in the Spirit as the Spirit of Sonship imparts to us the life of the one new man. Far from being frogs believers are God’s kings and priests called to reign on the earth.

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ Romans 7.21-25 NIV.

‘Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault’ Col 1.22 NLT.

A friend of mine had a dream in which he saw Ellen White standing on her head. Another friend had a vision in which the cross was seen suspended upside down in a church. I had a dream in which a woman was up-ending Adventist people and abusing them. The sad things was that they accepted that this abuse was sound Christianity. But the Lord was showing that Adventists have attached themselves to an upside – down gospel. The law leads to Christ. But Jesus does not lead to law. We either live in the law or we live in the Kingdom of God.

The Bible says the law is a school master to lead to Christ. It is a tutor, a method, a device of God to push us in the direction of union with God’s Righteousness: The Person of Jesus. But many Adventists believe that Jesus exists to empower us to keep the laws of Moses. Not so. Jesus lives to make us like Himself.

According to Adventist teaching Jesus plays second-fiddle to the law. The implication is that Jesus is subordinate to the law. If true this would mean that He is not really God but some lesser being who exists under a superior entity. Adventists could well examine the possibility that they worship a false christ. According to Ellen White, the real source of Adventist the Great Reality at the center of Heaven is not the Father and not Jesus. It is the law.

‘The law of God in the sanctuary in heaven is the great original, of which the precepts inscribed upon the tables of stone and recorded by Moses in the Pentateuch were an unerring transcript’ Great Controversy 434.

But the Bible contradicts such an assumption. The Bible says that the law and the temple services were shadows to lead us to the Great Reality: The reality that is Christ. The reality that the glory of God’s Kingdom on earth is Christ in you. Due to the incarnation, Christ not only live in you. He manifests AS YOU.

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ’ Col 2.16,17.

But you say, ‘I don’t live in the law.’ If you believe that Jesus lives to empower you to keep the law, you do live in the law. But if you believe that Jesus lives in you to transform you into His likeness You live in Jesus and you live as a son.

Do you want to live real as live as a shadow. Do you want to be a whimp, a wraith, a flitting ghost or do you choose to be reborn as a real son of God in whom the Son of God lives by His Spirit?

The law and the prophets pointed to Jesus. The law and the temple services were a shadow of the reality that is Christ. But the writings that have shaped Adventist theology and which have assumed greater authority than the Bible have portrayed Jesus engaged in the project of upholding the law.

In the Desire of Ages Jesus busily goes about to heal people on the Sabbath day as a means of establishing the sanctity of the Sabbath and supremacy of the law. But this is an imposition on the text. Jesus was doing nothing of the kind. What He was demonstrating was the compassion and life-multiplying nature of His Father, and its contrast to the life-denying nature of the law’s custodians. We become what we live out of. With these healings, Jesus  drawing all men to Himself to live as the life of sons in the Father. He was illustrating the difference between one who lived in God and those who lived in the law. In the latter case rules and strictures are more important that people  – and ultimately more important than God. ‘So let’s kill him to preserve our place and our nation.’

Law and temple had a purpose. But they came to an end over 2000 years ago. Now instead of living in religion God’s people would live in God.

‘Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law’ Gal 3.23-25 NIV.

God is not only the Father of truth. Truth is what He is. He does not promote information that is actually a lie. Since He is love, He lives to reveal Himself as He is and to reveal us as we can be. As the Son of God Jesus revealed God. As the Son of Man, Jesus revealed the glory of man.

God’s greatest exposure of Himself is the revelation that is Jesus. The Bible says that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father, He sits in equality beside the Father and that all things are under His feet. The Ten Commandments were never a description of the Father’s character. Was He ever on guard to ensure that He did not worship things that were not Him? Clearly the Decalogue is about us. Clearly this was a list of rules founded in the framework of the knowledge of good and evil to hold people accountable until the advent of Jesus.

‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word’ Hebrews 1.3 NIV.

There is only one description of the Father’s character: Jesus. It is this Jesus who comes to live in you and impart Himself to you. The new and living way is not the old and dead way. It is Jesus in you. This is entirely a work of the Holy Spirit. Significantly those who represent the Kingdom of God live in the Spirit by the One Spirit. They don’t live by a trinity of religious spirits spreading the notion, that with sufficient effort we can be like gods defining good and evil and rising like gods above chaos. No. To live in Jesus is to live in life itself and have this life transform you from glory to glory.

Keith Allen, May 25, 2011

Make sure your lens is perfect

1. Many years ago the Psalmist wrote, ‘In your light we see light’ Ps 36.9. Solomon wrote, ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ The question is, ‘Where are we situated. Where is the ground of our being?’ We need to ascertain if we live in God or live in the knowledge of good and evil and are attempting to construct an image of God from this position. Anyone still living in old Adam will be unable to comprehend the real nature of the Kingdom of God.

The most blind and obstinate people in Jesus’ day were the teachers of the law. Yet simple people whose heart connected  to Jesus could see what they could not: That Jesus was the light. That Jesus had authority and power that the custodians of law and letter did not. So blind were they that they remained paralyzed in their categories even when they one that had killed rose from the dead.

To live in God is to live in Jesus by means of the Spirit. To live in law is see with a distorted lens, even when god has removed us from the real of darkness and immersed us in the light of His Son.

2. Before the appearance of Jesus on earth people could make a fair degree of sense out of the Old Testament using the lens of the law and the temple. Bu the Kingdom of God cannot be understood with old testament eyes.

The law was a temporary measure used by God to lead people to Christ. All that came before was a shadow to lead to the reality that from now on people would not live from law or temple. They would not live in religion. They had been delivered from the tyranny of the knowledge of good and evil with its laws of sin and death. They would live in Christ. In Christ they had received a lens with which to interpret the future and all that had come before.

By living in Jesus they would see accurately and ‘do’ in a Godly fashion. Having been made one with God through Christ their life would be harmonized with God and His creation. They would be alive, sighted and righteous in the Law of Spirit of Life who is the Person of Jesus.

‘Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death Romans’ 8.2 NIV.

3. Through Jesus Christ we are able to interpret the Bible and make sense of our lives. A good lens is Jesus. He is the only accurate lens. We see clearly when we live, move and have our being in Jesus. We get a distorted picture when we attempt to interpret the New Testament through the law and performance. The new testament is a new and living way. Not an old and distorted way. Any perspective on what life is meant to be through the lenses of the knowledge of good and evil is a distortion. We have a new and accurate lens in Christ. We can live and see through Him.

‘Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come’ 2 Cor 5.17 NASB.

4. One of the principles of interpretation is that you see what you expect to see. If you think the new testament is just an extension of the old you will subvert everything in it to law and make Jesus a proponent of the law. For example you might fasten onto the words, ‘He will write His laws on their hearts’ as supporting the belief that Jesus lives to facilitate the keeping of the commandments.

But Jesus drew attention to Himself and His Father. He did not draw attention to the law. He said, ‘I am the way.’ He did not say ‘The law is the way.’ He said ‘ I and the Father are one.’ He did not say I and the law are one.’ Jesus said, ‘If I am lifted up I will draw all people to Myself.’ He did not say I will draw them to the law.

Paul says ‘If righteousness can be gained by law, Christ died for nothing.’ He also writes, ‘He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant–not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’ 2 Cor 3.6. In the light of this the writer if Hebrews cannot mean that Jesus abolished the law so that we can keep it. And of course he does not. Quoting Jeremiah, who could not have understood the incarnation whereby Christ lives in us to become our life, He means that by the Spirit the Person of Jesus infuses our heart and life so that Jesus actually becomes our life.

5. The law is a bad lens through which to view God. Adherence to law will eventually  provide us with the view that a law-bound, judging, condemning God is not a very nice person. And using this lens we can never become a gracious and joyful person.

It presents a God that is more like Allah than what God is really like: Jesus Christ.

‘There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’ But there is for those who live in law. We condemn ourselves, others and God. Our sad plight is that living outside of Jesus we live under the condemnation of God. So choose your lens carefully.