There is a key point here God's people are not the covenant keepers, Christ was and is. He has kept the law. We no longer have to for we have his righteousness, and he has borne God's wrath for our sin. We are now part of the New Covenant people of God. A people that God has given law not on stone tablets but on our hearts. God Changes our desires, we long for holiness, not necessarily keeping the full OT law. But the heart of the law is kept, conviction is brought when we fail to keep the spirit of the law.
This brings up an interesting phenomena, conviction something that is not universal to every experience I know people who are convicted to drink and others who aren't at all. Neither is wrong, it is a gray area. If you are convicted of something and persist it is sin. If no conviction and no clear command in the NT era, then you are fine, and probably not sinning.
And here is the dreaded application, you Christian stop keeping a law on a list and keep the law of the Spirit in your heart. Aid in that in fellow believers lives, not comparing you list of don'ts to their behavior. Aid their devotion to God not their behavior.
What, specifically, are you referring to as the law of the Spirit in your heart?
ReplyDeleteChrist convicting you through either direct NT command, or through general conviction from the Holy Spirit. I also feel I need to add, Romans 6:1-4, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Luke!
ReplyDelete