“But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

Jeremiah 31:33

We are under the New Covenant.  We are not under the old, and we are not looking for another.  Jesus died for us, not only for our actual sins committed, but to remove our sinful nature.  As the prophet writes, to remove the heart of stone, and replace it with a heart of flesh.

Given that 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that we are a new creation in Christ, and the other scriptural references that indicate our new spiritual position in Christ right now, we are now faced often with the question of “Why are real, born-again Christians not living according to their new nature?”  For surely, when we doubt, get unjustly angry, jealous, and contentious, we are still, as Paul writes, carnal (1 Corinthians 3:3).

It is in the light of the finished work of the cross, the New and Living Covenant in which we are a part, that we must understand the teachings of Jesus.  They were spoken by the Spirit, to those who would live by the Spirit.  They were not the words of Jesus as such, for they were the words of the Father (John 4:10).

The entirety of the Old Covenant demonstrated irrevocably the inability of ANY fleshly man to live out God’s perfect order.  While many tried, all sinned, and fell short of His glory.

Instead of the Law, Jesus came to show a righteousness through faith in Himself, by His Spirit.

The goal of both the Jew and the Christian has always been total obedience to the Lord, yet, where the man was unable to live up to the true law because of the flesh, by the Spirit, through faith, we enter into the Kingdom of Righteousness through the new and living way of the blood, into the perfect liberty of the Grace of Christ.

No where does the Sermon on the Mount dictate a new moral code, nor specify precise ways to live.  Rather, it speaks to the heart, and further, beyond that, to the Spirit.  The man living by the Spirit will live out the Sermon on the Mount perfectly, even when exact “prescription” of a situation is not immediately clear.  Similarly, a fundamental deviation from the Sermon on the Mount indicates a place where one is NOT relying on the Spirit.

Understand this.  If the law was not sufficient simply to say “Thou shall not commit adultery”, then the new commandment is equally as weak, if not more so.  “If a man so much as look to lust, he has committed adultery in his heart.”  If the first was unlivable (on the whole, combined with all the other laws), what we do not have is a set of harder laws in which to force ourselves into.  Yet, at the end of it all, we must live by them.  This is the paradox of living after the flesh or after the Spirit.

Obviously, understanding the heart of God, the latter command is the full intent and interpretation of the former.  To simply live out first, without it affecting the heart, is at the core of the failure of the religious mind to grasp the Truth of the nature of our Father in Heaven.  Yet, what Jesus spoke strikes deeper at the essence of the human heart.  So long as sin remains, for the law, though fulfilled, remains unchanged and Eternal, even to the slightest jot or tittle, there is more of the Spirit that can be had, more of surrendering to His love.

In the end, in the light of the finished work of the cross, the problem is NOT the sins, it is lack of faith.  At the bottom of it all, it is fear.  Faith that the Father will supply all your needs, irregardless of anything else.  And, when you’ve crossed over that, and you’re no longer clinging even to this early life, not only are you a free man, but you can walk by His Holy Spirit within you, the only TRUE rock within, Immanuel, God with Us.

So long as you look at the Beatitudes as ideals to adopt and the sins listed in Matthew 5-7 as ills to avoid, you have only recreated another type-and-shadow religion, another law, another system you will never live up to.

But, rather, you were co-crucified with Christ on His cross.  You were co-buried with Him.  You were co-raised with Him.  This is what baptism is.  Not only that, you were exalted with Him, and you now sit with Him in heavenly places on His throne in heaven, far above all power, authority, dominion, and all other things in this world and the world to come.  The verb in Greek is present tense.  This is not a future reality for the believer, but must simply be believed by Faith.

You have a new Spirit, and your old life is dead.  Put to death, therefore, everything of your earthly nature.  Put it to death by the Spirit within you.

When Peter walked on the water, and sank afterwards, Jesus asked him one question:  Why did you doubt?  There is no recorded answer, but Jesus did the simple thing of looking to see what the doubt was in Peter’s mind.  When Peter’s walk did not line up with the Spirit operating in and around Jesus’ life, for the Spirit was only poured out upon Jesus at that point, Jesus confronted Peter’s doubt, his unbelief.

Simply to become aware of ones emotions can be a hurdle for some to overcome.  Some have learned to ignore certain emotions and only feel others.  Still others have simply not developed sufficiently emotionally to distinguish between the many emotions of life.  Yet, it is precisely in the emotional realm where we are overcome.  A thought gives way to an emotion, which elicits a behavior.  This results in more thoughts and beliefs, yeilding emotions, yielding responses.  When we are, as Jesus put it, full up with dead mens bones, with bitterness, anger, hatred, worry, and the like, we are not in faith, to say the least!

The life lived by the Spirit in the Kingdom yields these responses naturally.  As fruit, it simply grows.  Yet when we hold onto ourselves, when we are unable to forgive and stay out of offense, not trusting Him to meet our every need, even when others short-change and hurt us, His grace cannot as fully flow through our lives, and we step out of line with His Kingdom.

Although we are covered by His blood, and continually cleansed from our sins, we often miss out on the fullness of what He has because we have not fully yielded our members to Him.

The goal is to get the house built on the rock.  If we can do that, we will withstand the storms.  Yet, an honest heart who simply reads these commands, and, in his failure, cries out to the Lord desperately, with his whole heart, is heard, and answered by the Lord.  If he falls seven times, and gets back up again, he is forgiven.  For the one who continues to come to the Lord, knowing he is blind, the Lord grants sight, yet to the one who says he can see, his sin remains.

The goal is absolute obedience, and yet, the goal, on man’s end, is impossible.  But God, in His mercy, shows us His Spirit, His Kingdom, when we call to Him with our whole heart.  He shows us His Kingdom, His Spirit, and He enables us when we continually call out to Him with our whole heart.

In the end, the stable man is the one completely built upon the rock of the Spirit.  He withstands the storms, because his entire personality is built upon Christ.  Christ within me, I shall not fail.  Christ is for me, whom will I fear?