Sum

November 23rd, 2011 Ben

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Matthew 7:12

As someone points out, if you were fully doing love, loving God with everything and loving your neighbor as Jesus loves us, we would be fulfilling the Law and the Prophets. Said another way, if we could do that, we would be fulfill the Old Covenant, the Mosaic law.

This really is a startling proposition, and yet, like the Jews surrounding the woman caught in the act of adultery, we all turn away as we realize we have all fallen short in love. It remains, however, that love was the sum total of the law and prophets.

Some people at this point, for this and other reasons, have made the incorrect conclusion at this point that somehow we are not to fulfill this commandment. One word from John helps with this.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

1 John 4:18

This is not written as some “too-high” goal, or some out of reach elevation. While we have all failed at love, it is to what we are called to. If we are to be holy as He is Holy, and to be perfect as He is perfect, it must include His love. In fact, the commandment Jesus left the disciples before leaving bodily was that they love one another as He had loved them (John 13:34-35). It was this very thing that He said the world would recognize the disciples by, their love for each other.

This is His command later again in John 15:12, that we love one another as He loved us. Later, in John 15:17, He issues the command again this way, “This I command you, that you love one another.”

This was the plan from the beginning. This was God’s heart from the start.

While it was the sum of the law and the prophets, it is the culmination of the New, too.

Yet, the Sermon on the Mount is not written as a new set of rules to follow, nor was it written as a proof to man that he was incapable of living up to God’s standards. The Mosaic Law once and for all established that. The Law itself was the proof of their standing condemnation. The Law was simply perfect to start with. If men did the Mosaic Law in their flesh, they would have lived. It would simply have been the most unjust thing to do to come and point to an even higher standard, and try to prove that they weren’t living up to the lower standard by showing them an even higher one.

But, instead, the intent of the Semon on the Mount can be encapsulated in the ending.

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. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.

Matthew 7:24-27

Luke 6:48 adds the phrase “dug deep” to this picture. The distinction is merely this. The man who is built on the sand of the flesh will fall under the pressure. The man built upon Christ, upon His Spirit, will live.

Paul expounds this very same principle this way.

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.

Galatians 5:16-17

For the believer, there is still a choice about whether to submit one’s self to the Lord to obey Him. There is still at times a war to lay down the desires of the flesh in the face of the fears and the terrors that can present themselves to the soul. Ephesians 6:13 indicates an “evil day”, in which, having done all else to stand, we are exhorted to yet stand. And, it was the equipping and the preparation that enabled one to do so.

But, the man properly trained in faith, in love, in righteousness, and equipped for every good work, lives out of the Spirit 24/7. The man built upon the Rock, the solid thing, Christ in us, is the stable, unmovable man, that the weather cannot shake.

The man living in the Spirit does not judge except by the Spirit. The man living by faith does not live anxious, because he knows that God is his Father. The man understanding the promises of the Beatitudes lives Most Happy, because He knows that the good is coming.

The end result is really the same. Both a man completely submitted to the Law would fully love, and the man completely submitted to the Spirit would both live in complete love. But, where one is produced through the arm and flesh of man, the other is sprouts forth from the Spirit within. One is put on through flesh, while the other is extruded forth from our innermost being.

God gave us the Law so that we could make ourselves righteous. God gave us the Spirit, through Jesus Christ, so that He could change us Himself into righteousness.

For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

Romans 8:3

The very same righteousness that was impossible without the Spirit, through Jesus, becomes our way of life, and what has been done in our innermost being must needs come forth.