Law's Primal Origin - Part Three
By John Gavazzoni

Go to Part One, Part Two or Part Three

This is an answer, slightly edited, to the same brother's additional question - See Part Two

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Questioner: “God knew that in creating Adam vulnerable to deception, through the woman taken from his side, the words of God "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it . . .

How do you conclude that it was a promise and not a command? If it was a promise, the promise was broken by God because she did eat, contrary to the promise. I don’t quite get it.”

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My reply was: “To our quickened spirit, it's promise, brother, but to the natural mind, its commandment. Just as the decalogue can be read as promise, or legislation: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, soul, mind and strength." My quickened spirit hears that as the self-fulfilling Word of God, my fleshly mind hears it as a legislated requirement. A legal requirement, that, by some definition, demands something of my contribution to bring it to fruition.

The New Man, just like Jesus, only does what he sees the Father do. Eve heard the words of the Lord as commandment, as the Lord intended her to at that stage of God's dealing with mankind, and thereupon broke the commandment, for, as I wrote, "the law is the power/strength of sin."- right there, by that interaction, God penned Eve up in disobedience. The New Man in Christ; the Man with Christ as His life, receives the Word as self-fulfilling, completely able, without any help from us, to accomplish that for which God sent it, and it never returns to God void.

There is a very subjective dimension to the Word of God becoming law to us. For instance, there are many imperatives pointed out to us in the New Testament. The apostolic writers inform us that certain things MUST come to pass, must be done, we must be a certain kind of people. If we read those imperatives as law, they kill us. Most Christians live by law. They take New Testament imperatives as a requirement laid upon them to do their part to bring them to fruition.

But as Harry Robert Fox once brilliantly explained, ALL the imperatives of scripture, are based upon the indicative. For instance, in Ephesians, Paul prayed that we be filled with all the fulness of God. He prayed that, because it's an imperative in the purpose of God, BUT he already wrote, before describing that prayer, that we ARE "the fulness of Him who fills all in all." See, the imperative was based upon the indicative. We ARE what we are to become and what we are to do, in Christ, of course.

My early mentoring involved great emphasis upon witnessing for Christ. We kids, who had been saved in a genuine revival that swept through our town, carried about that requirement in our minds constantly. It was something we had to do, and it lead to us either becoming proud when we were so engaged, or condemned, when we didn't do enough witnessing, like missing an opportunity to do so.

But Jesus spoke about witnessing in the indicative mode. "Ye shall BE my witnesses . . . " "Ye are the light of the world, a city set upon a hill, that cannot be hid." "I am the vine, and ye ARE the branches . . . " The apostles didn't open up their epistles with a word of requirement to be saintly. They addressed believers as saints (set-apart ones/holy ones).

In the larger context of any book of the New Testament, where the saints receive admonishment and exhortation, you will always find that the writer identifies them as the kind of people out from whom such behavior should proceed: "Little children, love one another." "He that loveth is born of God." Do we get born of God by applying ourselves to loving one another, or do we love one another because we've been born of God?

To restate: The law is about trying, grace is about being. Sin is about trying to hit the mark, grace is about the assurance that we, in Christ, ARE what God has aimed for. If we try to love one another, we surely will fail.”

Be well bro., John

Go to Part One, Part Two or Part Three