The Law and Grace
Physical Laws
The Creator of the universe established the necessary
interactions between the objects of His creation so that they could co-exist as
designed. On a much simpler scale, a human engineer does the same thing when he
makes a machine or an instrument. The design requires the establishment of
operating parameters. If something in the machine operates outside of those
parameters then shortly, the machine will fail. Temperature is a typical
parameter. Each machine can operate properly within a certain, designed in,
temperature range. A automobile engine is a good example. Try operating that
car without cooling water and what happens. The human body is another. If the
temperature of the human body gets below 92 degrees F for very long it fails or
if it gets above 105 degrees F it fails. The optimum operating temperature of
the human body is 98.6 degrees F. The human body was designed to operate at
that temperature. Other bodies operate at other temperatures; dogs (101F),
birds whales, etc. It depends on their design. It took us a few millennia to
figure this out. We call this a law. We call it a law because every human body
works the same way. If you over heat a human body it will fail, which we call
death. Our Creator included, in our bodies design, warning indicators, which we
call pain. The purpose of pain is to inform us that we are operating outside of
our design parameters. It is like the oil warning light on a car. We have an
entire branch of science dedicated to analyzing pain and attempting to ease it,
that is, Medicine. However, even though the practitioners can often ease the
pain they just as often cannot remove the source of the pain. They simple do
not understand the design nor the design parameters.
Our Creator established design rules for everything
that He created. In the physical world we have made the study of these rules
the branches of science we call physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and
sociology. He also gave us the spiritual laws setting the parameters of the
operation of spirits. We have identified many of the physical laws of operation
and are still discovering more, such as, the Law of Maximum Entropy discovered
in 1988. The second Law of thermodynamics is the Law of Entropy. This law says
that everything goes from order to disorder unless acted upon by an outside
force. (Anyone with children knows this law works.) In this universe every
observed physical event has shown that this Law is true. Our sun is going from
order to disorder, from more energy to less energy. The day will come when it
goes out. Death, as we call the secession of existence, is the end result of
the Law of Entropy. We do not even have a word in physics for a system going
from disorder to order, from death to life. Theologically, we call it
resurrection or creation. The fission and fusion reactions are other examples
of entropy, going from an ordered state to disorder. In this case with the release
of a lot of energy. Gasoline combustion is another. Entropy is the reason that
you will never find a working wrist watch at the bottom of a garbage dump.
Putting order into a system requires intelligence. Let's say that we completely
disassembled two space shuttles and placed them in separate rooms. Then we
brought an orangutan in and put it in one room and put you in other room each
with a complete set of tools. How long would it take the you to end up with a
fully functional space shuttle? How about the orangutan? Is a year enough time?
How about 10 years, maybe a hundred? To be fair, if we parked a shuttle on the
tarmac and left it untouched it would probably take several decades for it to
fall apart so we'll give you a life time to assemble it. Could you do it? How
about the orangutan or maybe a porpoise, a mouse or a fly? Now it not exactly
fair for the orangutan since it does not live as long as humans so we'll let
the orangutan reproduce and give them a human lifetime to reassemble it.
An implication of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is
that the process is irreversible, unless there is the action of and outside
force putting order into the system. In other words the results of the law is
that the consequences are predetermined toward "death" unless there
is outside intervention. In theology we call this the Law of Sin and Death. It
is overcome by the Law of the Spirit of Life. In the physical sciences we call
it a miracle because we have found no corollary law. This same law is at work
in the biological sciences. If you were to separate a child from it's parents
or any other human provision, it will die, every time. A baby requires care and
feeding. If you separate the baby from a source of love, it will die
emotionally, every time. We do not like to admit it but it does. If you remove
a baby from conversation and training it will die intellectually, every time.
There must be an outside influence to over come Entropy, otherwise disorder
results.
These assorted laws that were put in place are really
there for the sake of Creation. They were put in place to sustain Creation.
Without them the Creators could not exist. Gravity is a good example. If there
were no gravity there could be know life as we know it. There would be nothing
to hold our position is space at the perfect distance from the Sun to sustain
life on this planet. There would be no atmosphere for us to breath. There would
be no atmosphere to block the Sun's emissions that would destroy the Earth. If
gravity changed by a fraction of a percent then life would also cease to exist.
The Law of Gravity is not a respecter of persons. Every body that has mass is
equally effected. If we choose to try to ignore Gravity we do so at our own
peril. Our parents understood this and taught us as children not to jump off of
high buildings. ALL of the Laws that our Creator put in place operate the same
way. The Laws that govern relationships, elements, masses and light all
function the same way. They work the same everyday no matter who or where you
are. If you choose to ignore them or attempt to violate them then you do so at
your own risk. As humans we like to think that relationship laws are flexible,
or changeable but they are not. All the laws are interlinked. The 633 rules
given in the Old Testament are built upon a series of relationship laws. The
foundation of the relationship laws is the Law of Love. If we violate the Law
of Love, we do so at our own risk. The relationship Law of Marriage (or family)
is linked to the biological Law of Reproduction. The law of family says that a
family is composed of a male and a female with offspring as a result of their
union, which is the biological Law of Reproduction. If there can be no union
then there can be no marriage nor family. This law rules out homosexuality. We
use different terms for different species but the law is essentially the same.
The Fall
The laws, when followed, result in the harmonious
interaction of all of Creation. Something or someone operating outside of these
laws brings discord. It is like an orchestra. Every musician has an instrument
to play. Each instrument is designed to produce a certain series of sounds. All
of the instruments are tuned to produce the same notes. Each musician is
trained to read the music and play their instruments on key at the right time.
The end result is a beautiful, harmonious presentation of sounds. This symphony
is more than the sum of it's parts. This is all possible because of the
underlying laws of music. The musicians had to follow the laws of music, had to
work together and after long hours of practice they were able to produce great
harmony and beautiful music. This is a small example of Creation's
interactions. All of Creation is like a huge orchestra, with every creature
playing it's role. Up until the fall of man all of Creation participated in
this harmonious symphony, with the exception of Lucifer and his angels. He,
Lucifer, is the source of discord. Father calls intentional discord, rebellion
and discord in general, He calls sin. Father originally had given man one law
to obey; do not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
All of Creation on Earth lived in perfect harmony. There was no hunger, no
sickness, no disagreement, no discord, no death, no destruction; perfect Love
in perfect harmony. All Creation walked in the presence of their Creator, they
all adored each other and preferred each other. The laws of God were in force
working as intended and all Creation existed, no, thrived, because of them.
That is, until Lucifer tempted Eve. Eve chose to doubt what her Creator had
told her and then disobeyed Him. Eve then tempted Adam and he too chose
disobedience, and perfect harmony was broken; sin and death entered the earthly
realm and affected all of Creation on Earth. We have never seen perfect harmony
since then. It is even difficult for us to even imagine it. We are born in
discord with discord in the very roots or our beings. It is impossible for us
to work in harmony with each other. We innately know that we should but we cannot.
It is beyond our grasp. Almost beyond our comprehension. This is what is called
sin and death by our Creator as recorded in the Scriptures.
Why did Father not simply start over once Adam and
Eve sinned? He could have saved all of us a lot of pain and suffering if He
had. Why not just purge the universe of this discord by allowing death to take
place and then create a new Earth with a new couple? Here is where another law
of Creation comes into effect. That is: human life is sacred. It is set apart for
His purpose. Only He can give it and only He is allowed to take it away; murder
and suicide are thus forbidden. He chose, out of His Love for His creation to
keep Adam and Eve alive in spite of the death sentence upon them. It meant that
they would have to endure pain and suffering in this world because of sin. but
this pain and suffering served a purpose. It is a consequence of their
disobedience, and thus speaks of His mercy. Justice required that they die as a
result of their sin, both the death of the body and then the second death, the
death of their soul in hell. However, our Creator, demonstrated His mercy by
not allowing the death sentence to be carried out immediately, which would have
ended the human race. This allowed the continuation of the human race and
enabled humanity to be lead back to their Creator to find the answers to sin,
pain and suffering and ultimately, to find salvation. His desire is that no man
experience the second death. So He will allow sin and even unjust suffering on
this present world rather than allow death to send another son to perdition
without having every opportunity to find His Creator.
Our Creator built into His creation, laws with
benefits and detriments based upon the acceptance of or rejection of those
laws. The list of the blessings and curses are in the Book of Deuteronomy
Chapter 27 and 28. These are the consequences of man's choices. They are just
like the aches and pains in our bodies. As humans we have been given the
freedom to choose. We are sovereign individuals. We are only responsible for
our own choices and never responsible for someone else's unless we chose to
give up our sovereignty and become a slave. However, in the end we still suffer
the consequences of our own sins whether we acknowledge them or not.
Since the day that Adam and Eve sinned man has
labored under the curse of sin and death, generation upon generation. A couple
of thousand years or so after the Garden, Moses was given the Law at Sinai. Up
until then man had been operating in relationship with Yahweh or other gods.
Man was well aware of his spirit and communicated to his god with it. Before
the law was given Father called the Children of Israel out of their slavery in
The Plan
However, Father had a plan. He had lost his children
to disobedience, to sin and death as a result. He requires obedience because
his heart is to guide his children to fullness, abundance and fulfillment. That
is, to fulfill their design. His children simply do not understand nor even
comprehend the capacity that He has designed into them. The capacity to Love,
to create, to live in unity and harmony far exceeds anything that we can
imagine. So for us to mature into such lofty beings as Sons of the Most High we
have to be trained and He desires to train us personally, through our
relationship with Him. However, our disobedience and its consequences are in
the way. Father needed a way to remove that obstacle. Ever since the Fall,
mankind became the possession of Satan because he had chosen disobedience.
Father also needed a way to restore ownership to the Creator. You see whoever
creates the creature owns the creature, another law of the universe. Since the
law of Love supersedes all other laws, our Creator does not demand possession
of His creation but offers us the choice to choose Him. This is the law of Love
at work. However, with humanity born into sin we are not free to choose, we
simply have the illusion of choice. We are allowed to choose one of Satan's
many deceptions.
Father needed to make a way to solve that problem.
Father needed a way to buy back His children, to redeem them. All of His
children are under the curse of death because of the law of sin and death. That
is, if a soul sins then it will die. Our bodies die because of sin and so will
our souls in the second death. The requirements for redemption are for a
substitute who is free of the curse of sin and death who will, out of Love
voluntarily give Himself in exchange for fallen man. This substitute must be
perfectly pure in heart and soul and must fulfill all of the law in every sense
and be perfectly obedient to Father, completely sinless. This redemption had to
be complete. It could not redeem just a few of mankind from a few of his sins
and their consequences. It had to apply to ALL of mankind past, present and
future. It also had to pay the price for ALL of ALL man's sins and ALL of the
consequences of those sins. In other words it had to be able to remove all sin,
sickness, damage, destruction and death from mankind and deliver mankind from
Satan grip. All discord had to be covered. The redemption had to restore man to
Adam's state before the Fall. No mere mortal was qualified because of all men
being born into sin but this redeemer had to be human in order to face and
overcome the weakness and temptations of man. This redeemer had to be born and
raised as a human with all of humanities frailties and ignorance.
Father's solution was to join Himself to a human
woman to produce a Divine human Son. Father placed Life in a an egg of an
innocent young Israelite girl, formed a soul and placed the Spirit of Yeshua in
that soul. A Son who would be born on this Earth in the normal human way and
raised as a normal child and have to find His God just like any other human
would and be taught by his God to fulfill His calling on Earth just like any
other human would. However, this human would have to overcome EVERY temptation
to sin lest He be disqualified. Then once He was prepared by His Father, as a
result of their relationship, He would have to voluntarily accept as His own,
ALL of the sins and ALL of their consequences for ALL of mankind and be
sentenced to death for them and die and resurrect from the grave, the place of
judgment, and death,. Yeshua was the first man to fulfill ALL the requirements
of the Law. He fulfilled the Law so that the rest of mankind can fulfill the
Law in Him, by accepting His salvation through the Law of Love. This is the
Good News. The Law of Love requires that once this has been accomplished, this
salvation is offered to man, not imposed upon man but offered. Each man must
choose for himself whether to accept this offer of relationship and salvation
from sin and death to the Spirit of Life. Yeshua fulfilled His calling and out
of Love broke the curse sin and death for all who believe Him and accepts His
offer to be their Savior and Trainer. He set us free from Satan's captivity. We
have become the Righteousness of God because we trade our sin and sinful nature
for His Righteousness. We exchange our sin based curses for His righteousness
based blessings. We live in Him and He in us and He begins to transform us into
Himself, His very nature. We are dead to sin because we are dead to the Law of
Moses. We are no longer under the Law and as a result not obligated to the Law.
We now live in response to our Savior in relationship with Him by the Law of
Faith. We lose our consciousness of the Law and become Yeshua conscious. Our
life is now about pleasing and obeying our Savior which coincidentally fulfills
the Law, but we do not have to concern ourselves with obedience to the Law
since we are dead to it. We are living under the Law of the Spirit of Life. The
Law of Sin and Death is a thing of the past. We find as we walk with our Savior
that the door to Father has been thrown wide open. We find, as our Divine
relationships grow, we even lose the desire to disobey. We under go a change of
heart, a transformation of the inner most parts of our being. He delivers us
from demonic influence, heals our diseases, opens our blind eye and deaf ears
to His form and voice. We are being saved!!
This is all accomplished by Yeshua in response to our
faith (trust) in His love for us. This does not happen instantaneously, but as
a result of our ongoing walk with our Savior. He then leads us to fulfill the
purpose of our existence. We yield our will to obey His voice and He provides
His righteousness, His direction, His Spirit, His power and His timing. Ours is
to simply listen and obey His words to us and He does everything else. This is
called Grace!
John 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the
Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace
and truth came by Yeshua the Messiah.
Illustration:
One way to see how the Law and Grace work is to
consider the following illustration. There once was a man that that had two
sons. They were raised in his house and what ever belonged to the father was
available to the sons. He was a wealthy man and had much land and a thriving business.
His sons helped him with the business and the land on which there was a couple
of oil wells. One day the your son decided that he wanted to make his own way
in the world. He had been thinking about it for some time. He went to his
father and asked for his share of the inheritance. His father asked him what he
wanted to do with it and he said that he wasn't sure. Father asked him about
the wisdom of his decision but he was sure that he could handle himself. So his
father agreed and gave him half of all that he owned.
So off he went to seek his fortune. He wanted to go
into the oil business. He met up with some Arab oil men and told them that he
had a spot on his land that he know had thousands of barrels of oil. They
struck a deal, to the oil men's advantage without the son realizing it. It did
not take too long for the son to lose his land. However, the oil men took pity
on him and offered the son another deal. If he would just put his money up they
would let him in on another deal that was a sure thing. At first he refused,
and they went ahead without him and doubled their investment. This time he went
to them and asked to get in. So they let him in after some persuasion. Well
needless to say he lost it all. So he started looking for work. After a few
months he had not made any progress and ended up sleeping under bridges and
panhandling for his food.
Meanwhile back home, his father had sent out a couple
of his employees to check on him quietly. He discovers his sons predicament, so
he monitors him from a far, waiting. After a few weeks it appears that the son
is either too embarrassed or too proud to ask his father for help, so his
father decides to act. So by this time the son has gotten himself in hock to
the local loan sharks and they are looking to break some limbs. Father has one
of his employees get a few of his army buddies and sent them off to bring the
son back home to his father. It took a little doing but the team retrieved the
son and brought him to a local gym where he was to meet his father. They left
him outside and aimed him at the showers to clean up before they met. They also
provided him with a new suit, paid for by father. As the son took his shower he
got to thinking about his situation and decided that his father was going to be
very upset so he asked one of his father's employees to go see his father
instead. In fact the more he thought about it the more he liked the idea and
asked him to be his go between.
So the employee became the son's stand in and talked
to the father in the sons place. The father was of course very disappointed and
when the son drifted back to the city where he had come from the father decided
that he had better give his son some advice. So he wrote up a list of dos and
don'ts to keep him out of trouble. This is the giving of the Law. When the son
received them he realized that this was a good idea and thanked his father
through the employee and promised that he would keep them. After many months
the son had forgotten his promise and was ignoring the dos and don'ts, and he
landed back in trouble again. Father really just wanted his son to come home
and live with him, and had told him so but his son would not believe him. So
father had to come up with another plan.
This time he sent his oldest son with a blank check
and instructions to get his brother back no matter what the cost even if he had
to exchange himself for his brother. However, his brother would have to choose
to come home of his own free will. So the oldest son set off to where his
younger brother was living. He was careful to follow his father's instructions
and was in constant touch with him because he had never been in the city before
and there were many unsavory characters there. Once he arrived and started
asking about his brother he found one after another of his brothers debtors. He
paid each one what his brother owed plus interest. Father asked the eldest son
to give each debtor a blank check just incase the younger son borrowed from
them in the future. Father even had the elder son go to every loan shark in the
city and give them a blank check as well just in case. He discovered that his
brother had accumulated hospital bills and paid them all off and left blank
checks at every health establishment in the city. He discovered that his brother
had been in trouble with the local authorities so he paid what ever fines he
had accumulated and gave them blank checks as well and even spent some time in
jail for his brothers sake. He told the judge that if his brother was ever
convicted in the future of anything that he personally would serve the time. He
even ran into his brother every now and then and told him how their father was
waiting anxiously for his return and that everything had been taken care of.
All he had to do was give father a call on the cell phone that he was given and
father would arrange for his return. It wasn't too long before the elder
brother ran into a grieving widow whose husband was murdered, by his younger
brother. So he paid her a lifetimes wages and after conversing with his father,
he notified the authorities. His father had asked him to stand trial in place
of his brother and take the punishment if he agreed. That was a very tough
decision for the older brother and he took some time considering it. He finally
decided to go ahead even if it meant the death penalty because he loved his
brother and he knew that his father loved his brother even more. He figured
that he had spent his entire life with his father it was now his brother's
turn. He asked his father that he would send someone to tell his brother if it
came to that so that his brother could return to his father a free man since
the elder brother would not be able to. Father, of course agreed, and said that
he would send his wife to talk to their son. That is a sample of Grace.