A while back my daughter lived in a Christian commune for a few years. We would communicate in the usual ways; phone calls and email. Then for a bit I had some things on my heart to share and started writing letters to her. I was looking at some of them recently and decided to post them.
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Hey Sweetheart,
This one may seem a bit odd but I am going somewhere with it in the next letter. You pretty much know all of this anyway.
There is a difference between what the law said and what the law taught. Exodus 21:23-25 says “But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” This is what God’s word said, what his law said. It would make sense that people who wanted to serve God would do exactly what he said to do. But it is not what the law taught. The law taught mercy. It taught that we all deserved to be stoned, but God made a way for forgiveness and made a covering for sin. People who were religious in nature followed the letter of the law, which kills spiritually. People who really had their heart set on God followed the intent of the law. They lived a life of justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with their God. To those who followed the letter of the law, the folks who followed the intent were wrong.
Leviticus 20 includes the following: “If a man commits adultery with another man's wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death. If a man sleeps with his father's wife, he has dishonored his father. Both the man and the woman must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” So in John 8 the teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery to Jesus to see if he would agree with stoning her. (I don’t know where the man was). Jesus did what the law taught, showed mercy, and told her to go and sin no more. He did not do what the law said, he did not follow the letter, but he did what the law taught.
A lot of people look at Jesus’ teachings the same way people look at the law. After all, Jesus said these things, so they must be what he wants us to do. And God the Father actually said the things in the law, so they must be what he intended for people to do. Or maybe the letter of what Jesus said kills spiritually, but the spirit of what he said gives life. I believe what Jesus taught was something like this:
Hebrews 10 - "Then I said, 'Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—
I have come to do your will, O God.”
I think what Jesus taught was obedience. He taught that we lay out life down and obey God, that we seek the things of God and not our own, that we say “not my will but yours be done.” He taught a kingdom where the peace, joy, and righteousness are in the Holy Spirit, not in our flesh or in any carnal nature. And sometimes people who live what Jesus taught may not look like they are following what he said; the letter of his teachings.
And that is where I will pick up next time.
Love you,
Dad
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