LEGISLATIVE DEMAND or FULFILLING GRACE

LEGISLATIVE DEMAND or FULFILLING GRACE

By John Gavazzoni

What did God mean when He said that He didn't come to destroy the law but, to fulfill it? (Matt. 5:17) He meant that the perfection of the law had come to them in His Person, not as legislative demand, but as fulfilling grace. The grace of God had interwoven even in the demands of the law, promises, that would be fulfilled in Christ. As my good friend, Jan Antonsson has said, the law was God's concession to the fallen (legalized) mind of man. It was God's way of contact with men until He could lead them out of it.

I find it absolutely enthralling, that the Apostle Paul, who by the Spirit was the master of this subject, had as his old testament frame of reference, God's dealing with Abraham, which preceded and preempted the law. For the law was interjected until Christ would come (Gal. 3:16,19,24). But with Abraham we see, not an interjection but, a line of relationship that leads one directly to the new covenant which fully discloses the heart of God, so much so that the Lord calls Abraham our father (Rom. 4: 12,16). What is so enthralling to me (and I had known the Lord and something of His grace for many years before seeing this) is that, when God came to Abraham, to give him those wonderful promises, He never mentions anything about a sin problem. No mention of any failure to live up to some moral standard, which at that point would have existed subjectively in Abraham before the formal giving of the law. The Lord simply comes to the man and tells him that He's going to bless him out of his socks (Gen. 22:17; 26:3; Heb. 6:14). There is no mention of a sin problem that would have to be addressed before God could even think of blessing him. God made promises to be indulgently good to Abe; Abe believed God, and it was reckoned unto Him as righteousness (Rom. 4:3: Gal. 3:6). Later on, as God, by His grace, brought Abraham to the point where He could sacrifice his son Isaac, the Lord told him he was ready for even greater promises since He had come to commune with God in the pain of slaying his Son of promise (Gen. 22:12, 16). Many have imagined that stage of relationship with Abraham as being conditioned on his willingness to obey. But, they fail to realize that it was God who brought him to that place not some superior willing of obedience that lay in Abraham. God's relationship with Abraham was the exact opposite of the law. God's first posture toward him establishes the relationship and says in effect, "I'm going to bless you because I choose to and neither any sin in you or any righteousness in you is a determining factor" (Heb. 6:13-14). When God says to Abraham, "because you have done this, I will bless you further still," the mature expositor of the Word knows that God is the "Because." He is the "Unconditional" behind every condition.

When Christ died for us He was not paying dues to the law but, with love beyond measure, meeting us where we were in our mentality that said, "We demand justice. You let the serpent in the garden. You penned us all up in disobedience. The buck stops at your desk. You should pay" (Rom. 11:32). And pay He did.

"But none of the ransomed ever knew

how deep were the waters crossed,

nor how dark was the night

that the Lord passed through

ere He found His sheep that was lost."

We were lost in the darkness of our own minds at a level of subconscious despair much deeper that any psychologist has ever dreamed. Yet, He has delivered from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son (Col. 1:13).

Lord, renew our minds till every vestige of spiritual adultery is purged from us. We have been betrothed to Christ. Deliver us from returning to our former husband concerning whom we have died in Christ (Rom. 7:2-3). That former husband of bondage which we carried within ourselves has been nailed to the tree with us. The certificate of debt has been canceled for we have the mind of Christ, not the mind of legal indebtedness.

Excerpts from A LEGAL MENTALITY