Journeying through the Bible (long post!!!)

I have been really confused lately about some issues of faith. A good friend has completely changed her whole view of the Bible and Christianity and believes that the law from the Old Testament is still in place and it got me thinking. I kept wondering if she could see this written in the Bible why couldn’t I? Had I missed something? Was God talking to her but not me anymore? Could millions of Christians be wrong? I have been praying and seeking God about this for weeks now asking Him to show me if there’s something I’m just not seeing and I just kept hearing “Read my Word”. So I’ve been having quiet times and reading snippets and finding verses here and there but still having moments of doubt and confusion. Then at church on Sunday the sermon was all about really getting into God’s word and it challenged me so this week I started really reading and now I can’t get enough!

I started with Matthew and came across Matt 7:17 that has been used as an example to say the law still stands, it says “do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets, I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them”. So I started by asking God what that means exactly and what ‘fulfil’ really looks like. Then I kept reading through the New Testament asking God to show me His truth of what ‘fulfil’ meant. I didn’t want to be clouded by other peoples thoughts or interpretations so I didn’t use any commentaries or any other books, I felt really compelled to just read His word, so it was just me, God, my Bible and a pencil and notepad. So far I have read from Matthew through to the end of 2 Corinthians and have acquired 6 pages of notes. I wont share all 6 pages with you, but I will share a few key passages that really spoke clearly to me.

In Acts Chapter 15 there was discussion going on about whether Gentiles who became believers should have to follow the law. In Verse 5 some said that “the Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses.” Peter’s response was to say of the Gentiles in v8-10 “God, who knows the heart, showed that He accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them for He purified their hearts by faith. Now then why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples, a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?”

In speaking to the Gentiles at all Peter was breaking the law so if it was still in place then God was telling Him to break it‼! In Acts 10: 28-29 Peter said “you are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean. So when I was sent for I came without raising any objection.”

In Romans it got even clearer for me. Rom 3:21-22 says “a righteousness from God apart from the law has been made known, to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference.” These verses come in the middle of couple of chapters discussing that a heart following God is more important than circumcision or keeping the law.

But then verse 31 in that chapter says “do we then nullify the law by this faith? Not at all. Rather we uphold the law.” So again I was puzzled by the contradiction but kept reading to see if it would be explained, which I think it was in Chapter 5. Verses 20-21 say “the law was added so trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” So the point of the law was to show people their sin and point to the need for a redeemer, that Redeemer has now come and ‘fulfilled’ that law by dying for our sins, so when we have faith in Him then that is in fact upholding the law because we are seeing our sin and believing in Christ as the payment for it. I admit I am no theologian or Bible scholar and that may seem far too simplistic for some people, but it was a lightbulb moment for me and brought such a peace to my heart. Then when I kept reading I found so much more that said we are no longer under the law that I just couldn’t argue with it at all.

Here is a list of some more of those verses:

Rom 6:15 “what then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means.”

Rom7:6 “But now by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.”

Chapter 7 talks quite a bit about the law, but not as something that must be still followed, rather in past tense as something that was beneficial for exposing sin‼ For example Rom 7:7 “I would not have known what sin was except through the law.”

Rom 8:2-4 “through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.”

Rom 9:30-33 says that the Gentiles obtain righteousness by faith, but Israel who had the law didn’t attain it because they did not recognise their Messiah and stumbled over the stumbling block.

Rom 10:4 “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”

I found Chapters 14 and 15 particularly interesting. They talk about people basically on different journeys in their walk with God and that we will all be accountable to God for our own journey, even if it is different to other people’s. For example Chapter 14:2-3 “one man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man whose faith is weak eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him.” And verse 5 “one man considers one day more sacred than another, another man considers ever day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.”

Verse 14 “as one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean.”

You’ve gotta love a God of grace who allows people the freedom to walk their own journey‼

The last passage I want to talk about is 1 Corinthians Chapter 9. Paul mentions the law here and talks about the fact that to the Jews he lives like a Jew, but to the gentiles he doesn’t, which seems to me to be about not being a stumbling block to others (Romans 14 spoke about that too). Yes, Paul, Peter and even Jesus followed the law, but they were Jews so they did so for the sake of other Jews. I cannot find anywhere in the Bible where it says that the law ever applied to or was expected of the Gentiles, and there are many examples of Jews who became believers saying they were no longer under the law either. In 1 Cor 9:20 Paul says “to those under the law I become like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law.” He says instead that he is “under Christ’s law” in verse 21, which when you read through the whole book is described as grace and righteousness.

Through all of this reading over the past few days I have felt my heart and spirit lighten as I absorbed the truths of God’s word and stopped worrying about whether I should be doing something else that I don’t think God ever asked or required of me. It didn’t make any sense to me that God would call me to a new church where I have really started to feel planted and growing and then say ‘by the way that’s all wrong now you need to do this instead’. I am where He has placed me for this season and I feel at home but more than that I feel at peace, the kind of peace that comes only from God‼

 I can’t explain why others would be on a totally different journey that they believe is from God when our journeys seem to contradict each other, but Romans 14 really spoke to me about God knowing our hearts and our walks and that we are accountable to Him for walking with the knowledge and faith that we have regardless of what other people’s journeys look like and that we should not judge each other for our walks, that is God’s job alone‼ So we can both be “convinced in our own minds” that we are walking in truth and that is all God expects of us. So I shared all this not to say that I think I’m right and someone else is wrong, because like I said I am no theologian and other people may see totally different things in the same passages, rather I have shared all this because it is the journey I have been on with God lately, to walk out of a very confused and bewildering place and find His peace once again!