Daily Meditations from John N N Ng'ang'a: Week of April 3rd-10th April 2011.. What does the new testament say about old testaments requirements?
Day 1
Romans 4:13-16
For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression. That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring-not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.
YES, your faith is null and the promise is void if you insist on living and being justified by what you do.
If it by faith then you become justified and a friend of GOD like Abraham just because of putting your trust in him.
Nothing you do brings justification before a righteous God .If we live by faith like Abraham then we are his children spiritually even if we are gentiles physically
Day 2
Romans 5:20
Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,
Romans 6:14-15
For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
We actually are justified simply by faith through His grace alone as Martin Luther the reformer declared, but once justified we are so grateful we cannot but seek to please Him who died for us. We therefore seek to live righteously in thankfulness.
The law leads one to be tempted to break it but grace leads to thankfully living to please the one who gives the grace .
We therefore do not live in sin just because we are living by grace.
Day 3
Romans 7:4-6
Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.
The new testament believer is supposed not to live by following the law but by following the Holy Spirit’s leadership on a daily basis.
This means you are seeking to be in filled by the holy spirit and thereafter listening to him on even the manutest decision you have to make .
This is the new life of the Spirit. This means you no longer live to please self but to please your new master ,Jesus Christ.
Day 4
Romans 7:8-9
But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
The reason we should not seek to live by the law is because the law only arouses our rebellious nature. For…. Apart from the law, sin lies dead….and we need to know we are helpless before the law. We must die to it by not seeking to please God by believing on our own we are meeting his standard but by seeking His grace and relying on the spirit.
So living in the old covenant is trying tom please God by the law but now we live by the spirit in order to please God.
Day 5
Romans 7:12
So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
Romans 7:14
For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
But the old testament requirements are not wrong. The ten commandments are still our commandments but we know we are not capable on our own to fulfill them.
we now fulfill them by living by the spirit..in Him our helplessness is sorted out by his grace .
So the law is from God and is therefore ok. We still keep it but not in our strength.
Day 6
Romans 8:2-4
For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Romans 10:4
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
Romans 13:8
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
So we can fulfill the law for we trust Jesus so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Yes … Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. To trust in Christ leads to a very different way of pleasing God from the old testament way. His death brought transformation in the way of pleasing God.
Now God sees us as righteous even when we actually are not…. just because we have accepted our sin and our helpless to please him.
So the big question is how to live by the spirit since it will release us from the bondage of do’s and don’ts of the law.
Day 7
1 Cor. 9:20-21
To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law.
We must not mistake the new testament as allowing you to live in sin and yet claim to be godly….we are still expected to live under a different law of Christ which is the law of love and grace .
That leads us to seek to be used by God to lead those still under the law to realize their need of God’s grace .The way to achieve this is to seek to go from where they are then to lead them to where we are.
However we should not join people in sin in the name of seeking to help the sinner. Jesus ate with sinners without ever partaking of their sin.