'The new covenant'
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The Holy Spirit is the law of the new covenant. The Law of Moses, consisting of the Ten Commandments and the accompanying ordinances, was the law of the old covenant. When we died on the cross with Christ we became legally free from the Law of Moses so that we may live under the new law of the Spirit of life.
The new covenant is not an adherence to the letter of any law. Rather it is obedience to the Spirit of God. The letter of the law always kills us. The Spirit of God always gives us incorruptible resurrection life.
The Holy Spirit gives us life. What a difference there is between the old covenant and the new covenant! The law of God of the first covenant does not bring life, it brings death. "And the commandment which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death" (Romans 7:10).
Our first personality cannot fulfill the law of God.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ hath made me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:2)
The "law of sin and death" consists of the Ten Commandments working together with the sin which dwells in our flesh. When the commandments come to our sinful nature and deeds the result is spiritual death. The Law of Moses is perfect—absolutely righteous and holy. The sin which dwells in us is contrary to the Law and will not obey the Law.
The Law of Moses makes one fact clear to us: "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).
The new covenant does not consist of a new set of laws that we are to obey. The new covenant is the Holy Spirit working in us.
Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. (II Corinthians 3:6)
The Law, the Torah , never will be done away. It is of the eternal Nature of God. Under the new covenant the Holy Spirit puts the Torah in our mind and writes it in our heart.
We are to keep the commandments of the New Testament writings, and of the old wherever applicable, until Christ, the Day Star, the Torah made flesh, is formed in us. It is the Holy Spirit of God who forms Christ in us until we keep the Torah by nature.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their heart: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: (Hebrews 8:10)
The Torah that is formed in us is not the Law found in the Book of Exodus but the eternal moral law of which the Ten Commandments are an abridged form.
When we walk in the Spirit of God we are legally free from the law of sin and death because our death in Christ releases us from the legal obligation of the Law of Moses. The Law of Moses has jurisdiction over the individual only as long as he or she is alive.
As we continue to walk in the Spirit of God we are becoming actually free from the law of sin and death because the Holy Spirit, working through the authority of the blood of the cross, gives us the wisdom and power to stop sinning—to put to death the deeds of our body.
There are practical admonitions written in the New Testament to which we must give heed. These admonitions are not of the essence of the new covenant. They are guidelines for our conduct and must be obeyed, by our adamic nature for the most part, until we are able to walk in the wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit by our transformed nature.
As the Christian learns to walk in the Spirit, just as a baby learns to coordinate his muscles so that he can begin to take some steps, he starts to realize in daily living a measure of the enormous resources of resurrection life available to him in the new covenant.
It is the Holy Spirit who makes the new covenant operate, who changes our flesh into the Torah of God.
In its purest sense the new covenant is an impartation of the grace of God—Divine virtue that transforms us into the image of Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who is the guiding Force that keeps on bringing us to a stronger grasp on Christ.
Every person, Christian or not, has a tendency toward sin and rebellion. Left unchecked our fleshly nature brings us down to destruction because it lusts for the things that are hurtful to us and that cause God to turn away from us. The law of sin and death is so powerful in us that we by nature sin against God, destroying our spirit, soul, and body in the process.
The Law of Moses magnifies the state of corruption in which we live and warns us of the consequences of sin against God and against people. The Law of Moses interacts with the law of sin in our flesh with the result that we are deceived and slain (Romans 7:11). God has a method for bringing us up out of this death. God’s method is the law of the Spirit of life in Christ.
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