71. LAW vs. GRACE
--page 588--
Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ (Rom.7:4).
1. Jesus fulfilled the Law, therefore He ended it.
2. The Devil is for justice, he's a legalist, he's almost like the police system, he enforces the law on the lawbreakers!
3. The law is not made for the lawkeepers but the lawbreakers! (1Ti.1:9)
4. If you make the rules too hard, then people get rebellious & throw it all to the wind.
5. Justice has no mercy. Justice just decides if a thing is right or wrong & that's it. But love & mercy, though they know the sinner's wrong, they forgive.
6. Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
7. Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they are meant to serve.
8. We believe in obeying the laws of the land, every one we possibly can if we know about it. We believe in trying to be peaceful & not hurting anybody, but helping people. This is our way of life & our message.
9. If we stopped everything some people have doubts about, we couldn't do anything! If they doubt it, they shouldn't do it, but we have to carry on!
10. If you love God & you love others, what do you need with any other laws?--You're not going to do anything to hurt anybody.
11. We are only bound by God's law of love & this gives us a lot of freedom, but in another way it's the most binding law of all!--Because God's law of love not only says you can't steal, can't kill, can't do this, can't do that, but you've got to love everybody!--Which is one of the hardest things of all to do.
12. The law is our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ & the law is what we have to fall back on to solve a lot of situations when we don't have the love or the freedom we should have. If God could trust us with total freedom, if we had that much love & consideration & unselfishness & thoughtfulness & real concern for the other person & not wanting to hurt anybody, but love everybody, then God could trust us with more freedom, but usually He can't, because hardly anybody is that unselfish or loving or thoughtful.
13. There is only this law, the law of love: Love God with all your heart & thy neighbour as thyself.--The only part of the Ten Commandments that you have to keep now! Because if you keep that part, you keep all the rest. In fact, Jesus showed them they were not only keeping the Ten Commandments, but even more, because the Ten Commandments said that they were just to do that which was just & righteous, but under Jesus' Law of Love they were to do more than justice & righteousness, they were to have love & mercy, which is more than justice & righteousness.
14. Although God has given us all this freedom ourselves, we cannot be totally free, because we live in a World that's not free, & that has all kinds of laws against freedom! So you have to watch out you don't break those laws, or at least you have to watch out they don't catch you breaking them.
15. No one has ever been saved by anything but the grace of God through Jesus Christ, whether it was before or since Jesus Christ. We're all children of Abraham by faith. Abraham was saved by faith.
16. If you love your neighbour as yourself you'll put yourself in his place & wonder how you would feel if you were there & wonder what you would want & need to have fulfilled.
17. Love is greater than the law, because God is love. Love is God & God can do no wrong.
18. True love can do no wrong so how can it be under any law? How can it be against any law? He says, "Against such there's no law." (Gal.5:22-23) Against such love there is no law, so how can anything that you do in love be against the law? It may be against man's laws & church laws but it is certainly not against God's laws.
19. As far as God is concerned, there's no law but love except for the sinners who are outside of love & outside of faith & do not have God & reject Christ. They're under the old law, but not we who are believers & Christians & have faith & have Jesus Christ in our hearts & God in His love.
20. We are not judged by the old law, we are judged only by love, how much love we have & how much we give & how much we share.
21. The Lord really preferred the whole thing to be by grace & faith to begin with, that was His original plan. But He had to crack down with the rules because they didn't follow grace & faith & love. But keeping the rules didn't save them, they only showed them they were wrong.
22. We know that all Mosaic laws are null & void as far as we are concerned. Christ was the end of the law, He fulfilled the law & from then on we are no longer under the law.
23. It is impossible for anyone to be good according to the Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law makes every one of us a sinner, because not one of us can keep it. Nobody has ever kept the Ten Commandments except Jesus Christ Himself, nobody, it's impossible. That's why Jesus had to die for us so that we could be forgiven & be saved by His grace & His mercy & His love without the Law.
24. By the law we are judged for our sins & condemned to die & suffer. But Jesus came to save us by love, by His grace, by His mercy, showing that love & mercy are greater than the law.
25. Our whole doctrine of love is contrary to their doctrine of hate, their doctrine of enforcement & their doctrine of fear & terror.--It's totally contrary to their whole way. Therefore, of course, we lovers of love & the Lord are going to run afoul of the lovers of the law & legalism & we cannot possibly please them, because, love is love & law is law & never the twain shall meet.
26. God's only law is love, there is now no other law, no Mosaic Law, no church law, no law against adultery.--Those laws don't exist as far as we're concerned. They are only to regulate the ungodly, as He says in 1Tim.1:9, & by which the unrighteous who are violating the law of God will be judged.
27. God's love is absolutely lawful in God's eyes no matter whether it be a sin in the eyes of the churches & a crime in the eyes of man, it's still absolutely innocent in the eyes of God if it's according to love.
28. God now only judges according to whether we have love or no love--whether we have love or hate--whether what we do is done in love or selfishness & lack of love. The one who had love & acted in love is the innocent party & the one who acted without love because he or she had no love is the guilty party.
29. If you know you're acting in love, then you can go ahead by faith according to God's word & you don't need anything else, you don't need any other laws to go by, you don't need any other laws to confirm it, you're not guilty of disobeying God's laws as long as whatever you're doing you're doing in love.
30. If you are strong enough in spirit & filled with His love, you can be trusted with this liberty as a useful tool to help others. But if you are weak in the flesh, full of selfish lusts & play with it foolishly like a dangerous toy, it will only harm you & others & hinder the work of God.
31. When people start going back to these old legalistic Scriptures, even some of the legalism of Paul, then they are turning their backs on the freedom of grace & the liberty which the Lord has given us & the new wine & the new truth & the new revelations which are for us today, here & now, not for Paul & his day, much less for Moses & his day.
32. Our only rule & God's only law is love. You must have the love of God in your heart, you must believe in Jesus His Son & you must love one another & your neighbour as yourself.
33. God's law is love, not a cold, rigid, traditional, self-righteous service according to false, unscriptural & ungodly rules of certain religions.
34. God can break His Own rules if He wants to. If in this last generation He wants to throw out the whole rulebook & give you a whole new set of love rules to go by, God is the One Who makes the rules--not men!
35. God threw out the whole Mosaic rulebook when He started the Christian revolution back in the time of the Apostles. He practically threw out most of the Old Testament, the Mosaic Laws & the Ten Commandments & the old legalism & started all over again with nothing but the rule of love!
36. Each generation of the Church has taken some new step toward freedom from such harsh restrictions of the law to the total freedom of love through the grace of God, from material symbolisms & mechanical ceremonialism to spiritual realities & total spiritual liberty--"the spirits of just men set free"!
37. The old Law of Moses spelled out in detail how & what you ought to do if you are loving & love others, that you won't do this & you will do that, etc. But once you've got the Spirit Herself, once you've got Love itself, you don't need that old Law because you just won't do those things you shouldn't do & you will voluntarily do those things you should do.
(See also No.S, 25, 45, 73A, 91, 121, 302C, 317B, 531, 576, 592, 594, 605, 635, 647, 648, 696, 999, 1004, 1253, 1439, 1500, 1548.)
38. MAT.5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
39. MAT.7:12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.
40. LUK.11:41b Behold, all things are clean unto you.
41. JOH.1:17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
42. ACT.13:39 And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.
43. ROM.3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
44. ROM.6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.
45. ROM.7:4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ.
46. ROM.7:6 But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
47. ROM.10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.
48. ROM.13:8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
49. ROM.13:10b Love is the fulfilling of the law.
50. ROM.14:20 For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence.
51. 1CO.6:12 All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.
52. 2CO.3:6b For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
53. GAL.3:24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
54. GAL.5:18 But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.
55. 1TI.1:9 Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,
56. TIT.1:15 Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.
57. HEB.10:9 Then said he, Lo, I come to do Thy Will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.
58. JAM.1:25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
59. JAM.2:8 If ye fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well.
(See also ROM.14:1-23; 1CO.8:8-13; HEB.10:1-5.)
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family