Prescription or Inscription? (Part 1) Will we obey an external law based on rules or an internal law based on a new nature? The difference between internally adhering to the person of Jesus Christ and externally adhering to a prescription of “do’s” and “don’ts,” as concerning behavior or the development of Christian Character, is as fundamental as the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament and the implications each of these testaments or covenants represented to its respective adherents. At the core of both testaments is an appeal to a fundamental behavioral modification of the human heart, one based upon a prescription of law, the other on an inscription of law, one externally administered upon tablets of stone written by the hand of God (the Old Testament), and the other internally administered upon the tablet of the human heart inscribed by the Holy Spirit (the New Testament). An external adherence to prescriptive law (do’s and don’ts), which is the level of adherence of the Old Testament, however, proved to be an insufficient level of compliance, or perhaps an immature level of growth in regards to the perfect compliance God ultimately demanded of mankind; God’s solution was to introduce the New Testament, a better covenant founded upon better promises, and thereby internally inscribing upon the flesh of the human heart, not just the obligatory demand of the law of righteousness, but additionally the strength to obey what this law demanded. The Apostle Paul, who wrote the majority of the New Testament, and who, even by the Apostle Peter’s account, taught difficult things which the unlearned and unstable distort to their own destruction (see 2 Peter 3:14-16), wrote often of the theological idea of salvation by faith as opposed to works of righteousness. Paul even went so far as to teach that obeying decrees was like obeying the elementary principles of this world and the commandments and teachings of men; “If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men?” (Colossians 2: 20-22). Of course, Paul presupposes here the born-again experience which had the effect of killing off the person one formerly walked in. No longer is this former person afforded peace and mercy, not because God is stingy, but because He has left off tending to the unregenerate man; “For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God” (Galatians 6: 15-16). This rule herein mentioned by Paul is clearly not a rule of law, but a rule of nature; it is now the internal ruling disposition intrinsically resident in the new creation entity, even a restored or reformed conscience, which is now able to hear and obey the still small voice of God in real time. In other words, peace and mercy be upon the true Israelite, the born-again Christian, and not the natural born man each of us was born with. It is never again about how well or poorly the old creature behaves, because it is now entirely disingenuous. God has moved onto another plan and is no longer attendant to those things which are fading away. To walk anymore in this old creature, to even brush up against it inadvertently, or God forbid, purposely touch it, is as anathema as it was for an Old Testament priest to touch the dead body of a human being (within the prescriptions of their Law).
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 16:47:16 +0000
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