Imagine that you had just brought home your vehicle from the mechanic after having the brakes done on it. They work just great, strong and firm when you press down on the pedal, but for some strange reason you decided to grab your toolbox from the garage and proceed to remove those brand new brake pads and put those old, worn out ones back on again. It would seem rather absurd, wouldn’t it? All of that work that your mechanic had just done would be pointless and wasted.
This type of scenario is similar to when someone has become a Christian, but then for some reason they decide to go back into the Old Testament and the Law in an attempt to try to keep it. If thousands of years of history have taught us anything it should be that absolutely no one has ever been able to keep the Law perfectly in it’s entirety, because everyone who tried had failed somewhere at some point. No one could do it. No one until Jesus. It was only until Jesus kept the Law perfectly that anyone had done it, and when Jesus accomplished this what did He do? He took it away. He instituted grace and mercy. When He said the words “it is finished” just before He died on the cross, the Law was put away and abolished, as He ushered in the New Testament.
Now the New Testament is so much better than the Old. So much easier, so much simpler, so much superior, just like a brand new set of brakes that I referenced earlier. But what some people are doing when they try to go back into the Law in the Old Testament in an attempt to keep it is making the sacrifice that Jesus gave pointless. It has already been established clearly that salvation couldn’t come through the keeping of the Law, but only through Jesus, so why would someone try? All they are doing is making what Jesus did of none effect to them.
Galatians 5:1-4 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.
For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.
Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.
The Law was bondage, truly it was, because you were constantly under all of those many rules that had to be done and kept. From keeping the many feast days, to the abstaining from eating or touching certain things, the Law was filled with so many different things that had to be done. So many things in fact that no one ever kept everything perfectly, and this is why we are now in the New Testament of the grace of Christ. Jesus has made it simple, teaching us to love one another. Why go back and make it hard once again and try to keep something that no one else could?
Jesus died for a reason and that reason was so that we could be saved, something that the law of the Old Testament could not do. We have it easier now. We have it better. Don’t waste the gift that Jesus has given you by trying to keep the Law, you can’t do it all. Just accept Christ’s gift and enjoy the grace and liberty He has provided, and live in the New, not the Old.
In Christ
Andrew
Teufer Lake King James Bible Church 