A CONFUSING MIX OF RULES AND REGULATIONS
STUDY TIP: Before reading this series of pages, it will be instructive to first read The Law. There readers will learn that Biblical references to “law” can be reduced to two very different kinds of laws: Religious laws and God’s spiritual laws.
God does not call the law a stumbling block without good reason. First of all, humans, with all their biases and shortcomings have shaped the Bible to conform to their religious beliefs. They are blind guides leading their followers (i.e. readers) into a pit. When they follow religious leaders both the leaders and followers stumble into the pit of religion. Here are scriptures that discuss stumbling:
1 Corinthians 1:18-26 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” 20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. 26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.
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Hosea 4:1-5 Hear the word of the LORD, you Israelites, because the LORD has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. 2 There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. 3 Because of this the land dries up, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea are swept away. 4 “But let no one bring a charge, let no one accuse another, for your people are like those who bring charges against a priest. 5 You stumble day and night, and the prophets stumble with you. So I will destroy your mother—
COMMENTARY: Faithlessness, lack of love, cursing, lying, murdering, stealing, adultery and bloodshed are all consequences of stumbling over religion.
Your mother is symbolic language for religion. Religious people become religious because they listen to the teachings of religious leaders who are symbolically mothers who give birth to religious people when they spread the seeds of religion with their mouths. These religious leaders are God’s enemies. That is why he will destroy them.
Malachi 2:8 But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi,” says the LORD Almighty.
COMMENTARY: See this link for understanding of “the way.”
1 Corinthians 2:14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
COMMENTARY: The things that come from the spirit are God’s words. New Covenant disciples are able to discern the things that come from the spirit of God. The spirit of God is the messenger through which God speaks.
Old/First Covenant religionists have hard hearts that prevent them from hearing God’s voice. They do not have discern between God’s voice and the voices of false prophets.
Proverbs 3:11-23 My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, 12 because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in. 13 Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding,
COMMENTARY: Wisdom is one of many symbolic terms used to describe God’s spoken word. Wisdom (i.e. God’s spoken word) is what God uses to discipline those he loves. Wisdom and love both describe God’s spoken word.
STUDY TIP: See Love and this link for understanding of love.
God’s love, discipline, rebuke and wisdom are tied together because they all refer to God’s spoken word
14 for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. 15 She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her.16 Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. 17 Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. 18 She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her; those who hold her fast will be blessed.
COMMENTARY: These verses refer directly to wisdom, but, because wisdom, discipline, rebuke and love all refer to God’s spoken word, these verses could be rightly translated as follows:
God’s spoken word is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. God’s spoken word is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with God’s spoken word. Long life is in God’s spoken word; in God’s spoken word are riches and honor. God’s spoken words are pleasant ways, and all of God’s spoken words are paths to peace. God’s spoken word is a tree of life to those who listen to it; those who listen to it will be blessed.
19 By wisdom the LORD laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place; 20 by his knowledge the watery depths were divided, and the clouds let drop the dew. 21 My son, do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight, preserve sound judgment and discretion; 22 they will be life for you, an ornament to grace your neck. 23 Then you will go on your way in safety, and your foot will not stumble.
COMMENTARY: People who do not have wisdom (i.e. do not listen to God’s spoken word) do not have sound judgment or discretion. They are not safe from the snares and traps religion. They will stumble into religion.
Isaiah 8:15 Many of them will stumble; they will fall and be broken, they will be snared and captured.”
COMMENTARY:
Proverbs 4:12 When you walk, your steps will not be hampered; when you run, you will not stumble.
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Jeremiah 50:32 The arrogant one will stumble and fall and no one will help her up; I will kindle a fire in her towns that will consume all who are around her.”
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Proverbs 4:19 But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble.
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Jeremiah 18:15 Yet my people have forgotten me; they burn incense to worthless idols, which made them stumble in their ways, in the ancient paths. They made them walk in byways, on roads not built up.
COMMENTARY:***
Then we have the fact that the Bible is full of various kinds of rules and regulations that appear to direct the way to holiness, salvation and God. Not only are these laws hard to understand, they are hard to identify, catalog and do. Furthermore, even though these laws are identified as commandments, charges, ordinances, statutes and judgments which the Bible literally says people are to to, they are not what God really wants his people to do. People who try to achieve holiness by performing all these literal rules and regulations have stumbled over the stumbling block. What can be more confusing than that? God says one thing and means another. With complications like these, it seems impossible to please God. But, take heart dear reader, it is possible.
STUDY TIPS: See God’s Written Word and God’s Spoken Voice for discussion on knowing what God really wants. Also read the rest of this website for examples of how to interpret the spiritual content of the Bible which God wants people to obey and distinguish it from the literal, written word that he does not want people to obey.
Also see First the Natural and Then the Spiritual for understanding of how it seems like God says one thing but does not really mean what he says.
If we would be honest with ourselves, with others and God, we would have to admit that these literal laws are confusing and impossible to obey. And yet, all religionists are compelled to do their best to obey all the laws because God has clearly instructed his people to be holy as he is holy while detailing out the many terms of the law. We thus get the clear sense that obedience to each and every detail of the law, no matter how vague, complicated, and even ridiculous it might be, is critical to personal holiness. And because of the ways these legal concepts are used singly and in various combinations, we also get the idea that it is important to differentiate between different types of laws (i.e. moral, ceremonial, civil, and judicial) so that we would be better equipped to understand and obey all of them. In human terms, that is good, logical thinking, but that is not what God has in mind.
STUDY TIP: Before we get to God’s purposes in the details of the law, we must recognize that the number of scriptures with legal-sounding words in the New Testament is significantly less than the number found in the Old Testament. This makes sense considering the fact that the New Testament is about the New Covenant.
Whereas the Old/First Covenant is all about the written law in all of its explicit details, the New Covenant is about the law written on the hearts of New Covenant disciples. That being the case, there is really no need for detailed discussion about the written law like we find in the Old Testament.
Because the spiritual law in all its complexity is spiritually written on the hearts of New Covenant disciples as needed and when needed by the Holy Spirit, it is not necessary for people who want to be obedient to have all the legal details in writing so that they can bring them to awareness for application at an appropriate time in an appropriate place. Life problems are too many and too complicated for a list of laws, no matter how detailed, to cover all the kinds of situations that humans encounter.
Jews, for example, no matter how super-spiritual and observant they may be, are unable to obey all of the written laws of the Old/First Covenant (i.e. the Torah). Similarly, no Christian, no matter how sincere he or she may be, is able to be a true follower of Jesus through sheer force of will and conscious effort. They claim that they are followers of Jesus, but, unless they incorporate all of Jesus’ personal qualities, and unless they personally fulfill all of Jesus’ ministry functions, their claims are vain, empty boasts that are hallmarks of fake faith.
God is so big and so beyond human understanding, that no amount of human language — including the words of the Bible — could ever come close to explaining him or his laws. No amount of human effort will empower anyone to be holy as God is holy. Jesus also is so complex and perfect that no one can conform to his likeness and obey his commands by human effort. It is a fool’s errand to try to be holy through application of human intellect and reasoning through human effort.
It would be offensive to God to suggest that the laws written in the Bible come close to explaining him. Therefore, the only way God can communicate the full truth about himself and his laws is to write them on the hearts of his people so they are always accessible for application in every life circumstance. Another way to put it is that the written law is static, and limited in scope, while God’s spirit and his spiritual laws are fluid, dynamic and unlimited — just like God.
Regrettably, the religions of both Jews and Christians are based on the static, written law. In God’s terminology, they are slaves to the Old/First Covenant on which the Law of Moses and other written laws are based.
This begins to explain why Christ (i.e. the New Covenant) is considered to be the end of the law. What this essentially means is that, when people are set free from Old/First Covenant religion that adheres to the static, written law (i.e. the literal words of the Bible), their spiritual eyes and ears are opened to the fullness of understanding of God’s laws (i.e. his character) written on their hearts with spiritual words — not natural, human words. Then they are no longer limited to the intellectual understanding of God that they try to glean from human words. This is the freedom for which they have been set free.
God makes his point about the complexity of the law by giving hundreds, perhaps thousands of scriptures about various aspects of the law. That seems like overkill or redundancy to anyone who wants to serve a simple god. But, anyone who stops to think about the many commandments found in the law will sooner or later come to the conclusion that keeping them all straight and doing them in a timely, thorough way is humanly impossible — even if they could be understood.
This is an important realization to come to because much time and effort will be wasted trying to obey even the few laws that can be understood with the natural mind with the limited amount of time and energy people have available to devote to keeping them. They will become burned out and frustrated trying to obey all of God’s written laws found in the Bible. And those who do not make the effort to obey them all will live with guilt and fear in the awareness that they are not doing enough or that what they are not doing the right things at the right time in the right way. That is why God calls the Old/First Covenant a covenant of death.
After coming to the realization that efforts to keep God’s laws which have been translated into religion is all vain striving to be spiritual, people will do the following:
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When people come to these realizations and make these decisions, they make an important transition from being a religionist to becoming a disciple. God calls that process transformation of the mind which is necessary in order to know God’s good, acceptable and perfect will. In reading the Bible literally, they know God’s incomplete, imperfect, shadow of God’s will. But what they learn is not acceptable and not perfect. What they read in the literal Bible is an imperfect shadow or image that is not able to impart life.
If they could be honest with themselves, others, and God, they would confess that all the fussy laws about animal sacrifices, washing and food, for example, are silly, out of date and even pagan. Christians will even conclude that all the stuff of church and its many rituals is worthless striving after the wind (i.e. trying to be spiritual). It is a curious contradiction, however, that Christians, while rejecting these archaic laws of the Old/First Testament, readily accept what God says about priests, temples, tithes and worship. They pick and choose the ones they think they understand and do their best to obey them in ways that are consistent with the times in which they live, but they are still striving to be spiritual. They are double minded.
What we observe from this history is that religion evolves over time and geography according to changing tastes, leadership, technology and social patterns. The word that is commonly used to describe this phenomenon is syncretism. The changes are slow, almost to the point of being imperceptible, but man’s religious imaginations and schemes of what it means to be holy do change over time even though God does not change. The result is evolving religious standards for righteousness based on evolving interpretations of the law suggested by a new religious leader with a new interpretation of scripture. A rational mind, it seems, should be able to figure out that such changes are inconsistent with a God who does not change. Those who do see this inconsistency are on their way to being liberated from religion.
STUDY TIP: These changes in the law over time strongly relate to the so-called end times prophecy found in Daniel 7 where we find that the fourth beast wore out the saints and changed the time and the law. The law which changed, of course, was man’s religious laws — not God’s eternal laws written on the hearts of men.
This leads us to the conclusion that the “end-times” are not some global, apocalyptic event as is commonly portrayed by religionists who specialize in eschatology. Given the evidence of the evolution of Judaism and Christianity, we find that the end times have been around forever because the saints in every generation have been worn out with their religious activity and because the laws have been evolving.
STUDY TIP: See this link for understanding of the end times.
Even though God has said that no one will achieve righteousness through human, fleshly effort, religionists are dedicated to proving God wrong by gaining righteousness through religious activities. That is why hundreds of generations of Jews and Christians up to the present day did not learn and have not yet learned how to rest from their religious works. They do not know the difference between their Defiled Religion which is based on legalistic performance of rules and regulations, and Pure Religion which is based on obedience to spiritual laws written on the hearts of people.
What these burned out religionists did not learn and have yet to learn is that they are better off doing less work and more listening — where the listening is to the spirit of God speaking to their hearts.
Religion is not what God wants — even though a literal reading of the books of the law leads us to think that God wants people do follow a bunch of rules and religious ceremonies. That simple, one-dimensional, literal reading of the Bible has kept generations of people in bondage to religious activity.
Despite the authority of the books of the law, Religion is nothing more than rules made up by men. Religion based on the literal reading of the law is doing things that can be seen, walking by sight — not by faith. It is working for salvation which is Old/First Covenant religion. It is not New Covenant faith which depends on obedience to God’s voice.
STUDY TIP: See God’s Written Word and God’s Spoken Voice for more about God’s voice.
These poor, tired, lost souls are deceived into believing that obedience to the written law and rules taught by men are the way to salvation — whatever that means. They are totally ignorant of the New Covenant where God’s spiritual laws are written on the heart so they can rest from all of their religious work. They are ignorant of the fact that the Messiah came to bring people to the end of working for their salvation and come to rest in the New Covenant. They do not realize that the salvation that God offers to them is rest from their religious enemies who keep them in slavery to deceptive religious laws.
This pattern of exile and deliverance explains why God sets the stumbling block of religion before his people: They must have the experience (i.e. signs and wonders) of being delivered from religion before they can appreciate that he is the Lord. We see it most clearly in the following stories:
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These and all other stories communicate the theme of death, resurrection and new life. The following are a few examples of the ways that New Covenant disciples understand the differences between death and life:
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Old/First Covenant religionists cannot relate to these experience because they have not been delivered and have no memory of the process by which they were delivered. They think that they are spiritually alive but they are spiritually dead. They think they have spiritual knowledge but all they have is worldly knowledge. They listen to false prophets but do not listen to true prophets or to God’s spoken voice. They look for physical miracles but have not experienced the spiritual miracle of having God give them a new heart and giving them spiritual eyes and ears.
Lacking these spiritual signs and wonders, Old/First Covenant religionists comfort, excite and feed themselves with religion. The form and intensity of the religious experience may vary in intensity from time to time, from religion to religion and from individual to individual, but there is always something in the religious worship ritual that satisfies those who do it. This happens because God has hard-wired all humans to experience fleshly excitement of the mind and emotions while engaged in repetitive religious activities with other people.