no more rules

            Hebrews 10 says:

1  The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming - not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.

2  If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins.

3  But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins,

4  because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

5  Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me;

6  with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased.

7  Then I said, ‘Here I am - it is written about me in the scroll - I have come to do your will, O God.’”

8  First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them” (although the law required them to be made).

9  Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second.

10  And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

            We have all lived under some kind of law.

As children, our parents had rules that we were expected to obey or face the consequences. Some of us remember times when our parents “laid down the law” and we knew we were in big trouble.

Our schools had rules about behaviour and homework and returning library books, again with consequences for disobedience. In older generations, there was the strap. In more recent generations, there are study hall, suspensions and expulsions.

The companies we work for have employee handbooks, health and safety rules, work procedures manuals, and so on. In our performance reviews, we find out how well we’ve done in comparison with what’s been expected of us and how much we will be paid as a result.

Our churches have constitutions and rules regarding membership. They also have church discipline and disfellowshipping for offenders.

We marry and discover that both partners have unwritten rules - expectations about what each partner should bring to the relationship and what each should be doing within the family. Some of us have marriage contracts. Breaking too many rules can bring separation or even divorce.

            There is nothing that we do and no place where we can go where there are no rules. “Oh,” you may be thinking, “I could go to a desert island and live all by myself. There would be no rules there.” But, I’m sorry to say, there would be. Because we all have internal rules, and we can’t get away from those. Look at how God has designed us (Romans 2):

14  (Indeed, when Gentiles [unbelievers], who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law,

15  since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)

So we are born with God’s law written on our hearts. In addition to this, back at the beginning of time, the first man and the first woman chose to live according to the knowledge of good and evil - according to laws of their own making - and people have been born in that image ever since.

We are people under the law - it’s in our DNA. This means that, left to ourselves, we can’t stop making rules and trying to live by them, not to mention trying to get other people to live by them. It’s at the core of what the two people who began human history made us to be. We are creatures who know right from wrong. At least, we like to think we are. Human history has demonstrated, however, that we really haven’t a clue. Family courts show us that we haven’t a clue. Crime rates, abuse rates, divorce rates, addiction statistics, the unending list of wars on our planet, the destruction of our planet, and the many people we each have hurt even unintentionally demonstrate that we haven’t a clue how to tell right from wrong or, if we can tell because we are in touch with the law of God written on our hearts, we seem to lack the power to live according to that knowledge (Romans 8:3a).[1]

And so we have Hebrews 10. God knew from the beginning what people take a very long time to admit: we can’t do it. We are utter failures at living good lives. Some of us seem to be able to live better lives than the next guy or pretty decent lives, but none of us has lived a 100% good life. We all have checkered backgrounds. We have all done bad, wrong and stupid things. And we all have people who dislike us or fear us for very good reasons.

That’s really bad news for those of us who hope to live longer than the 70 or so years we’ll have on this earth. If there’s an afterlife with a good God overseeing that life, would we make the grade with Him? Which brings us to the really, really bad news. The really, really bad news is that no one has a snowball’s chance in hell of making God’s grade. His standard is way beyond anything anyone could hope to achieve:

Leviticus 11

            44  “I am the LORD your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy.”

1 Peter 1

15  But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do;

16  for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

Many people claim that they’re good people. But I doubt there’s a single person who would claim to be holy as God is. Yet that’s the standard for being in God’s good books and being a welcome part of His family both now and hereafter.

            So what’s a person to do? The simple answer to that question is: “Absolutely nothing.” There’s nothing you can do. You’ve already blown it more times than you can remember. That’s the truly depressing news. Imagine, for example, crashing out of the sky in an airplane and finding yourself alive but with a broken leg in the middle of the Sahara Desert. The plane’s transmitter died long before the crash, no one knows where you are, and you will have to walk thousands of kilometers with no water and on a broken leg to save yourself. Or imagine crashing under the same circumstances in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and you have to swim. It doesn’t matter, in the first example, if you’re a marathon runner, and it doesn’t matter, in the second example, if you’re a long-distance swimmer. You just aren’t going to make it. Yes, you’re better than most people you’ll ever meet, but you’re just as doomed as they are in these extreme circumstances. Oh, others may die a few days before you do, but you’ll all be dead within a week. Now bring that hopelessness to trying to squeak past God’s standards into His heaven. The same applies. You may look a little better than the next guy, but you both fall so short of measuring up to the standard of God’s glory that you’re both equally doomed. There is nothing anyone can do to fix this.

            So God fixed the problem Himself. In order to do that, He had to do two things.

            First, justice had to be paid. We all know that. Deep down, even though we all want a second chance when we blow it, we really do know that the second chance is not fair. We show that when we get angry over some judge who was lenient on a criminal we think should have got the book thrown at him. We show it when we watch sporting events and we believe the referee has made a bad call. We show it when our children defy us and all we feel is anger and all we can think of is what punishment is good enough for them. We show it when we think our spouse isn’t doing their share of the work at home and we begin to harbour resentment until finally we blow and start a fight where anger and hard words fly. We show it when someone at work gets the promotion we deserve and we can no longer bring ourselves to do coffee breaks with that person. Deep down, we all know that, if someone does wrong or something unfair happens, there should be a penalty and justice should be served. This is because we are made in the image of God, and God is a judge - a God of justice who knows that a penalty does, indeed, need to fall on wrong. And the penalty for violating the glory of God and offending God’s holiness is death:

Ezekiel 18

4  The soul who sins is the one who will die.

Romans 6

23  For the wages of sin is death …

            But God is also love, and He has loved us always - even while we are sinners who offend Him and stir His wrath. So, from all eternity, from before the day He made the first man and the first woman, knowing before creation that people would go wrong and bring the penalty of death down on themselves, God planned to continue loving us and to take the penalty for all humankind Himself:

Romans 5

8  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Revelation 13

8  All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast - all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.

Jesus Christ would satisfy justice for us. And so Jesus, God the Son, died on a cross 2,000 years ago with the sin of the whole of mankind on him (2 Peter 2:24): “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” And three days later He rose from the dead. Forty days later He returned to heaven, where He waits for people to make their choice. There is nothing that people can do themselves to “measure up” to God’s standard of holiness. They have just one choice: accept or reject Jesus’ offer of forgiveness:

Ephesians 2

8  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God -

9  not by works, so that no one can boast.

John 1

12  Yet to all who received him [Jesus], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God -

13  children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

            In exchange for our faith in Jesus, we are given God’s perfect righteousness, which is the second thing God needed to do for us so that we make the grade:

2 Corinthians 5

21  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Philippians 3

8  What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ

9  and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

            To sum up, we all are born under a system of rules - God’s rules and the rules of other people. We all fail to live up to those rules, especially God’s. That “love your enemies”[2] rule alone takes most of us out. But God loves us so much that He took our penalty and satisfied justice for us. If we believe this and receive Christ and the forgiveness that He has for us, we then receive the righteousness of God - all as a gift. And we start life completely without rules:

Galatians 3

25  Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.

Galatians 4

4  But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law,

5  to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.

Romans 10

4  Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

            The old covenant that people had with God - the agreement to keep God’s law in exchange for His blessings - is completely gone (Hebrews 8):

6  But the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs [the Old Testament priests] as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, and it is founded on better promises.

7  For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another.

8  But God found fault with the people and said: “The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

9  It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord.

10  This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

11  No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.

12  For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

13  By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.

The old covenant had to go. We couldn’t be saved under it because of our weak natures that tend to sin (Romans 8:3): “For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.” A new covenant was needed and has been given:

Hebrews 10

15  The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:

16  “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”

17  Then he adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”

            This covenant is written in our hearts and minds. As believers, we have a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26): “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Our old heart had the “requirements of the law” (Romans 2:14-15)[3] written on it, but it had no power to meet those requirements (Romans 8:3a).[4] However, our new heart fully meets “the righteous requirements of the law” (Romans 8:4).[5] Our new heart is holy, filled with God’s grace (his unchanging love) and “the gift of righteousness” (Romans 5:17).[6] We are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17): “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” We no longer live by rules, but according to God’s Holy Spirit (Romans 8):

1  Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,

2  because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.

3  For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man,

4  in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

You can’t pin a Christian down by rules (John 3:8) [Jesus speaking]: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” Christians will be forever unpredictable by the world’s standards. They will live according to how the Spirit prompts them to, and that will always surprise the world. The world, for example, expects that people will hate their enemies, but Christians will love their enemies. The world expects to forgive someone a few times and then write them off, but Christians will forgive without counting (Matthew 18:21-22).[7] The world expects people to worry when bad news comes, but Christians have a peace that passes understanding (Philippians 4:6-7).[8]

No rules means a lot of very good things for the believer. For one, no one can tell us any longer what to do or what not to do in order to measure up. There are for the believer no rules for “measuring up” or “making the grade” or being a good this or a good that. Does this mean, then, that we should let our kids run wild or allow our believing friends to do anything they want whether or not what they are doing hurts us or them or someone else?” Absolutely not! Galatians 6:1 says: “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.” However, our fellow believer who sins still measures up. That person still has the righteousness of God as a gift. We can share with anyone that we think their behaviour is wrong, and we can bring discipline to bear on our kids. But their good or bad behaviour is not the measure of their worth.

Also, we as Christians don’t need a list to tell us how to live because (Hebrews 10:16): “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” All we need is what God has graciously given to us:

12  . . . when this priest [Jesus] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

13  Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool,

14  because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

15  The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:

16  “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”

17  Then he adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”

We Christians are “perfect forever” already, and we have God’s law and will written right in our own hearts, leading us, along with the guidance of the Holy Spirit within us, into life and peace, with the “righteous requirements of the law . . . fully met in us” (Romans 8):

3  For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man,

4  in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

5  Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.

6  The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace;

7  the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.

8  Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.

9  You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.

The believer also has no more guilt problem. Yes, the Holy Spirit will still prick our conscience when we do wrong. And God may discipline us if we continue in wayward ways (Hebrews 12:5-7).[9] When this happens, we confess and are cleansed (1 John 1:9).[10] For a Christian, a pricked conscience, God’s discipline and confession are all for one reason and one reason only: to fix the problem so we can be free of that problem (Galatians 5:1a): “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” But there is no guilt complex, no low self-esteem, no compulsive busyness in order to be accepted by others, no rescuing in order to feel good about ourself, and so on, under which Christians should continue to live. God says (Hebrews 10):

17a  “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”

18  And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin.

We don’t have to do penance, to prove anything to anyone, or to justify our existence through good works. There is “no longer any sacrifice for sin” that we need to make. Our slate is absolutely clean. There is no condemnation on us (Romans 8):

1  Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,

2  because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.

Yes, if we’ve committed a crime, we may need to “pay our debt” to society. Yes, others may hold things against us. And others may try their best to make us feel bad about ourselves. But none of that adds up to a guilty conscience or a need for the believer to do penance since God has said about every believer that there is no longer any sacrifice needed for their sin. Christ’s sacrifice was enough for that. We are a free people, uncondemned.

            Finally, because there are no more rules for a Christian, any Christian is free to come to God full of confidence that there is nothing about them or their life that will cause God to frown at them (Hebrews 10):

19  Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus,

20  by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body,

21  and since we have a great priest over the house of God,

22  let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.

This invitation to draw near to God is open to us as believers even when we are needy, or we’ve “blown it”, or no one else seems to be standing by us right at the moment (Hebrews 4:16): “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” It doesn’t matter what our earthly state is, we can come to God confident that we are 100% presentable to Him and 100% loved at all times.