“Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18 KJV). The word “vision” in this scripture is used in a prophetic sense, a revealed understanding of a future reality. It says that if we lack a purpose and a clear direction of where we are going and how to get there, we are not going to “get there”. Knowing where we are going and our purpose, our intent, is extremely important.
God gives humanity a purpose, a destination, and He gives us a way to get there. The Bible is a complete system in that sense, and that system includes law. “Law” is actually not a terrific biblical translation of the word Torah; teaching or instruction is better. God gives us these instructions and we will naturally want to ask questions of them.
We must begin with the purpose. What is God’s purpose for humanity? Why law? God is not merely trying to save men’s souls, He is, in fact, creating God beings. He’s creating children for His family who will have the full, divine glory of His nature. God wants us to become god beings, like Him. The difference between “saving souls” and “creating God-beings” is pretty dramatic. The most significant difference between those two things is free moral agency.
Being saved is passive; it’s instantaneous. Whereas, creating a God-being requires the active engagement of the subject and it requires a creative process that includes time, growth, practice, and development. God has provided us with law as a system by which to produce in us a character that is identical to His own. He’s transforming us through a carefully planned, creative process that’s described in the Bible and includes law. It is a way of life, and He requires that we use our free moral agency to conscientiously choose to submit ourselves to His mind, His way, and His being so that He can birth us in the spirit and glory like His own. God’s goal for mankind is that we become God-beings, possessing His complete image—in form, character, and power.
His law is the expression of His mind. It is a primary tool of His creative efforts, and it is imperative for us. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). We see that echoed in the account of creation: “Let Us make man in our image, after Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). God, it says, is “Elohim”, a plural word. So, there are two beings in that family.
We are also given insight into our purpose: “Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Having predestinated us to the adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” (Ephesians 1:4 -5). Their purpose from the very beginning in the creation of man is that they would create us in their image (Genesis 1:26). It is a likeness similar to “a reflection of” or “the same as”. We now have physical bodies that are some kind of a reflection of Their spiritual bodies. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18, Philippians 3: 20-21). We are being conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).
What is that image? Who is Christ? Christ was there before there was a beginning (John 1:1-3,14). Christ as the Word took a subordinate role to God the Father. And our transformation is to: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. and being found in the appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death” (Philippians 2:5-8). We are to “…put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22-24).
The scope of God’s Plan for us is radical. We are to become like God in nature and character: “… by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Peter 1:4). “But also, for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love” (2 Peter 1:5-7). We certainly won’t be equal in authority or in role, but we will have the same life form, the same power, the same capacity, and the same potential.
We are begotten as “Sons of God” through the implanted seed of the Holy Spirit, and we will be born in Spirit as full-fledged children in the God Family: “Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should called the children of God! . . . Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. But we know that, when He is revealed, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone that has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 John 3:1-3).
How does God go about creating God-beings? God has designed a process and Jesus Christ, who is our pattern and our model, has demonstrated what that process is for us. What Christ has already become, we are promised to be. He is the firstborn Son of God. There are things that He became, and that is something we are becoming. Prior to being begotten in the flesh, Christ was not the Son of God; His time in the flesh mattered and what He did on earth mattered. And so does our time on the earth. Christ was incarnated in the flesh, conceding His power and His life, and became flesh just like us, for us. He became mortal.
Think about the sacrifices that Christ made for this plan of God and think about His crucifixion in the flesh. Think about that decision as an all-powerful God being who decided to give that all up and become mortal. He was begotten by God through the Holy Spirit and became His Son at that time (Luke 1:35, Romans 1:4, Hebrews 5:5-8). He lived without sin which qualified Him to fulfill the law as the sacrifice for all of humanity’s sins according to the law (Leviticus 23). He sacrificed His life in our stead; He died via the crucifixion of His body. This process was an expression of His faith in and submission to God the Father, and of His love for fellow man. His life was a complete sacrifice. In so doing, He became the firstborn Son of God, and our example.
The instruction and teaching in the Bible, which He inspired to be written, was His source of power as a human being and it is a model for us. The word of God is instruction. It is teaching. It is the law, and every word of God is useful for our instruction. Did any word of law proceed from the mouth of Moses? No, Moses spoke what God gave him to speak. What He gave to Moses was a package, a covenant, a body of laws, statutes, and judgments, a way of living. All of which are working not merely to “save us”, but to produce a product: children of God. Keeping God’s commandments serves a positive function in bringing us toward the goal that God is working out.
Law reflects the mind of Christ. Christ reflects God; it is the way by which we can abide with Christ. Once we are equipped with the Holy Spirit, the law is the way by which we reflect Christ, and He perfectly reflects the Father: “Blessed are the undefiled in the Way, who walk in the law of the Lord” (Psalm 119:1). The Way of God is defined by the law of God, and the law of God is the totality of teaching and instruction contained in God’s Holy Scripture.
Digesting, applying, and reflecting that law is our life’s work: “Every commandment which I command you today you must be careful to observe, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers. And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So, He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:1-3). Christ Himself quoted scripture when He was facing down Satan the devil.
In the contest between Paul and the law, the result is Paul’s death—not the death of the law: “For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:19-20).
So, “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
“For he who has died has been freed from (the penalty of) sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise, you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6: 1-11).
“And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. . . .But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. . . . But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life” (Romans 6:13, 17-18, 22).
We cannot earn salvation. It does not come by works. But we (our empirical selves) must die. We must be crucified; sacrificed; that God may raise us up, just as He did His Son. We are putting to death our old self by submitting to that law day by day, consuming it as our meat and drink, by rejecting the lusts of the flesh that oppose that law, conceding our personal dominion—that which wars in enmity against God—and living according to that law. And by embodying the law, we embody Christ, who embodies God the Father. Law has a purpose. It is imperative in bringing us to perfection. It is the tool of our crucifixion which is required for us to achieve resurrection to eternal life. Do not let anything distract or dissuade you. God is creating a Family; He is preparing a Kingdom. His people are to inherit sonship, brothers and sisters of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and children of our Father.
Staff