Law Of Liberty Vs Bible

By Author: Sixth Day Creation
Total Articles: 7
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Deuteronomy 5:15
In preparation for Mountain of God to enter the Promised Land, Moses repeats the commandments in Deuteronomy 5. The Sabbath command here has a significant change from its Perfect law of liberty Exodus 20. The emphasis here is to remember our slavery and, by implication, being free. "Remember that you were once a slave. Examine this day to stay free." The Sabbath brings out in us to recall the history and deem where we are headed in Split Rock of Horeb. We do this by remembering that the Sabbath is a memorial of creation and a type of Sixth-day celebration.
The ministry enhances this through the messages they preach about the world today and the world tomorrow. In some means, maximum ceremonies implicate crime, which can provoke us into slavery. James, however, names the Ten Commandments "the ordinance of liberty" (James 2:12). By protecting them, we stay free of enslavement to Satan and this nation. On the Sabbath, God instructs His people through His Word about how to keep His commandments and thus stay free.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fourth Commandment (Part One) (1997)
Matthew 12:1-8
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... Jesus understood God's statute and that additional interests (mercy, in this lawsuit; verse 7) might occasionally override the strict letter-of-the-law approach the Pharisees used. The Pharisees no doubt thought Jesus a flaming liberal, but to Jesus, He was working within the liberty God's law allows (see Psalm 119:45; John 8:31-32; II Corinthians 3:17; James 1:25; I Peter 2:16).
David F. Maas
Righteousness from Inside-Out
Matthew 23:23
Interestingly, of the three "weightier matters" Christ says to focus on—judgment, mercy, and faith—only one is even mentioned in the Ten Commandments. Forgiveness is not listed as one of the Ten or emphasised as an importer essential but as a blessing from God to the thousands who keep His law (Exodus 20:6).
How, then, do these three virtues carry such weight with the law? The Pharisees were in a horrendous spiritual condition. Notice that Christ did not merely say, "You are breaking the law—keep it!" They had the law, and they allegedly kept it, ever so minutely. The problem was that they had completely lost the meaning and purpose of the law! Rather than it being a joy and benefit to them, it had become a burden grievous to be borne and unhealthy to their spiritual state.
God intends the law to be "the law of liberty" (James 1:25; 2:12). If a person looks into it and obeys, he is liberated from guilt, shame, feelings of worthlessness, self-pity, abandonment, and loneliness. In short, we can only obtain joy and happiness when we keep the law with God's intended spirit and attitude. Any other use of the law or the breaking of it leads to adverse effects that preclude joy and happiness.
They had taken what Jesus and His Father had instituted as a blessing and turned it into a curse. Paul, "a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee" (Acts 23:6) recognised how the law could become an enemy: "And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death" (Romans 7:10). When the law is misapplied, the consequences are always destructive.
The scribes and Pharisees used the law on others like a club and perverted it for their selfish gain. "Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble" (James 1:27). How could anyone, by any stretch of the imagination, the reason a way to turn this around to the point he could turn widows and orphans out of their homes, then stand in the streets as if righteous, making long prayers to God?
Is it any wonder Christ denounces them so harshly? Considering the content and repetition in His vilification, Jesus Christ is as incensed at them as perhaps anyone He ever addresses in the Bible, Old or New Testament. After calling them snakes in Matthew 23:33, He questions if there is any way they can escape eternal damnation!
Yet in His righteous anger, He still gives them insight on how to correct their course, to put them back on track regarding the spirit and attitude necessary to keep the law correctly. Christ intends His instruction to cause us to think through three essential elements of the purpose of that law and how it should work to man's good.
To the Pharisees, He did not explain the relationship of judgment, mercy, and faith to the law. Why cast His pearls before swine? But if they would make an effort, He gave them a clue about how to straighten out their thinking. In so doing, they would re-establish the law's purpose and meaning and gain a correct perspective on how to keep it. History shows they did not take the hint.
Galatians 4:1-3
Paul uses an analogy that is similar to Galatians 3:23-25, where he likens the Old Covenant to a tutor meant to teach, but his application is very different. He says, "Now I say," indicating a different approach to his instruction.
As long as the heir is a child, as long as he is immature and unable to inherit, he is not much different from a servant. The child's potential is much higher, and his future is much brighter, but in day-to-day activities, he is restricted, limited, and controlled just as much as a servant of no lineage. The net effect of immaturity is the absence of control. The child, like a servant, can only respond to what happens to him rather than having any power over his well-being or destiny.