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1.20.2008

To fallen man the perfect law of God is the bondage of the Beast system


A Christian dies to the law. This is not well-understood among Christians or the teachers of Christians. To die to the law means to see your own nothingness. Truly. Getting beaten down by the world and your own vain foolishness helps. But one way or another you have to die to the law. First you have to understand that the perfect law of God is not what human beings understand it to be. People don't know it as a curse, because they still think they can follow it and be 'good' in God's sight and go to heaven. People don't realize they distort and pervert God's perfect law into vain moralism and proud self-righteousness and self-willful false piety. The law is the Beast system.

Basically to die to the law you have to truly see how you are dead in sin and thoroughly corrupt from the womb, and see that any thought, word, or deed - good, bad, or indifferent - that manifests from your being is as a filthy rag in the sight of God. You have to cease thinking you can follow the law and thus save yourself. As if a poisonous snake that has never struck anyone with its fangs could be let into the crib of an infant. But it's a 'good' snake! It's never struck anybody with its poison-delivering fangs! No, but it is its nature to strike with its fangs; but even beyond that it has poison inside it. It is not 'good' precisely because it has poison inside its being. It was born with that poison inside its being. And, again, it is its nature to strike, and so it will, eventually. It needs to have its nature changed and its poison removed from its being. Only God can do that. So it doesn't matter if the snake 'follows the law' and doesn't strike. It can't take the poison out of its body, and it can't change its very nature to strike. It has to 'die to the law' by ceasing to think it is being 'good' just because it hasn't struck anybody with its fangs.

Adam's fall made sinners of us all. We are born sinners. Original sin as part of our being from the womb. Then active sins adding to that. Yet people congregate in various villages of morality (to use Bunyan's language) and think they are good ol' boys and girls when all they have is the bondage and darkness of self-righteousness. They compare themselves to other people and thus come out, in their view, looking pretty good. A Christian has to compare himself to God and God's infinite holiness to begin to see the depth and degree of corruption that makes up his very essence. Then he has a chance to die to the law. Which is an awakening. But it is also a painful experience. It is a leaving of the world and entering the Way, which doesn't promise all flowers and sunshine and smiles. We experience what Jesus experienced.

And this is a difficult part of all this for Christians to accept: family is as much 'world' as the world around you is. Jesus made this point to us explicitly. In the churches you see moralising and self-righteousness that grows around notions of being a family man. The churches themselves become places for families. I.e. not for strangers. And Christians are strangers in this world. The holier-than-thou virus and self-righteousness virus and moralism virus infect people who affect to be 'separated' from the world when they are making the world to a more concentrated degree right in the temple of God itself. Enough on that difficult subject.

A Christian dies to the law. Then comes alive in Christ. Once alive in Christ the law is something you do because it is what you are. You are the image of God, and God's perfect law is natural to you. This can best be seen in spiritual warfare. It is something we want to engage in. Because it is what we are to engage in spiritual warfare. We are soldiers of Christ in our heart. We don't have to be bribed or coaxed or convinced or threatened with punishment to engage in spiritual warfare, we just do it naturally. The law is no longer a chain about our neck that compells us to do something we'd rather not do. The law becomes what we are. It is our heart.

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