1. A truly practical understanding of the Christian faith. Church leaders and educators have let us down.
2. The Christian faith is reality. It is based in creation, history, human nature, law, and Gospel.
3. Law has to be seen as something almost tangible. Like a medium we exist in and that we use and abuse. It's kind of like the logos (word) spoken of in the Gospel of John, chapter 1. It's something we can't escape, any more than a fish can escape water.
4. We feel this phenomena of law in the personal/social realm. In the realm of government/state. And in the larger realm of the religions operated on high by fallen angels and in this world by fallen man.
5. At first, in the Garden, we were in harmony with this law. Then after the fall of Adam we became out of harmony with this law. The law became a curse. It began to be twisted and distorted and even turned upside down as it began to be used by fallen angels and fallen man to coerce and control and enslave.
6. We mostly know the law - as Christians - as being a curse because we can't fulfill it after the fall and as carrying the penalty of death which we can't escape. As Christians, though, those aspects of the law have been taken care of by Jesus who fulfilled the law and paid the penalty of death for us all making the law no more an undefeatable curse. This is the good news of the Gospel.
7. Yet the law still remains to be used by fallen angels and fallen man in its twisted, distorted form as false religion; and by the state as coercive force; and in our social sphere as manipulation and attack in various ways. (Accusing and shaming are big aspects of the law of God as it's wielded in its distorted form.)
8. A Christian has to learn how to deal with these remaining perverted uses of the law at these three different levels in the battle with the world, the flesh, and the Devil.
9. We are freed from the curse of the law, yet while still in the flesh we are on a spiritual battlefield where we have to deal with these remaining elements of the law.
10. When Jesus teaches us how to act in general, for instance to love our enemy, He is teaching us how to do battle with the now perverted law as it is wielded by fallen angels and fallen man. All of Jesus' teaching is about this. Christianity is a warfare teaching. Yet it is simple: there is law, and there is gospel. The law of God is pure and good as it is engrafted in the Bible (the ten commandments, the two great commandments of Jesus), yet it is a twisted, distorted version of that law that is wielded against us on the spiritual battlefield.
11. We basically walk, wherever we walk, in a dark medium of the distorted and twisted law of God as enforced by fallen angels and fallen man.
12. When we follow Jesus' teaching to basically have gratitude in place of resentment for everything all the time we are practically doing effective battle with the forces of darkness on the spiritual battlefield, and it develops us in terms of our progressive sanctification.
13. Our faith in Jesus' work in his life to fulfill the law and in his death on the cross to fulfill the penalty of the law for us once and for all gives us all we need for victory. Everything else is successful battle or getting beat up pretty good yet still having the victory. Jesus as leader of God's army needs good soldiers though. He wants good, effective soldiers. Good effective soldiers by their example call out other of God's elect and perform acts on the battlefield that need to be performed. Effects that are contingent on good soldiers getting it done. Examples are myriad but basically have to do with effecting lives of God's people especially ones connected to us in the connections and timelines of our lives. People we can influence.
14. But see how this has to do with law. This battle. The dark forces want you resentful rather than grateful. They want you asleep rather than awake. They want you imprisoned rather than free. At all levels: personal/social, government/state, false or counterfeit religion. And they use God's law in a twisted, distorted form to do this. The most hellish totalitarian states of the last hundred years use law - God's law - law as a thing that God created and that we all exist in as a medium, in a distorted form. See this. This is the aspect of law that Christian leaders and educators have been delinquent in describing and explaining. They don't see it.
15. A big point about all this to know is: Law without Gospel is a formula for the demonic. The totalitarian states of the 20th century were all law and no gospel. They were thus blood-splattered hell-holes of suffering and death. Islam is all law and no gospel, hence it is a bloody hell show. (Funny how all law sounds like Allah, but anyway...)
ADDENDUM: Christian leaders and educators don't see it, as stated, but this should be added: this is why establishment Christianity knows nothing of spiritual warfare and never speaks of Jesus' teaching on things like wakefulness and loving your enemy. These are practices that enable us to do battle with the law as it's wielded in its distorted form by fallen angels and fallen man. Establishment Christians are going with the flow. They feel no friction and want no friction on the spiritual landscape. Real Christians can't escape the friction and learn to use it to develop. Like warriors. But it's a subtle battle because it's not like fighting flesh and blood. The two great commandments of Jesus correlate to being awake and loving your enemy, and constitute the complete war plan; but to learn of those two acts is to go deeply into their meaning. But you meet the friction of the law with those two acts and this enables you to develop and transcend and navigate the spiritual landscape which is a battlefield. That friction actually becomes a gift in your view. An opportunity to develop. Law and Gospel. Christianity is simple as in plain, but we must understand law especially to see it all in its completeness and simplicity.
