The Law and the Fall of Man and addendum

The Law and the Fall of Man


Recently I wrote an article( available on my blog)  talking about our natural man and how we are biologically created with a system that responds to external stimulus and creates more desire in us each time we satisfy that external desire. This external desire works in contrast to the internal desire the scriptures say is put within every human being, a longing and a desire for relationship with God. That seed or measure of faith is put within every man  allows him to  respond and seek a relationship with and in God through Jesus Christ or he can respond to the natural drawings of his human body towards gratification.


Scripture tells us that sin was not attributed to man until the law was given. Does that mean that there weren't consequences for man's choice in the garden to seek the gratification that the enemy offered him in the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Of course not. Adam and woman began their journey as mortal beings once they partook of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For Adam and Eve it took some 800 plus years and many more for Methuselah before their physical bodies died and we know God continued to walk with them and have some measure of fellowship with mankind.


So when the law was given in Moses, so also did desire get empowered in a way that it hadn't before. The law which is true and holy, perfect as far as what it was intended to do, stirred up in human beings the awareness of the emptiness and separation that partaking of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil stirred up. We know now from science, that all external pleasure creates dopamine in the brain that then tells the human being that more and more of that “pleasure” is desired. The Law, therefore, which tells man what he has failed to do, only creates in man the desire to work harder and harder to try and be “holy”, “complete” or in our language today, to “feel good.”


Romans tells us that this “law” that works in us is only conquered through the Life of Jesus Christ in us. Relationship with Jesus Christ living and dwelling in Him and Him in me is the power and the Life that saves me from the “law of sin and death” that works in my natural man from the time of conception. Law in all its forms sets up desire in man to work harder to comply with the Law, to do it right, to succeed, to feel good, to get approval. In Christ, we find acceptance and privilege in being children of the Father, joint heirs with Christ. We work from the security and love of the Father that the Law cannot ever give through anything external.


For many Christians, the distinction between going to church and “feeling good” and leaving services and saying things like “how wonderful was the Presence of God” today, such distinction between that “good feeling” and being in God and moving in God and allowing God to be in us and among us who He is apart from our external awareness of pleasure and comfort is unknown. So it shall be with many of us who were in that place that we might find the Lord saying at some point, I don't know you. We were living little differently than the heathen except our pleasure came from “spiritual experience” rather than intimacy with the Lord God Himself in and through and by the Spirit of the Living God.

May we be quickened to respond to the gentle promptings of the Holy Spirit in greater measure to yield to Him, to allow Him to be in us all that only He is, Life, Light, Peace, Joy, Hope, our Justification, our Sanctification, our Righteousness, our Healing, healing and health our everything!

Meri




I wrote the above this  Sunday morning about 8:30am having been stirred of the Spirit to put these thoughts out to the Renewed Hope  community.  Then I left to go to church where my son in law attends in Woodland, a congregation called The Promise. It was indeed a divine appointment that I am so thankful that the Lord stirred me to share in!  The reason I bring it up is because the sermon was an extension of what this post talks about.  I don't know the name of the pastoral staff that preached other than to know he was a brother in Christ for his words spoke what Holy Spirit had been stirring in me only in greater detail.  To briefly summarize, he spoke about our conscience and how we were born with our conscience connected to the law, with our conscience telling us what was right and what was wrong. Motivated then by guilt and shame we often changed behaviors in effort to get approval which of course never came under the law, only the drive or "desire" to work harder to do better.  In Christ, at new birth, our conscience was reconnected to the Source of Value, and tied to our Sonship with the Father which was separated when man sinned in the garden.   Our conscience as one in Christ, tells us that when we do something wrong, that we are still loved, valued and still the son of our Father and it is His life that we are to yield.   He made it clear that most of us have been under the power of guilt and shame, that most altar calls and "invitations" pull from the power of guilt and shame, and the end is that we go forward asking for help to "do better."  Such effort to "do better" are "dead works."  Only when guilt and shame lead us to the awareness of who we are in Christ, are we empowered in Him to live out the works He destined us to walk in before the foundation of the earth! 

I know that I have a lot of scripture searching and review to do to allow the Lord the soil of my heart to bring forth the fruit out of this Word and to keep the soil of my heart fresh for Holy Spirit to come in and convict me so that I can further walk in my identity in Christ Jesus.

The law is holy and perfect but it cannot change my nature. The power of the guilt and shame of the Law/sin was broken when the body of Christ was broken and his blood shed for me.  As often as I eat His body and drink His blood, I am being strengthened in His Worth and in His Value as a child of the Heavenly Father. It is a matter of working out the completed work of Christ in me by faith perceiving who I am in Christ and who Christ is in me, walking out all that is mine as one seated with Him in heavenly places. There guilt and shame only bring me to awareness of the totality of the Father's love for me. I will have feelings of guilt and shame as a result of being human. But with Christ in me and me in Him, those feelings are what the Holy Spirit uses to bring fuller awareness of the power of the love of God in Christ Jesus, not only in me, but in those around me. The new commandment is Love the Lord your God with all your being and your neighbor as yourself.  When the law shows us how short we fall, we are freed from it's influence through the life of Christ in us and freed to be loved and to love others. When we stay in guilt and shame, we stay under the law and live under the law and will not have any assurance of being loved and therefore will automatically treat others  as "under the law", seeing their sins and shortcomings rather than the love that God has for them.

May we all come to the knowledge of Christ and the greatness of His love  which has more power than  all the principalities and power on earth and in the heavens

Meri Ford


I think the pastor's name is Dan  Schiopu who is part of the Power Culture School of Ministry at The Promise in Woodland.