“Diagnosis… Deliverance”

"Diagnosis… Deliverance"

    God's law given through Moses reveals.  God's grace and truth given through the Lord Jesus Christ redeems.

    "The law was our schoolmaster, to bring us unto Christ" (Galatians 3:24).

    "What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Romans 8:3-4).

    Apart from Christ, humanity has a heart problem.  Regardless of how moral, ethical, or even spiritual we seek to become, we cannot free ourselves from the mastery of sin that exists in our innermost being, as inherited from Adam.  God gave the law to Israel as a means of exposing the flaw in our core.  We cannot change our hearts spiritually any more than we could perform a physical heart transplant on ourselves.  Only God can conduct such a radical procedure, which He does in all who respond to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus.  "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.  Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new" (II Corinthians 5:17).  Thereby the promise of the Old Testament becomes the power of the New in all who believe: "A new heart will I give you, and a new Spirit will I put within you" (Ezekiel 36:26).

    The primary message of the Gospel does not call us to change what we do, but rather to trust God to change who and what we are.  Only those with a new heart bestowed as a free gift through Christ can live in accordance with the will of God.  "Without Me, ye can do nothing" declared the Lord Jesus (John 15:5).  God made us to serve as His spiritual temples.  He alone can enliven and empower us as the Life of our lives, and as the indwelling Light that forever burns within the Holy of holies of our spirits.  Indeed, the law called Israel to live for God, but did not provide the new heart necessary to fulfill the high calling.  God's grace and truth calls believers to live from God by providing His spiritual and moral nature as the heart transforming gift of a "new creature… new heart… new Spirit."  "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father" (Galatians 4:6).

   The law of Moses tells humanity it is sick by diagnosing our fatal heart problem.  The grace and truth of the Lord Jesus provides deliverance by offering the free services of the Great Physician.  He conducts transplants in all who humble themselves to acknowledge the congenital flaw of our spiritual being apart from Christ.  This is salvation, the redemption of the heart accomplished in all who realize that only God can perform the procedure that changes who and what we are.

"The law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did, by which we draw nigh to God."

(Hebrews 7:19)

"But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.  Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness."

 (Romans 6:17-18)

Weekly Memory Verse

    For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

(John 1:17)