Most people don’t realize that the law has two sides. I didn’t for a long time. Why do you think there are two sides on the justice scale? Both sides are equally deadly, but at face value one side seems a little less deadly than the other, and that is exactly how it snares you and kills you. The side that seems less deadly is the most deadly of all. If you look at the 10 Commandments as an easy example, there are 8 commandments that say, “Don’t do this” and 2 commandments that say “Do do this.” Do you notice the slight difference? The one side points out what you aren’t supposed to be doing while the other more subtle side points out what you should be doing. Both these sides are equally the law and you can be in bondage to either side.

Many times people hear a little about grace and they think they have come out from under the law. However a little way down the line everything falls apart. The fire is gone, the first love seems to have disappeared, their life is a mess and they are frustrated by the grace of God that seems to be working for everybody else except them. The actual problem here is that they never truly got completely out from under the law. They merely swung from the one extreme of ‘Don’t do this’ to the other extreme of ‘Do do this.’

What is the ‘Do do this’ side today? It can be anything you believe you have to do. You have to read your Bible. You have to go to church. You have to save people. You have to heal the sick. Don’t get me wrong, those are all very good things. But very good things done under law are still done under law. When good things are done under law, Paul says they are like dirty rags, to put it nicely.

Hebrews 9:14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Did you see that? Read it again slower. Cleanse your conscience for dead works TO SERVE the living God. Dead works to serve are the works you think you have to do for God, not the works you shouldn’t be doing. Most people believe that to be in good fellowship with God you have to NOT do the bad things and DO do the good things. Less bad works, more good works. Nothing could be further from the truth. How do you know if you are under bondage to good works? You do the guilt check. Guilt is the first sign of being under law because guilt was the fruit of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Let’s do a quick guilt check:

1. If you don’t go to church on Sunday, do you feel guilty?
2. If you have to miss a home group meeting or prayer meeting, do you feel guilty?
3. If you lie in bed at night thinking about your day and realise you haven’t even prayed or read your Bible today, do you feel guilty?
4. If you realise you haven’t talked to anybody about your faith in Jesus in a while, do you feel guilty?
5. If you realise you haven’t gone to pray for the sick in while, do you feel guilty?

I can go on and on and make a long list of questions but if you felt slightly guilty over even just one of those questions, something is wrong. Guilt over not doing good things is the first sign that somebody’s conscience is not cleansed of dead works of service to God. They are caught in a mix between believing God does know and love them completely, but to build a relationship with Him you have to do all these things. I didn’t build a relationship with my wife by cleaning the house, doing the dishes, taking her out to dinner etc. WE built a relationship in the midst of doing all those things and more. You cannot build a relationship by yourself. You and God can build one together, but you can’t build one by yourself. If your definition of building a relationship is ‘Do do this’, then you are trying to build the relationship by your own deeds and efforts. That is dead works, probably the most deadly of them all for they become religious tradition instead of expressions of love.

I am going to stop here for now and continue this in a second part.

Cornel

Read more about Cornel’s book “So You Think Your Mind Is Renewed?” here!

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