Rules and Spirit

[mfblume]

Originally Posted by RevDWW

Huh? You mean if I follow after Jesus' rule to treat others like I wish to be treated I'm walking in the flesh and not the spirit? Unless your definition of "rules" is standards and not the teachings of Jesus. Would you consider any of Jesus' teaching to be rules?

Good question!

Put it this way: Jesus said that if we love him we will see ourselves keeping his commandments. We just WILL keep them. This is what it means to have His law written in our hearts. We need to cease looking for rules on paper and look inward into our hearts where the Law of God is written on fleshy tables.

In regards to your example of your thought that Christ had a rule in saying we must treat folks the way we wish to be treated, anything Jesus said is something the Spirit must empower us to do. Reading a rule and trying OUR BEST to fulfill it is what I was speaking against. We need God's Spirit empowering us. My point is basically that sinners can read a list of rules and exert their will power to keep them. The New Testament goes beyond that. Sinners cannot do what we can do in the Spirit. So this is one way to determine whether or not we are truly living in the Spirit. If a sinner can do what we're doing, then we're not living after the Spirit.

Pressing On mentioned the idea that there are so many rules in the New Testament. I disagree, sis. I think the error of so many has been to make the New Testament another rule book like the Law of Moses. God never intended that.

For example, the beattitudes cannot be "kept" as rules. They simply describe the STATE OF A PERSON'S HEART. And only God can make our hearts that way. I would say that anything that could appear as a "rule" in the New Testament, which can be accomplished by anyone with or without the Spirit, is something we have mistaken as a rule. Many of the things Jesus described were things that people can only do if they are empowered by the Holy Ghost.

If anything is required of us similar to a rule, it is something that we must actually rely upon the Holy Ghost in us to be able to accomplish it. Without the Spirit, we cannot do the things Jesus said... at least not do them genuinely the way God expects them to be done.