The Letter of the New Law
Exodus 28:15 You execute the word of decisions
2 Corinthians 3:3 You reveal that you are an epistle of Christ…written not with ink but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.
2 Corinthians 3:14b the same veil (of Moses) remains when the old covenant is read. It hasn’t been removed because only in Christ is it brought to an end.
2 Corinthians 3:18 And we who having been disclosed in true nature are being transformed into His exact image, present a clear image of the Lord.
The Letter of the New Law
Becoming an epistle of Christ is “What Would Jesus Do” on steroids. A wristband isn’t enough to remove an old covenant, but rather, a new walk…the Jesus-Walk. Only adopting His Walk of Truth, Humility, Righteousness, Compassion, Justice and Mercy can I present a clear image of Jesus. With this power-walk, I can keep strict the Twenty Commands of Jesus. These commands, when they were spoken by Jesus on a mountaintop in Galilee, brought to an end, the era of an old covenant. Matthew 5:17 “I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.” This prophetically mysterious statement was His prologue to rolling out the Twenty Commands (fondly known as the Sermon on the Mount), the historical moment when the old covenant was “You have heard it said,” converted.
Matthew provides the account in chapter’s five, six and seven, the very moment when the Ten Commandments were being fulfilled. But that was only in the words of instruction. The execution of the word of decision is when I actually put them into action, i.e. when I turn the other cheek when I am offended. Luke’s version of this ‘sermon’ is bound between chapter’s six and twelve and vary in slight measure. For instance, Matthew’s ‘enter the narrow gate,’ is exacerbated to ‘agonize through the narrow gate. Maybe Luke knew something that Matthew didn’t, but I do agree with Luke that the narrow gate in question can be quite the agony.
That narrow gate can be agonizing because its design is to pull the flesh right off of the spirit, much like an ancient Assyrian skin-peeling torture method. Agony. This is also the very description of spiritual development. Spiritual development happens when the flesh (pride and ego) is reduced, thus being transformed into the exact image of the Lord. An epistle of Christ, I am a written letter bursting with good news when in my obedience to those Twenty Commands and an indebtedness to the Jesus-Walk that produces His spirit-fruit, how I present a clear image of Lord’s glorious face. John 15:8 “In this my Father is glorified, that you produce much fruit, and become my disciples.”
What other goal is there for a disciple than to transform into the likeness of his/her teacher. And like a dress pattern from any well-stocked notions department, the Twenty Commands are the model to creating this preferred image, complete with a Jesus-Walk of six steps and nine ways to produce spirit fruit, the true nature of Jesus. “Not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” The life of a disciple of Jesus begins with a desire of a beating heart, “Desire, Pursue and Knock on my door,” and a bent-knee of Humility. Only interns who don’t know anything need apply.
