Christ vs. the Law

I Introduction

The creation of Adam and Eve was a marvel of the creative brilliance and power of God. They were created in the image of God and were designed to be His glory. But they had a deliberately created weakness. Although they did not know it, this weakness was a part of their make-up as a benefit to them and a means by which they would reach the Divine intention for them.

Not only did God create Adam with a weakness but He also created him with a good nature. At the end of the sixth day God declared that all that he had made was very good. This refers to the creation on the sixth day which mainly was the man. So man’s inclination according to his created nature is goodness. Man, basically, desires to do good. He wants to please God by doing good. So if he can determine what is good, then he will do his best to do it. All human beings have this inbred desire unless totally corrupted by some outside instrument.

However, the devil, no doubt, knowing man’s weakness and his good nature took advantage of it. He had a subtle goal when he deceived Eve and induced her to eat the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He knew that, if he could get her and her husband to eat that tree, they would become independent from God. Once he had separated them from God, the weakness in them and their good nature would result in their living an unrighteous life and would bring the judgment of God upon them.

That weakness and our good human nature is still a part of us and we are continually being deceived because of it. This is why the law is so attractive to us. Especially since we have received Christ as our Savior and been regenerated, we want to do something to please God. We are eternally grateful to Him for His death on the cross which paid the penalty for our sins and rescued us from Hell. The law of our mind, being good, desire to do good to please this wonderful Savior. So we are attracted to the law to attempt to keep it. However, the weakness in our being plus the sin-nature we acquired when we ate the tree of knowledge makes the keeping of the law impossible.

The solution to this problem is the Life of another Person, the Lord Jesus Christ. Unless we receive revelation from our Lord to see the provision that He made through His death and resurrection we will continue to struggle under out inborn weakness. It is possible to live without the certain result of a failing Christian life only by seeing a fresh revelation of Jesus Christ.

II The Tree of Life vs. the Tree of the Law (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil)

A good writer or speaker will always write or speak according to a simple outline. First, he will tell you what he is going to tell you. Then he will tell you. Then, finally, he will tell you what he told you. Our God is the best writer of all. Therefore, His writing of the Bible is according to this formula. In Genesis one and two He tells us what He is going to tell us. Between Genesis Three and Revelation twenty He tells us and in Revelation twenty one and twenty two He tells us what He told us.

The first two chapters of Genesis portray the foundational principles of the Bible. In Chapter two you have a man before two trees. The implications that are revealed through this picture are staggering and awe inspiring. If we can see why God began His revelation with this simple picture, we will be able to unlock many passages in the Bible and to be enabled to live the Christian life according to the Lord’s revealed way.

Have you ever heard that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a picture of the law? Please think about it. What does the law do? It teaches us the difference between good and evil according the God’s standard. It teaches us and the teaching demands us to love God and to have nothing to do with idols. To love God is good. To worship an idol is evil. It teaches us to honor our father and our mother. To dishonor them is evil. Every other point of the law is the same. By it you know what is good and what is evil. So the tree of knowledge of good and evil a picture of the law.

The law of God demands that if you live by it, everything you do will be good and on the other hand you will not do anything unrighteous or evil. Only this kind of living will please God under His law. However, if you live by the law you will have to do it by your own strength. He will not help you do it. So it means that you will be your own god living by your own decision to work the good and abstain from the evil. You have become independent from God.

However, you are under a deep deception. If we live by the law, we are automatically brought under the domain of the devil. For his life is stronger than the good nature in us and we will be captured by sin and wind up in death.

No doubt you know that the tree of life is a picture of Christ as our life. So it is obvious that Christ is verse the law. Not only Genesis two reveals this but the rest of the Bible unveils that if a man or a nation attempts to please God by keeping the law the result will be sin and death.

This is the history of the nation of Israel and the history of the church. The minute any from of law keeping enters into a man’s thinking, he will enter onto the way of failure in living the Christian life..

Let’s think about it. Was there ever a king of Israel who did not fail? David? No he fell into adultery and murder. Solomon. No, he was seduced by too many women and their idols. How about Josiah? He was excellent yet in the end he died by fighting a battle that was not of God. How about Moses? Also no. Even eventually he was prohibited from entering into the good land due to his failure.

Eventually, there were only four who overcame. Joshua, Caleb, Joseph and Daniel. I believe that these men learned the secret and did not live by the tree of knowledge. It was their hearts desire to God Himself and their determination to stay with Him that saved them.

III Humanity after the Fall living by the flesh, resulting in murder, violence and the beginning of the World-system

After the first couple ate the tree of Knowledge and were expelled from the garden of Eden, their whole life was one infected by the poison of that tree.

Therefore, whatever they and there decedents did, unless they received a fresh word from the Lord, was governed by that tree and the mind-set it produced in them. All their thoughts and their resulting actions issued from a what-is-good and what-is-evil worldview. They would behave by considering that if something was good, they would do it and if it was evil they would refrain from doing it. But they were deceived.

The difference between Cain and Able is the difference between a man who lived by revelation and a man who lived by right and wrong. Cain knew that it was good to bring an offering to God. No doubt he had heard this from his father but when he heard it, it went into his mind as something good to do. He did not receive revelation as to what God desired as an offering, so he offered the work of his hands. That is, something good that he had done. His was rejected by God. He was disappointed and offended that his good works did not please God.

Why? Because he did what was right to do, he thought he would be commended for it. Are we not many times the same. We do some kind act for someone expecting our Lord to praise us for it and discover that somehow we have lost the presence of God. We don’t realize that we have again partaken of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We might even say to the Lord, “Haven’t I done this in your name?” But He would reply, “I never knew you in that thing you did. Depart from me.” In other words, “My presence will not be with you until you confess your sin and turn back to Me.”

The whole race of man after the fall, lived by the good and evil mind-set that got into their first parents and came to them by their birth. They must have some good things that they did and we know that there were many evil things that occurred but the Lord proclaimed that man was nothing but flesh.

Only a very few lived in the way that pleased the Lord. Two are of note; Enoch and Noah.

Enoch walked with God and was not because God took him. He lived only about three hundred and sixty years which was a short life in those days. As fart as we know the only commendation the bible gives him was that he walked with God.

Here we have to stop a moment and think a little about Enoch’s life. “He walked with God.” This is a remarkable statement. It does not say that God walked with him but that he walked with God. When God went, he went. When God stopped, Enoch stopped. He did not moved ahead of God nor did He lag behind. He spent his life with God in the most obedient way always remaining in His presence.

If we would look at it according to the New Testament revelation we could say that Enoch was a man who always remained abiding in the Vine. He never departed from the life flow of the vine so that he has borne much fruit. Because he always stayed attached to God, the Lord could impart great revelation to him. He was the first to prophesy concerning the great flood, naming his son Methuselah, meaning, “when he is dead, it shall come.” Enoch also prophesied concerning the judgment of God coming on all the unrighteousness of the ungodly generation of mankind. (See Jude 3-4