Abraham and the Commandments
” He became a friend of God simply because he believed, not because he fulfilled commandments.”
Considering that laws are not enacted for the righteous but for transgressors and rebels, irreverent and sinful people, the wicked and profane, parricides and matricides, murderers. I Timothy 1:9
Every man knows what is right and wrong in his conscience. They need to suppress their conscience if they wish to live a lifestyle inconsistent with it.
It was never God’s intention for man to live by the law. God’s main agenda is for man to have a relationship with Him based on grace. That’s what He did when He called Abraham out of his land and his relatives. He did not give him any commandments but called him to a relationship. Abraham is called a friend of God (James 2:23). He became a friend of God simply because he believed, not because he fulfilled commandments.
The law was given four hundred years after Abraham, and still, he walked with God. For those who think that we cannot walk with God without the commandments of the law, I recommend observing how Abraham was called a friend of God. But even without the law, Abraham obeyed God on such a deep level that most of us never imagined. He was willing to go up the mountain and sacrifice his son to God. He loved God, was a man of faith, and was willing to obey until the end. All this without the knowledge of the law.
The Reason for the Law
When God gave the Ten Commandments, He knew that man was not capable of obeying them, but man did not know that he was incapable. Thus, God had to give the law to show every man his inability to obey.
God did not give the law for man to fulfill it, but the law was given so that man would know sin through it. Paul says in Romans 5:20, “Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound.” In Galatians 3:19, he asks, “What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions.” God’s main agenda is grace, but the law was added because of transgressions.
What does these transgressions mean? In Romans 5:13, Paul says, “For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.” In other words, there was sin, but sin was not transgression because there was no law. Suppose you go to a country where the speed limit is 80 kilometers per hour. Then you drive your car at 100 per hour, transgressing the law. You were already a sinner, but now you have become a transgressor because you broke a law. Sin was in us, but the law was given to make sin a transgression. Thus, the law shows how sinful we are.
Commandments in Grace
And today, in the New Testament, are there commandments? Yes, there are.
Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. And whatever we ask we receive from Him because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment. I John 3:21-23
John says that we receive what we ask because we keep His commandments. If we stopped here, we might be confused, thinking that these are the commandments of the law. But he explains further that “His commandment is this: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.”
The commandment that He gave us was mentioned by John himself in his Gospel, in chapter 13:
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this, all will know that you are My disciples if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35
The Lord said it was a new commandment, not something He took from the commandments of Moses. The commandment of the law was to love your neighbor as yourself. I have often heard people say, “How can I love my neighbor if I haven’t learned to love myself?” I always found that silly, but it seems to make some sense, even though the Word of God says that no one ever hated their own flesh (Eph. 5:29).
If we follow this same reasoning, we can say the same about the new commandment: we will love one another as we understand how much He loved us. If we understand how much He loved us, we will spontaneously love our brothers. The blessing of God is upon every minister who unveils the veil each week by showing Jesus’ love in their preaching. They are helping us fulfill the new commandment.
John’s explanation is straightforward: “We love because He first loved us” (I John 4:19). Our love is just a response to His love for us. The revelation of how much we are loved by the Lord is the key to fulfilling His commandment.
The first commandment mentioned by John is that we should believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ. Unlike the law, the Lord commands us to believe and not to do something. And what do we need to believe? That God loved us so much that He gave His only Son to die for us. When we believe in the name of the Lord, we understand that we are loved, and thus, we fulfill the other commandment.
The law said, “Love God!” But today, grace says, “Believe in His love for you!” The more you believe, the more you fulfill the new commandment, and whatever you ask, the Father will hear you. Remain in the love of the Lord.
In the old covenant, the commandment was “Obey or die!” But the new covenant says, “I know you are tired, I command you to rest.” “You are hungry, I command you to eat!” How burdensome can that be? When we receive the order to do something that is inherent in our nature, we obey without realizing it.
The commandment of the law is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deut. 6:5). But John defines love by saying, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:10). It’s not about how much I love God but how much He loves me.
The law is about me loving God, but grace is about God loving me. John puts it another way: we are no longer under the law of loving God, but under grace that says He loved us so much. The commandment that defined the law passed away along with the entire law. But that doesn’t mean that I won’t love God; rather, I will love because His love for me has won me over.
The Imperatives of God
The Scriptures declare that the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. This means that the great sign that we preach the gospel correctly is when we feel joy and peace in receiving the word of God.
“For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Romans 14:17
But what about righteousness? Wouldn’t that be our works of obedience? In the New Testament, two types of righteousness are mentioned. In Philippians 3:9, Paul says that he wants to be found in Christ, not having his own righteousness, which is from the law, but the righteousness which is from God by faith.
The righteousness that depends on our obedience to the commandments is self-righteousness, which does not depend on faith. But the righteousness of the kingdom of God is the righteousness based on faith.
When the Lord Jesus said that we should seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness, He was referring to this kind of righteousness, the one that comes from God, based on faith (Matt. 6:33).
We are no longer under the law in the form of ordinances. We have been set free from the law. But does this mean that there are no commandments in the New Testament? Certainly, they exist, but they are not like the commandments of the law. It’s as if the Lord says, “Tell the hungry man to eat!” “I command the tired one to rest!” In theological terms, these are called imperatives.
However, before we emphasize the imperatives, we need to understand the indicatives. You certainly remember grammar classes. Every verb has a tense and a mood. The tense can be present, past, or future, but the mood can be indicative or imperative (of course, there’s also the subjunctive, but we won’t talk about it here). God’s imperatives are based on His indicatives.
The indicatives tell us who we are, what we have, and what we can do in Christ. It is only based on this that we can obey the imperatives.
Because Christ loved us, we should love our wives as He loved us. Since we have been richly forgiven, we should freely forgive those who offend us. As we are a new creation, we will no longer live like the wicked. Because the Holy Spirit now dwells in us, we will no longer use our bodies for impurity and prostitution. Our obedience to God’s imperatives is only a consequence of the power of the indicatives of the cross.
In the Old Testament, people obeyed to become righteous and holy. The New Testament is different, we have already been made righteous, and thus we obey because that’s how the righteous live. In the law, people obeyed to become righteous, but in grace, we have been made righteous, and that’s why we obey.
We must believe and confess that we have been made the righteousness of God in Christ. Commandments are for the wicked and profane, but the righteous need only to believe in the truth of God’s Word (I Tim. 1:9).
Since laws are not enacted for the righteous but for transgressors and rebels, irreverent and sinful people, the wicked and profane, parricides and matricides, murderers. I Timothy 1:9
It is not possible to believe in the right thing and not live in the right way. Your conduct is always the result of your belief. If we live wrongly, it’s because we believe wrongly. Of course, behavior is essential, but the greater emphasis is always on what we believe.
The indicatives always point to Christ. The more you contemplate Christ, the more you become like Him.
If we do not teach the indicatives of our union with Christ, we have no ground to demand the imperatives of God from our brothers.
In all the epistles of the New Testament, Paul starts by teaching the indicatives of our position in Christ. This is what theologians call Kerigma. Only after that, he presents the imperatives of God, also called Didaquê. Every Pauline epistle is divided into two parts: Kerigma and Didaquê. Kerigma is the foundation for practicing Didaquê. Without Kerigma, Didaquê is just a set of rules common to most religions.
The New Testament always shows us who we are and then exhorts us to walk accordingly. We have been raised with Christ; therefore, then we must have a heavenly lifestyle. Being members of one another, so we cannot lie. We’ve become children of God, part of the royalty, the royal family, so we must act nobly. We cannot be greedy and stingy simply because it is not noble, and it no longer fits us.
Every exhortation is always based on the revelation of what we are in Christ. When we understand the reality of the new creation, we then live according to God’s will spontaneously.
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