Law & Grace in Circumcision & Passover

You have no doubt heard all your life about how Grace and Law are polar opposites, how you cannot be saved by Grace if you are committed to obeying the Law. This is directly contrary to the overall witness of Scripture. I will show you Grace and Law are not only not incompatible, but are absolutely necessary to each other.

Let's start in Ezekiel 16:6:

And when I passed by you and saw you squirming in your blood, I said to you in your blood, Live! Yes, I said to you in your blood, Live!

Albert Barnes wrote,

In thy blood - may be connected either with “I said” or with “Live.” In the latter case, the state of blood and defilement is made the very cause of life...

So that the last phrase in the verse could be rendered, "Yes, I said to you, 'Live through your blood.'" In other words, the blood brings life. But why does God say it twice?

In "Circumcision: The Individual's Covenant with God" Rabbi Yohanasan Gefen wrote that each iteration of this statement refers to a different shedding of blood. The first statement refers to the circumcision of Abraham, while the second refers to the Passover Lamb.

Circumcision represents our decision to commit ourselves to God, while the Passover Lamb represents God's decision to commit himself to us. Faith gets you inside the house as the angel of death passes over, but you can't eat the Passover Lamb unless you are circumcised. Without both commitments, we are lost and we have to accept both of them, hence we are commanded to eat of the Lamb by both Moses and Yeshua.

Circumcision was a physical manifestation of Abraham's faith in God's promises. He circumcised his flesh  and the flesh of all of the males in his house, including Ishmael, as an outward sign of his complete trust in God's faithfulness.  However, circumcision in itself was not the means of Abraham's salvation. It didn't replace his faith, and the act of cutting himself did not cause God to keep his promise of an heir and a great inheritance.

Consider Ishmael. He was circumcised also, but he did not inherit the covenant. Many years before the circumcision, God promised Abraham a son. When he began to doubt, he tried to force God's promise through his own power. Ishmael was conceived through his father's mistrust of God and a reliance on works to earn God's favors. Obedience alone will never be enough to warrant inclusion in the covenant with Abraham; one must also have faith.

But faith in what? In the Messiah Yeshua, our Passover Lamb whose blood covers us and takes away our sins. This is the ultimate inheritance of the children of Abraham, and the ultimate reason we must keep God's Law.

We do not (cannot!) obey to earn God's favor or to bribe or force him to keep his promises. God is faithful whether we are or not. No, we obey because we believe. If we believe in God's faithfulness to provide an atonement for us and to forgive us our sins, then we will obey him. Obedience follows true faith, and there are only two reasons why a a person would not keep God's Law:

1. Ignorance of his requirements, such as is the case with those many Christians who have been deceived their entire lives to believe that God didn't mean what he said.
2. Lack of faith. As James said, "Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by my works." There is no such thing as faith without works. A lack of works always indicates a lack of faith.

 As I have said over and over, this does not mean that anyone is saved by their works. Abraham did not circumcise himself before his faith, but because of it. We do not keep God's Law to earn salvation, but because we are saved. Likewise, a person can be perfectly obedient to every point of the Law and still be eternally lost because they put their hope for salvation in obedience instead of in God's faithfulness.

I can't tell you how many sermons I heard growing up in the Assemblies of God about how the Law was replaced by Grace. Even at the time it all seemed a little hypocritical. If the Law was done away (or "fulfilled" away) why did Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and others spend so much time talking about it? Why do we put the Ten Commandments up on the Sunday School walls?

The Bible was very little help. James clearly wrote that the Law was still in effect, and Peter wrote that you had to have a good foundation in the scriptures (the Law and the Prophets) in order to understand Paul's letters. But why should an understanding of the Law be important to understand someone who used so much ink telling us to forget the Law?


"Don't take James so literally," I was told. "He's talking about a new spiritual law that has replaced the old written law."

OK, but what about Peter? He couldn't have been writing about spiritual scriptures. Scriptures means "writings". If they only exist on a spiritual plane, how can they be written? And how could one study writings that aren't written?

As I have demonstrated through numerous arguments elsewhere, that was all so much hot air and wishful thinking. The fact is that the Bible is only no help if you have assumed a priori that the Law is irrelevant to the Christian.

Grace and Law were never in opposition, but were always complementary. You cannot be saved by Grace unless you are first convicted by the Law, and you cannot be saved by God's Grace unless you are also committed to obeying God's Law. How can a person claim to believe in someone else if they refuse to believe what the other person has said?

Law and Grace are not opposed to one another, but are merely two sides of the same coin. If you are not committed to obeying God's commandments, then you cannot be heir to his promises. And if you are not under God's Grace, then all the obedience in the world will earn you nothing but damnation.

Prosperity for Palestinians

There is one move that would almost guarantee a more prosperous and peaceful future for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank:

Total repudiation of Hamas, et al, and total surrender to Israel.

Anything less will simply continue the poverty and violence that has always been their lot.

After Its Own Kind

From Truth Farmer:

Never in nature has a spider or a human crossed with a goat, a human with a cow, nor has a mouse coupled with a pig, or a fish combined with a cat. Nor has a bacterium inserted itself into a plant or a chemical herbicide entered the germplasm of a plant and propagated itself.

Whether it is strictly correct or not that no genes from one species have every been naturally inserted into the genes of another, completely unrelated species, Truth-Farmer's point is undeniable. Deliberate genetic modification isn't even close to the same thing as selective breeding or natural selection (whatever that is). Living organisms are extraordinarily complex marvels of engineering, and people messing around with them are like five-year-olds thinking they can improve on a Frank Muller watch using wooden mallets and finger paints.

In Full Knowledge of Who you Are

In Deuteronomy 31 God told Moses to gather the people, the Levites, and the elders together. YHWH looked down at Israel in the Land of Moab and told Moses to address each group, declaring his knowledge of their character and predicting their unfaithfulness.  He knew them more thoroughly than they knew themselves. He saw their rebellious nature, their tendency to pride and idolatry. He knew that they would reject his commandments and follow their own ways. He knew that they would worship other gods, that they would claim to be the source of their own strength. He saw them for the treacherous adulterers they really were, and he promised to redeem them and love them regardless.

Yeshua has done nothing other than what the Father had already demonstrated, only on a greater scale. He confronted the elders of Israel and showed their character to them.

“And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”
(John 5:37-47)

He knew that they were thoroughly corrupt, that they wallowed in pride and injustice. Yeshua stood before them and condemned their sins in full knowledge of exactly who they were, and all the while he was planning to die for them.

Just like YHWH knew Israel, he knows you and me. He knows all of the despicable things that we do and think and feel. He knows what we have done and what we will do. He knows each one of us down to the minutest detail, and–most remarkable of all–he still loves each one of us and wants us to repent and come back to him and his laws.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.
(John 5:24-25)

Not only does he know who you are, but he knows what you can be. You can be alive.

Random Thoughts on the News

Common Sense Defended

The study asked thousands of adult children of straight, lesbian and homosexual parents dozens of questions and compared the results. While many questions did not produce statistically-significant differences, the study found major differences in a few categories. Adult children of gay couples were two to four times as likely to be on public assistance, more than twice as likely to be unemployed and more than twice as likely to have contemplated suicide.

A gay blogger is slandering and bullying a heterosexual man who says homosexual parents might not be good for children. What a shock.

A modern American university has determined that this study by one of its professors is completely above board and that he "used sufficiently scholarly methods". Universities usually bend over backwards to accomodate sexual deviants and other politically protected classes. If they couldn't find anything wrong with the study, I'm reasonably certain there was nothing wrong with it. (Unless Professor Regnerus is very well connected. There are all kinds of politics going on in our schools at every level.)

Enemies, Foreign and Domestic

The U.S. Border Patrol is reporting that shots were fired at some agents patrolling the Rio Grande near the border town of Hidalgo.

Even when our relations with Mexico were at their best, the Mexican border has always been a weak point in our national security. We can do something about it, but Washington actively undermines every attempt. I wonder why that is.
Man Likes Breasts

A high school girls basketball coach in suburban Chicago has been placed on administrative leave after writing a self-published book that includes graphic sexual content and an acknowledgement from the author that he has a "weakness for cleavage."

Seriously? This is news? Do these people really think that all high school girls coaches are asexual, homosexual men, or heterosexual women? No wonder our schools are in such trouble: they're run by morons living in a fantasy world. If they really wanted a coach who wouldn't be ogling the players, they would have to do some profiling. After all, it's ok to profile if your goal is to discriminate against white, heterosexual men.

The book is reported to contain all kinds of amoral and immoral advice. This is public school we're talking about. I seriously doubt their real objection concerns non-Christian behavior. I think they actually have a problem with men who don't behave like women. Heterosexual women, I mean. The unintended consequences of the controversy will be that Coach Player will sell a hundred times more books than he would have if left alone.

Who Are You?

Until God showed his power, Moses doubted his own role in God’s plan. He continually asked the question that weighs on us all: “Who am I?”

Who am I to lead your people? Who am I to speak to Pharaoh? Who am I that anyone should listen to me? God replied by giving Moses a mission: to confront both the B’nai Israel and the Pharaoh and to bring the Israelites out of Egypt.

When Moses asked again, “Who am I that Pharaoh should listen to me?” God, secure in his own identity (“I am/will be who I am/will be”), responded to Moses’ doubt with ultimate authority: “You are who I say you are. ”

Exodus 7:1-2  And YHWH said to Moses, See, I have made you a god to Pharaoh. And Aaron your brother shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you. And Aaron your brother shall speak to Pharaoh, he will send the sons of Israel out of his land.

You too have a mission, a task delegated to you by God. If you doubt your ability to be of service to God and his Kingdom, believe this: God knows who you are. In the end, it doesn’t matter if you believe in your own capabilities so long as you trust in him. You will not overcome through your own power. You are just a tool. Moses and Aaron may have spoken God’s words to Pharaoh, but it was by God’s might that Israel was delivered.

Exodus 7:4-6  But Pharaoh shall not listen to you, and I will lay My hand upon Egypt, and bring My armies, My people the sons of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am YHWH when I stretch forth My hand upon Egypt, and bring out the sons of Israel from among them. And Moses and Aaron did as YHWH commanded them; so they did.

God knows who you are and what you are capable of accomplishing, and he does not choose his tools arbitrarily. He always uses the right tool for the job.

Pharaoh's Bad Marriage

Exodus 1:10  Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.

And we all know how that worked out.

There are four ways to preserve a relationship that has begun to deteriorate:

1. Disable the other person. Through emotional abuse, you can make a person doubt themselves and their ability to survive on their own. Through physical abuse, you can confine or even cripple a person so that they are physically incapable of leaving. Perhaps the most common method today of disabling a person to keep them in a relationship is by keeping them financially dependent. Your credit card issuer and your neighbor with two upside down mortgages can tell you how effective this tactic can be.
2. Instill fear of the unknown. Convince the other person that there is a big bad wolf hiding behind every tree outside the door, that every person they encounter will take advantage of them, and they will be very reluctant to strike out alone. This method has worked very well for politicians throughout history.
3. Bond. Be friends. Spend time together in situations that develop emotional attachment. Study, explore, play, fight, and work together. Have an adventure.
4. Improve yourself. Make a relationship with you look more attractive than a relationship with someone else by becoming a better you. You have probably heard it said that you can’t change someone else. You can only change you. I haven’t read it yet, but Athol Kay’s Married Man Sex Life Primer appears to be based on this idea. It’s on my reading list.

Each of these methods works to a greater or lesser extent and there is a time and place in which each would be appropriate. A healthy relationship, however, will be almost exclusively characterized by methods three and four. Pharaoh tried to keep the Hebrews in Egypt by physically and financially hobbling them. Although they wanted more than ever to leave Egypt, they had no ships, no weapons, no chariots, and no gold with which to obtain such things. They had no allies. They came to believe that they were too weak to face the Canaanites and that their God was too weak or too busy to rescue them. Pharaoh’s strategy might have worked if he had not dismissed Joseph’s God along with Joseph himself. God is the champion of the oppressed and does not allow his people to be abused, enslaved, and terrorized forever.