grace and peace to all of you, the united body of christ!

“So the moment we humans, not yet recognizing Christ in us as the only keeper of His own law, want ourselves to keep it, and slip into this old habit of thinking we can do it, then down we fall. We can’t do what we want to do, and we do what we should not. Oh wretched man! And the law of God stands there to demand of us that we keep it, if we think we can! Then at last it dawns. Our human self is now a container of Another Self, Christ, the Spirit of Christ. We never were meant as humans to keep God’s laws of self-giving love.

Left to our human selves, we can only be ourselves and love ourselves. But that is just why Christ has come into us — to replace that evil spirit of self-centeredness by which we had lived. By ourselves, we would still remain self-loving selves, but we are not ourselves any more. By inner union, Christ is our real self. So what do we now do? We tell the law it is no use to shout at us, because we can’t fulfill it, were never meant to; but we contain the One who can and does. So the law has not a thing to say to us or demand of us. We are ‘dead to the law’ in Christ. And now we are free by simple recognition that Christ in us, Christ as us, keeps His own law in us, so that ‘the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us’ who are now walking by inner recognition of the Spirit, and not recognition of that old self-effort.

How thankful I was when, as a young missionary, longing to be ‘improved’ — to love more, have more faith, the Spirit said to me, ‘Drop that. You can never be improved. You are just a vessel.’ And then He showed me that simple fact that God is love, not has love, and I saw for the first time that love is a person, God Himself; and that it was not a matter of my being made loving, but of me being the vessel which contained Him who is the love. I learned then to change from the false idea of becoming something, to containing Someone.”

There are respectable theologians taking different positions along the continuum. I personally find Douglas Moo’s arguments very persuasive.

I pray that this blog will be a place where readers’ come with openness and humility. Everyone can take home something!

Yes, I think one can’t really use Galatians 3:10 to say Christians are under a curse unless of course they are trusting in their obedience of the 10 commandments for their salvation. Most Christians who may disagree with NCC will not say that they are trusting in the 10 commandments for their justification, but they will use it as a guide for their sanctification. I think that’s wrong, but they are definitely not under the curse!

I’m still thinking about the role of prayer and fasting in receiving “breakthroughs”from God. Will write more on that one day and would be interested to hear your thoughts. I’m also hoping to put up some testimonies of Christians who have been transformed by the gospel of grace. I would love to hear your testimony. Will email you and we should catch up one day also :)

On another note, please do not send any emails to stupidauthoritarian or controlfreak at stillhaventfound.org. My server is meant to redirect all emails to another email account, but somehow it’s not recognizing those two keywords. I guess that’s affirmation that I’m none of those! ¡Muchas gracias señor servidor! You can email me at idealist at stillhaventfound.org email.

Having walk so close with Lord these few years, actually, if you just look to Jesus and let the Holy Spirit lead you by His Grace, what you walk out would be more than what the 10 commandments told you to follow.

10 commandments is about man efforts to walk out the Law specified by Lord.

Walking in Spirit directed activities, trusting and obeying His Words as the spirit leads, and give you Grace and Favour and the Peace of God, all that you obey and walk out will be effortless.

Glory Glory!

In the nature, I can’t imagine to give away all my wealth and family. Lead by the Spirit, I fulfilled it with the Peace of God stabling my heart.

So, do not quarrel the relevant of 10 commandments.

Learn more about what Jesus has done for you. Pastor Prince sermons that revealed about Jesus is good in leading one who choose to believe to mind renewal. Once you think like Jesus, Lord leads you to read his words and talk to him through meditation.

His leading is with Great Grace and Favour. No stress, no fear at all.

With that, what you can accomplish through Him will be greater, as Jesus is the Start and the End, He, who write the 10 commandments will be able to give you Grace to walk it out effortlessly. Glory to Lord Jesus. Amen Amen!

Shalom!

In other off topic issues, I believe the writer of the blog has the right to decide the way his blog is managed and is not obliged to answer to anyone about how it is managed. A blog is still afterall an individual’s own platform to express his opinions and views. I think some readers (like me) appreciate this blog platform also because we find that it is a platform that invites meaningful discussion about issues that are relevant to our searching and growing in our Christian journey. There is value and function in such a blog platform and to manage it in a way that maintains such a value and function requires responsibility on the author’s part and I think that has been achieved to some extent. SHF has not simply ignored comments that were not related to the post but has extended an invitation for comments not relevant to the post, but relevant to other issues no doubt, to be emailed to a separate email address and that can become another platform for more discussion.

Don’t worry I agree with you that we should stay on topic, although at some point in time we can address Chin’s issues about the authenticity of the Bible, and whether true transformation only happens within the Christian faith.

I am from NCC, and in the same way agree with NCC (and more importantly with the apostle Paul) that we are no longer under the 10 commandments. And I think personally through my own experiences that liberty from sin lies in beholding the love of Christ, not by consciously trying to keep the 10 commandments.

I think you mentioned in your previous posts that you disagree with how we perceive people who are under the 10 commandments. Some New Covenant believers I have met continue to bash people who are under the law and declare they are under a curse (Galatians 3:10).

Well I still believe and have seen that my friends who believe in the 10 commandments for the purpose of sanctification, still experience blessings, healings, breakthroughs. I am not able to quantity if they “receive less or more”, but I know it happens. Just like what Pastor Kong says, Billy Graham loves the 10 commandments, and I have heard it myself through one of his interviews. Are we to say that he is under a curse? And hence it is hard to believe that they are “under a curse”. I don’t think it is right for us to declare them under any curse, for the scriptures have already mentioned very clearly that we, as believers, are in Christ.

My suspicion of what happens is that for every believer, whether we are new covenant, or under the preaching of “mixture”, we often come to situations where we come to the end of ourselves. Meaning that at that particular point in time, we know that nothing will help us – not principles, not the 10 commandments, not positive thinking, and we cry out to Jesus. And these prayers are definitely answered – be it healing, or financial lack, or a deliverance from bondage. But after the deliverances happen, some of us return to the routine of “mixture”, believing that the deliverance happened because of Jesus + prayer + fasting + obeying the 10 commandments.

Your thoughts on this?

I’m not going to publish any more off-topic or rude comments. The topic of this post is about the place of the 10 Commandments in the life of the Christian today. As much as I believe that some of the other issues raised above are worthy of discussion, this is really not the place. Feel free to email me or others if you want to discuss those things privately.

I don’t want to sound too authoritarian here ;) Other blogs may allow a free-for-all in terms of publishing off-topic and rude comments, but I’ve tried to prevent that from happening here because I think it’s simply pointless – and doesn’t bring the best out of each of us! I know there are lots of commenters who are not interested in a proper discussion of the topic at hand, but are just out to hijack the conversation and draw attention to their attacks. I won’t allow that on this blog. This blog wasn’t catered for those who want to prove other people wrong or attack New Creation or attack Christianity. There are other blogs where you can do that. This blog is really for people who appreciate constructive discussion and criticism. I’ve never deleted a comment for taking any particular stance on the topic at hand, but I have for the tone of the post, the language used and the off-topic-ness.

As long as your comments are on-topic (or at least close to it) and does not violate basic comment etiquette, I’ll be more than happy to approve your comments, whether you agree with what I or others have written. And if you’d like to discuss something that’s not related to the post, feel free to email me at stupidauthoritarian at stillhaventfound.org and I’ll definitely consider posting something related to that topic for the readers to discuss. Controlfreak at stillhaventfound.org will also do :)

Having said that, you are allowed to comment (off-topic-ally) on this comment – whether you think I’m just being an ass (a sure way for your comments not to be posted) or that you agree with this “policy” or whatever.

Cheers!

P.S.: If you think I’m an ass for being such an authoritarian, just keep it to yourself, substantiate your arguments, use gentler words and your comment should see the light of day :)