Two Ways of Fulfilling the Law

What does it really mean to fulfill the law? What goes off in our minds when we hear those words?

I know for me that typically the reaction that I have is from a human legal perspective. Fulfilling a law means to satisfy the demands or requirements of a regulation so that punishment can be avoided. But now I realize that this is based solidly on the counterfeit sense of the interpretation of the word law and is not viewing it in the more accurate sense of law being descriptive of the principles of reality. To view the idea of fulfillment primarily from a legal perspective is to limit too much my understanding of the real issues involved, for I am not saved by keeping the law and thereby satisfying the requirements of holiness. At the same time, I cannot be saved if I am out of harmony with the law.

This gets into the most argued aspect of Christianity that likely has ever existed. Billions have been led to believe that Christ took away the need for us to obey the law by taking the punishment of disobedience upon Himself in our behalf. This line of thinking leads many to believe that they are free to disobey the law without fear of punishment because Jesus stands between them and the “wrath of God” so they no longer need be afraid of punishment and are not longer obligated to keep the law.

But inherent in this logic is a fatal flaw embedded there by the master fabricator of lies himself. Because we mistakenly view the law in the context of the counterfeit legal model that we live in on this earth, we limit our concept of our relationship to law based on the flawed ways in which arbitrary, prescriptive rules are set up and enforced here. Using human reasoning and human faulty legal posturing we create a legal loophole that we think will shield us from any consequences of ignoring God's words to us in His laws.

But Jesus did not come to satisfy the legal demands for justice by the law based on human counterfeit legal models, although in our very limited thinking it would often appear that way. Jesus was primarily operating in the true realm of reality where God's laws are in actuality simply descriptions of the principles of reality and how things function. To claim that Jesus' death shields me from the natural consequences of suffering ill effects from me ignoring the law of gravity is the same kind of illogic that is applied in much of Christianity today. Jesus did not live and die to take away the effects of natural consequences but to demonstrate them so that we would no longer believe Satan's lies.

So in reality, Jesus fulfilled the law in two opposite respects. Because He mysteriously was able to take upon Himself all of the guilt of the whole human race, He suffered the natural consequences that are inevitable from violation of the principles of reality outlined in the Law of God. But He suffered those consequences, not because He earned them from any violations of His own but because He took full responsibility for all of our violations and then demonstrated what happens as a result. This in no way prevents us from suffering the same consequences if we do not relate properly to the demonstration that He gave in His suffering and death. If we refuse to believe the real truth about God's passionate love and about the principles of reality and consequences so graphically displayed on Calvary, we will not be prevented from repeating the suffering and death demonstrated by the perfect Son of God. For that demonstration does not take the place of our suffering the same fate if we refuse to be brought into alignment with the principles of reality in our own life and thinking.

So in one sense, Jesus fulfilled the Law by allowing the natural wages of sin to be realized in His own flesh and soul as a human being. But there is the opposite truth that was also demonstrated during those days and throughout all of His life in which He fulfilled the Law of God. And this sense is the most important sense in which Jesus fulfilled the Law and the sense that has inherent saving, transforming power to align any one of us with the principles of reality which is the law if we allow it to have its effect in our thinking and beliefs at the deepest level of our being.

Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:8)

Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Romans 13:10)

Paul says twice here that it is love that fulfills the Law of God. And all throughout the writings of John it is repeatedly emphasized that God is love. Love itself is the very essence of all the principles of true reality as set up throughout all the universe because everything was created by the God who is love Himself. So what becomes clear here when all of these issues are viewed from a higher perspective outside of our counterfeit system of artificial law, is that to be out of harmony with love is to suffer and experience death like that which happened to Jesus.

But Jesus did not suffer what He did because He was not in harmony with love but because He took on the dysfunction and disharmony of all those who were out of harmony with love. Isaiah makes this perfectly clear in chapter 53. It was not for anything He did wrong that He suffered but it was on our behalf. But just because He illustrated very graphically the consequences of disharmony with love does not exempt any of us somehow from reality and to continue to live out of sync with the principles of love as outlined and detailed in all of the basic laws that God has put into place.

Love is certainly the fulfillment of the Law, but love does not take us out of reality. Reality as God created it still remains the same and disharmony with the principles of reality still have the same consequences as they did before the death of Jesus. Jesus did not come to change or nullify the Law of God but to change and nullify our twisted ideas about reality and our false opinions about how God feels about us. Jesus came to demonstrate more perfectly in His life and teaching what real love looks and feels like so that we would be drawn by attraction into becoming aligned with that love. For it is only as we become realigned with the principles of love that we will be safe to be exposed to the immense and dangerous power and passion of the Source of all holiness and love, God Himself.

So it becomes much more clear that Jesus fulfilled the Law of God, the very principles of reality itself, in both respects. He fulfilled the Law in demonstrating the consequences of being out of harmony with it (even though He did not live out of harmony Himself) as well as demonstrating the power of love to overcome those consequences in the face of all evil. Jesus exhibited a constant spirit of love in the face of all hatred, abuse and unspeakable evil, not to prove that He was better or more powerful than everyone else but that love itself was stronger that any amount of fear, intimidation and lies that could be invented by the propagator of evil himself. He demonstrated that love, the very foundation of all the principles of reality which make up all the laws that govern all the universe, is superior to any of the propositions and alternatives that Lucifer put forth as a better alternatives to the ways of God.

Satan's kingdom and system of governance is based on force, fear and deception to hold its counterfeit reality together. All of the kingdoms of this world are based on His counterfeit foundations of economics, hierarchy and artificial laws. He has had thousands of years to refine and perfect his system and in these last days will do everything imaginable to bring it to what he considers perfection. But his system is fatally flawed from the very beginning because it refuses real, selfless love and the truth about our need for dependence on God. And if we continue to believe in his lies about reality we will be sucked into the consequences that are inevitable in the realm of the true reality.

According to what I have been learning here in Romans thirteen and all throughout Romans is that resistance is somehow opposite to love. Legalism and dependence on my own obedience is not in harmony with the foundational motive of real love and so keeps me outside the satisfaction of the requirements of the Law. No amount of external conformance to rules will align me with the far higher requirements of perfect, selfless love, for all of these external requirements and performances fail to align my heart with the pulse of God's heart who is the essence of selfless service for others. If I have any resistance in my heart to perfect humility and selfless love and passion to bless others, I will inevitably suffer the fire of “wrath” in the heat that I feel internally as a result of my own resistance to love.

Selfishness is actually trying to change the direction of the current flow of life in all the universe. Selfishness tries to appropriate and suck life into itself in preference to being a channel of life for others. Selfishness is thinking of myself before thinking of others. Selfishness by nature is self-preservation and is the very essence of the theory of evolution. So to claim that I do not believe in evolution while at the same time living in selfishness is really hypocrisy. My sinful flesh believes in the principle of the survival of the fittest and I make my choices based on that principle until I am transformed by the far superior principle demonstrated in the life of Jesus – the principle of real love on which the rest of the universe is founded.

Only by embracing the truth about love and being embraced by the God of pure love will I ever be able to come into alignment with the descriptions of love as outlined in the Laws of God. But only those who choose to allow this transformation to be accomplished in their hearts by the grace of God and the convicting of His Holy Spirit will become aligned properly with the principles of reality and be safe to be filled with the electric dynamos power from the Heart of the universe. Jesus never desired to exempt us from the requirements of the Law but to attract us to be filled with the love that underlies that Law. And only love received from the heart of God will empower us to fulfill the law in the same way that Jesus fulfilled it and demonstrated it throughout all of His life.

As I allow His grace to fill my heart and allow His truths to integrate my intellect with the love that I receive from Him into my heart, my life will become more and more like the perfect demonstration of love. Like Jesus, I will be empowered to love my enemies, to subject myself to authority without fear or resentment and will overcome evil with true goodness. But this can never happen by my own efforts or accomplishments. I must first receive real love before I can have it flow out of me. I am not a source of light but I can be a reflector of light. God, this is what I desire deeply and ask You to do in me!

(next in series)