" However, whenever Jesus (pbuh) was asked about the path to "eternal life" he consistently told his followers to only "keep the commandments" and nothing more." Ray Norris
This statement is not accurate. Jesus consistently pointed to Himself as the path to eternal life illustrated in this verse and in many others throughoutt the Gospels.
John 14
"6: Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."
The commandments of God are good and holy, but no man can obey the spirit of these commandments without the the grace and Spirit of God within them. The old covenant was a school to educate mankind into the impossibility of following rules and regulations with our present nature. These rules and regulations--commandments, statutes and ordinances--taught man the about his utter depravity and his need for a saviour who would transform and recreated his heart.
This was all in God's plan of salvation and rescue of mankind after Adam and Eve's rebellion against God and their consequent spiritual death--"if you shall eat of this fruit, you shall surely die."
Mankind was in a state of spiritual death from the sin of Adam, so God designed a plan of salvation which he recorded in the Scriptures..
WHAT WAS THIS PLAN AND HOW DID HE ACHIEVE IT?
The first part of the plan of salvation:
He chose a man of Faith called Abraham to establish a peculiar peopleas a type or a school of faith for mankind. God choose abraham because Abraham understood in his heart that righteouness was by faith or simply believing and trusting God. This faith of Abraham was the foundation of ancient Israel. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteouness. Notice how Abraham believed God and acted by faith upon His Word for hundreds of years before the commandment of circumcision was established. Circumcision was simply the external manifestation of an internal faith and reality. This principle of faith that Abraham grasped so long ago was the foundation and key to the Kingdom of God, but mankind had not yet learned it and God would establish a school of faith with the Hebrew nation. Through the children of Israel, God taught mankind the hopelessness of their sinful nature they had inherited from Adam. He did this by giving them commandments, statutes and detailed ordinances for worship and sacrifice for sins.
For centuries, God's choosen nation struggled with obedience to the law for righteouness and failed miserably. Ancient Isarael was the best of nations and yet they could obtain righteouness through obedience of commandments, statutes and ordinances. After 1500 years of instruction in the futility of righteouness by the works of the law, God was ready to reveal His righteouness through the faith of Abraham. The old covenant had served its purpose and proven that mankind could not attain to the righteouness of God through the external keeping of statutes and ordinance.
The second part of the plan of salvation"
God was now ready to establish his NEW COVENANT. He revealed His second part of His plan to His prophet Jeremiah:
Jer. 3131: Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
32: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:
33: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD,I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
34: And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
After the fall in Eden, man had been cutoff from a personal and visible fellowship with their spiritual Father. From Adam to Jesus, God revealed Himself to mankind in prophecies and visions but remained mostly hidden because of man's spiritual deadness. Adam and his chidlren---mankind---were spiritually dead and their spiritual eyes could no longer see and expereince God.
When God took on human flesh in the form of His Son, he gave mankind the blessing and glory of "seeing, touching and handling" God. John expressed the blessing of this personal experience. Despite our fallen condition, God revealed Himself in human flesh that man, even without his spiritual eyes, could behold their eternal Father.
While in this flesh, God--Jesus demonstrated His divinity by healing the sick, turning water into wine, walking on water, and opening the eyes of the hopelessly blind and the eary of the deaf.
God had come in the flesh to experience the reality of fallen man. He was tempted in all was as we are, yet without sin.
Finallly, He gave His perfect human--God life on the Cross as an offering for the sins of all men. Love and holiness, the Father of mankind, had come to rescue His children.
Now that they had seen him, touched him and partaking of His blessings visibly, he invited them to have faith in what had been so difficult before because of their dead spiritual eyes.
By this simple faith, Jesu-God promised that He would totally earase their sins and give them a NEW SPIRITUAL birth and baptize them with the HOLY SPIRIT.
By simple faith in this visible and historical divine Jesus, man could now be restored as the sons and daughters of God.
The reality of Jesus Christ is not the empty words of false philosophies and false religions but by the power the New Birth and the Holy Spirit that is given by simple faith in Him.
This is the New Covenant that God has given us in Jesus. Through Jesus He writes His laws and commandments on our hearts and puts them in our mind that we may do His will through the love of a Born Again man rather than the forced obedience of ordinances that were foreign to our old dead man..
May the Father open your heart to the reality of Christ according to the sincere desires of your heart. |
