Colossians 2:13-14 (WEB) You were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, wiping out the handwriting in ordinances which was against us; and he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross;
The entire Christian world assumes this means the laws were nailed to the cross. But you’ve seen that those laws are ALL derived from “love thy neighbor as thyself”! And thus cannot be abolished without abolishing love for others!
And anyway… why would you, a good person, want “don’t steal” to be abolished? Is it not a good principle? Don’t you agree with the idea that people shouldn’t steal – at least from you? So why would you even WANT it to be nailed to a cross and done away?
So then what precisely was nailed to the cross? Surely not “do unto others”, for Paul himself taught that to gentiles long after the death of Christ. Nor can it be “don’t steal”, for Paul likewise taught that to Gentiles as part of the great law (Romans 13:8-10). Moreover, he taught it as an vital component of loving others!
So what then, was nailed to the cross? Well, whatever it was, it was something that was against us. Something that was bad for us. But is it bad for us to not lie, steal, or keep idols? Is it bad for us to love our neighbor? Is it bad for us to keep the principles of the law? Ask Paul!
Galatians 3:21 (WEB) Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! …
Romans 7:7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? May it never be! However, I wouldn’t have known sin, except through the law. For I wouldn’t have known coveting, unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.”
Paul knew people would misunderstand what He was saying, and he took pains to say, on MANY occasions, that the law was not the problem. “The law was,” as He would go onto say in this chapter, “holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good” (verse 12).
So if the law wasn’t against us, if the law wasn’t sin, if the law was “holy, righteous, just and good”… then it wasn’t the law that was nailed to the cross! But then… what was? Again, Paul tells gentiles the answer!
Galatians 3:13 (WEB) Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,”
It is not bad for us to keep the law… on the contrary, the law defines Good for us! But it IS bad for us to be cursed for those things we foolishly or ignorantly did in the past!! The only thing in the Law of Moses that was contrary to us is the curse! Which curse?
Galatians 3:10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who doesn’t continue in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.”
This curse was written, by the hand of man, on the covenant that God made with Israel at Sinai through Moses (Deuteronomy 29:20-21, Deuteronomy 31:26). This HANDWRITING of ordinances was a witness against us! It was contrary to us! Why?
Isaiah 38:17-19 (WEB) … you have in love for my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption; for you have cast all my sins behind your back. For Sheol can’t praise you. Death can’t celebrate you. Those who go down into the pit can’t hope for your truth. The living, the living, he shall praise you, as I do this day. The father shall make known your truth to the children.
We cannot learn from our sins if we are dead! God cannot make known His truth to us if we die for our first honest mistake! So Jesus took the curse OUT OF THE WAY. He didn’t abolish the law written with the finger of God (Deuteronomy 9:10)!
He didn’t abolish “love your neighbor”! Jesus took only the CURSE on Himself, nailing only the hand-written CURSE to the tree, removing only that part of the law which prevented us from LEARNING from our mistakes!
But the “holy, just, and good” law (Romans 7:12) was meant to teach us how to treat all beings as we would want to be treated! It exists to show us how to love all men as we love ourselves. Why would a loving God abolish that? He wouldn’t!
So Jesus only removed the parts of the law which got in the way of the great goal!
THE GREAT GOAL
A child learning to walk falls down a lot. But what if the “wages of falling” were death? How many of us would be alive now? But God’s goal for us is to be able to stand up, as tall as Christ Himself!
Ephesians 4:13-15 (GWV) … until we become mature, until we measure up to Christ, who is the standard. Then we will no longer be little children, … we will grow up completely in our relationship to Christ, who is the head.
Paul tells us we must have our senses exercised by using them to determine good from evil (Hebrews 5:13-14). But as with every exercise, beginners are guaranteed to make mistakes because they’re beginners!
The Old Covenant was against us because it didn’t allow for that; a mistake, ANY mistake, for ANY reason, meant a curse! Hebrews 10:28. But that was not because of the law, it was because of the curse of the lawwhich, because of our selfish natures, kept getting us killed before we could LEARN!
Romans 7:10-11 (BBE) And I made the discovery that the law whose purpose was to give lifehad become a cause of death: For I was tricked and put to death by sin, which took its chance through the law.
So it wasn’t the law that was the problem – for the law, if kept, gives life! (Romans 3:12). No, it was the fact that we had no way to undo our sins under that law! The problem with the law is that selfish humans cannot keep it perfectly.
Sooner or later, someone will slip up, and the law only knows one answer – death (Romans 6:23). You can avoid the curse indefinitely by keeping the law, but you cannot UNDO the curse by keeping the law!
Once sin is committed no amount of perfect obedience to the law can EVER undo a past sin! (Hebrews 7:19). You can avoid murder for a thousand years, kill once, and keep the whole law perfectly for eternity after that – and nothing will EVER change the fact that you DID kill.
You DID harm someone. You DID fail to love your neighbor. You can love everyone else perfectly, but that cannot undo the ONE act of sin you did! Keeping the law can never wipe away that sin!
Hebrews 10:4 (WEB) For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.
The law, though good, needed a better mechanism to remove the curse from those who, though they sincerely tried their best to keep it, fell short of perfection – “sinned”. To save those who, though they tried to do as Christ would have done, failed to live up to His example.
And so Jesus died to nail that curse to the tree with him so that we would not be under the curse of the law! To redeemed us from the curse of the law, save us from the death we deserved for our sins!
Isaiah 44:22 I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions, and, as a cloud, your sins. Return to me, for I have redeemed you.
Thus overcoming the law’s sole weakness – the fact that we were human, and the law was incapable of undoing our inevitable sin! Something Moses’ law, with it’s blood of bulls and goats, could not do!
Romans 3:31 (WEB) Do we then nullify the law through faith? May it never be! No, we establish the law.
We don’t abolish the law by faith in Christ, we ESTABLISH the law through our faith! For it is through the grace we receive to try, and fail, and try again to keep the law that we learn HOW to be good people; in so doing, we make the law HONORABLE!
WHY KEEP THE LAW?
Some will say “if Jesus abolished the curse, why keep the law at all?” If you are asking this question, you’ve missed the point of the Bible. It is GOOD to love your neighbor more than you love yourself! Why would you want to stop doing that?? Are you a bad person?
1 John 5:2 (BBE) In this way, we are certain that we have love for the children of God, when we have love for God and keep his laws. For loving God is keeping his laws: and his laws are not hard.
It is GOOD to love God with all your heart, mind, and strength! The laws – and by that I mean every law, every ritual, every idea in the Bible – are put here to help us perfect our love!
1 John 4:17-18 (BBE) In this way love is made complete in us, so that we may be without fear on the day of judging, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love: true love has no room for fear, because where fear is, there is pain; and he who is not free from fear is not complete in love.
When you were under a curse, doomed to die for your first mistake you could not be made perfect in lovebecause you lived in fear! And so because Jesus took away the curse, we can now do the right thing, love our neighbor and God, without fear of being killed if we fail! Because Jesus first loved us!
1 John 4:19-21 We love him, because he first loved us. If a man says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? This commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should also love his brother.
Thus John is reaffirming, 60 years after the death of Christ, that we must keep both of the two great commandments and love God AND love our neighbor – for to break either one is to break “do unto others!”
God knows that loving our neighbor as much as ourselves is a lot to ask from a selfish human! And He expects us to fail – even to fail often. But just like a child learning to walk, God expects to see regular improvement from us!
Romans 6:1-2, 14-15 (WEB) What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? For sin will not have dominion over you. For you are not under law, but under grace. … What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? May it never be! May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any longer?
We don’t abolish the law by grace – God forbid! Because if grace gives us permission to sin freely, what would that make Christ?
Galatians 2:17-18 (WEB) But if, while we sought to be justified in Christ, we ourselves also were found sinners, is Christ a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I build up again those things which I destroyed, I prove myself a law-breaker.
If Christ’s death is used as an excuse to hurt others without fear of the curse, then that would mean Christ is a minister of sin, an enabler of evil-doers – and surely nothing is further from the truth!
The world has this all backwards! Jesus didn’t die so that we can BREAK the law! He died so we can LEARN TO KEEP the law! Jesus abolished the curse so we can make mistakes while learning to love our neighbor as He loved us!
He died so you and I could learn about the “perfect law of liberty” in a covenant made out of love, not fear! He died so we could learn how to love our neighbor the right way, not out of obligation to a covenant, but out of desire for their good! Who in the universe would want that abolished?
Not you, I hope?
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Jesus said He came to fulfill the law. Most people assume He meant that, once fulfilled – by His death – the law no longer had any significance. Again I cannot say often enough that all laws are derived from love for God and man, and the idea of “fulfilling” that love so that it never has to be shown again is absurd.
But what exactly does it mean? When the year is fulfilled, it has come to the end and a new year begins. When a laundry cycle is fulfilled, the clothes are washed, rinsed, spun, and the machine stops – ready to go again. So what can it mean to fulfill the law?
We know that the law produces life, IF a man obeys it (1 Timothy 1:8). But in the real world, we also know that eventually, all men will sin at least once. So while in the ideal sense, the law produces life, in the real world, what does the law produce?
Romans 4:15 (WEB) For the law works wrath, for where there is no law, neither is there disobedience.
That is the natural cycle of the law: life, temptation, sin, wrath, death (James 1:13-15). So when the law is finished, or fulfilled, the end is death! That is why Paul called the Old Covenant the “ministration of death”(2 Corinthians 3:7).
Because though it would produce indefinite life if kept, in the real world – with real, flawed people – it always brought death to those who were bound to the covenant! Sooner or later, the Old Covenant always ended in a curse!
Romans 10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who has faith.
But the New Covenant has A BETTER end to the law! The end of the law is death, so to complete the law and fulfill its awful cycle Jesus had to take the curse upon Himself even though He didn’t deserve it!
Even though He had not sinned, He FULFILLED the wrath of the law and tasted death FOR EVERY MAN (Hebrews 2:9), so that He could make us FREE from the law of death (Romans 8:2)! He made peace with the law for us, by taking away the enmity, the anger the law had for us – by bearing that curse Himself! Ephesians 2:14-16.
By thus fulfilling the cycle of the law when He didn’t have to, He was able to take the curse out of the way so that we can be free!
… But free to do what? Free to hate our brother? Free to dishonor God? Free to commit adultery, free to worship idols? Free to marry unbelievers or unequally yoke our animals together? Free to forget about mortifying our flesh daily? Free to defile God’s holy temple within us? Free to leave our hearts uncircumcised?
Or did He only make us free from fear of death for an honest mistake?
Hebrews 2:14-15 (BBE) And because the children are flesh and blood, he took a body himself and became like them; so that by his death he might put an end to him who had the power of death, that is to say, the Evil One; And let those who all their lives were in chains because of their fear of death, go free.
That was the true bondage! And that’s why Jesus came – to show us the truth, THIS truth, and promised that it would set us free! (John 8:32-34). The Jews were indeed in bondage – but not because God gave them laws requiring them to treat men as they would want to be treated!
The Jews were not in bondage to the law, but to the SIN the law warned them about (Romans 7:23), and the curse that came from it! They were in bondage because they were held hostage to the law BY FEAR OF THE CURSE!(Romans 8:15).
Colossians 2:13-14 (GWV) You were once dead because of your failures and your uncircumcised corrupt nature. But God made you alive with Christ when he forgave all our failures. He did this by erasing the charges that were brought against us by the written laws God had established. He took the charges away by nailing them to the cross.
It was the charges against us – the penalty for our sins – that were nailed to the cross. Not the law, not the golden rule, not the obligation before God to treat God and your fellow man as you would want to be treated! Only the penalty for when you, inevitably, fail to do so!