The universe is a legal system. The entire universe
operates by laws of nature sealed in place by God.
All things in God's creation operate under their own laws,
internal and external . . . the laws of God run the universe.

Everything was created under laws of its operation,
for the purpose God had in mind.
Boundaries of function were given to every thing created.
The moon is confined to its orbit.
The fish, bound to life in the waters.
And so on . . . .
 

LAW GOVERNS ALL

God's law is meticulous over all His works.
The law given to Moses governed every phase of
human life - relationships, works, even accidents -
all matters had their law.

Justice and equity were the foundation of the
Law given to Moses.
The Hebrew nation was to operate within the
confines of precise ethics taught by God's law.

The Ten Commandments are the bedrock of the Law.
The moral laws of nations have been founded
on this set of simple but unbending laws that
covered all aspects of mankind's behavior.


The Law issues from the nature of God and reveals
His very Being in its Fixed Purity.
His character is
perfect Holiness, an absolute Standard
that is not possible of compromise.


God's Law - issuing from His Holiness - was
given to humanity and recorded in scripture,
that we might glimpse the nature of the Creator
and how far we have fallen
from His presence and His pleasure.

The Cross is proof of the inflexibility of God's statutes.
Sin, the breaking of the Holy Law, required a death penalty
that only God's Pure Son could take.
No way around that death penalty.

Christ satisfied God's Law by His perfect life,
and satisfied the justice of that Law in His vicarious death,
executed by the very real sentence of death
my sin earned for me.

Every person
earns the death penalty from the womb.
"Born in sin" by being born a sinner,
every person born...can only sin.
For he is a sinner.

And especially are we blind to our own
prospects of execution.
"They" deserved death. Certainly not me.

Mere rebellion of an infant's rage sets up its
courtroom of guilt unto death.

The universe is set on a legal basis.
That fact, we must understand.

Our concept of accountability depends on it.
Our commitment to forgiveness -
our primal need for forgiveness -
rests on that understanding
of God's Absolute Justice.

  
Humanity is a criminal on the loose,
unaware of his own lawlessness,
believing his little misdeeds are not that serious.
"God understands."

Many Christians believe that grace took away all the law.
Everything is all right because Christ lived as
a human being and understands our frailty.
Some live under the Old Covenant Law, already proven
impossible to fulfill.
 

GRACE AND LAW
 

The Christian delusion about grace is this:
God's overlooks, God forgives all.

He does forgive - completely -
but even forgiveness is a principle
that rests on Holy and Impartial Law.

Grace is not the absence of Law nor
the negation of the Law
but the completion of it finally.

Grace imparts the power to fulfill the law
by Christ's indwelling life.

Forgiveness is not bypassing the Law of God
It is the satisfaction of His Law and it
removes the imposing of Divine Justice . . .
on all parties to sin:
the one who offends
and the one who does not forgive.

THE SPECTRE OF ACCOUNTABILITY
 

The shadow of the "Day," "That day"
falls over all the New Testament.

So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.
Romans 14:12

And that was written to Christians not unbelievers . . . .

Every one will give an account.
A solitary appearance before
the Infinite Holiness of God.
A reckoning in utter nakedness of the soul's
secret history.

To be unaware of total accountability,
even to a Christian, is to live loose and deluded.
To tremble at this inevitable prospect
is spiritual health by virtue of hearing His Word.
To ignore it is insane.

Sins admitted and placed under the healing
flow of Christ's blood . . . these will be gone.
Vanished, erased from history.

The measure of your forgiveness given,
will be precisely the size of the forgiveness
you will have earned.
All be will exposed and set in Precise Justice by the
One who alone knows the True Dealings
of the unseen heart.

Your unforgiveness will cost you the grace
and covering of your own sin.
It will constitute your spiritual loss
forever and ever and . . . .

Forgiveness has to happen today.
It must be quick. Before the sun goes down.
Why? Because
Tomorrow lies in God's Providence
over life and death.
Tomorrow is not assured to us.
And eternity stands as a
sentinel before us in the dealings of every day.

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Copyright © 2001 Martha Blaney Kilpatrick