Of course, it greatly helps an elect spirit if that one's mind of flesh also hears some correct teachings from God's Word too, so one can pray more directly for understanding and not fall into confusion through contradicting teachings from others. One can make far more progress in salvation if one has a Bible and knows how to use it. Nevertheless, God states that a man can be saved only by Him, and He can save anyone without His written word. For “God shows no partiality” in whom He saves or condemns. Whether or not an elect child has heard the Bible and God's written law, it will not make any difference to God, regarding His salvation. For God initially saved His people before the Bible was ever written. He revealed His words to those already saved, before they penned those words in the Bible. Thus, He can easily do so again, and does so every day for all His elect, even for those who have never read His Bible. Many “heathens” are always being saved by Jesus, in the same way as those who know the Bible. For the elect without a Bible “show that the work of the law is written on their hearts” by God Himself, when they do the fulfilled meaning of God's law. Jesus is teaching and training their spirits for their salvation, which will occur on that day when, according to the Gospel, God judges the secrets of men (Rom. 2:16). Clearly, God was saving Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Job and others, long before a single word of the Bible was written. God was saving all His elect long before anyone knew Jesus' name. So God does not rely on written words or men to save His beloved elect. For flesh always fails. But God can never fail to finish anything He chooses to do.
Also, to fully comprehend what God's law truly means, we need to realize how God's understanding of His own law differs greatly from the ways most churches interpret His law, since their perception is almost always influenced by interpolated pagan, Greco-Roman concepts. And those humanistic concepts cause the church to teach about God's Word, God's law and God's salvation in ways that God did not intend. For instance, in the Old Testament, the word that the church normally translates as “law” is the Hebrew word torah, which actually refers to “a doctrine or precept,” not to a Roman kind of law. Then, in the New Testament, the word “law” is translated from the Greek word νόμος, which actually refers to “a principle or prescribed way of behaving,” and was chosen by the apostles because its meaning most closely resembles the meaning of the word torah. So neither of these words in the Bible, in neither of the Bible's original languages (Hebrew and Greek), bear the stigma of the word “law” implied by the English language, an implication originating from Greco-Roman humanists. For the Roman law consisted of man-made prohibitions and they thought justice involved revenge. Then the English churches adopted these concepts. But both torah and νόμος suggest a teaching or a principle that we strive to follow, and lack any connotations of a Roman kind of “law.”
Most churches also teach about God's “commandments.” But the English word, “commandment,” also carries a Roman corruption. It makes us think of a command given to Roman soldier, where the soldier could be executed if he even questioned it. But, in the Bible, the word “commandment” is translated from terms where their ecclesiastical meanings (i.e., God's intended meanings, that is, the meanings derived from the ways the Bible used these words) are not Roman. The Hebrew word mitsvah and the Greek word ἐντολή both refer to “authoritative words, precepts, teachings, concepts or principles.” When the Bible talks about “commandments,” it is actually talking about principles that need to be comprehended and understood. Neither mitsvah or ἐντολή merely refer to commands that must be blindly obeyed. And, to this day, many Jews do not speak of the “Ten Commandments,” but refer to them as the “Ten Words (Teachings) of God.” And, while most English translations of the Bible indicate that God wants us to “obey” His law, the Bible's original languages actually tell us that God wants us to “guard” His authoritative precepts or teachings, that is, in our hearts. We must protect them, keep them pure and safe from any corrupting influence. The Hebrew word shamar and the Greek word τηρέω both mean “to guard,” and imply that we must do this guarding inwardly, in the heart. Neither of these words ever imply that we must “obey” God's law through the will and mind of the flesh. Then the Hebrew word shama means “to hear with discernment, understanding and care." So our spirits are to “guard” and “understand” God's law, then learn from Jesus how to apply His law rightly. We are not to simply “obey” God's “commands” by wills of our flesh, neither blindly nor in the ways our minds of flesh choose to interpret them. Such semantic differences seem trivial to some. Yet they reveal a profoundly deep antithesis of views about both God and His “law.”
So, while you study the Bible, always remember that, throughout the Bible, the word “law” primarily refers to the authoritative words, teachings, instructions and precepts of God, to His principles which He passed on to us, to guide our lives and lead us into a kind of love that pleases Him. We are to guard these teachings in our hearts, to keep them safe and pure, to ensure they are never harmed or nullified by corruptions originating from men or devils. God's laws are the ways He created in the beginning, the ways that always function most effectively in producing a warm, loving, just, equitable and beneficial life for all. God's law was never supposed to be treated like a long list of prohibitions interpreted in a cold, self-serving, Greco-Roman way by man's mind of flesh. God's law is not a bunch of rules which deluded men superficially obey so they can think they are so much more righteous than other men, so they can esteem themselves above others, so they can look down upon the others as subhuman “sinners.” The lying flesh will use God's law to pretend to be better than others, to delude men into thinking they are more godly than others. But those who do not know that they are just as foolish and sinful as literally all other men are actually less than others.
By thinking and acting as though a fleshy, man-made interpretation and one's outward obedience to “God's law” makes one better than others, one is falsely proclaiming that God Himself esteems one more highly than others. And this is not true. God esteems no man above another. Neither should we esteem anyone above another. For all human beings are equally sinful, equally “worthless,” equally deserving God's wrath—as God's Word clearly proclaims. So, if anyone falsely interprets God's words in a way that esteems oneself, one is misusing God's name (using it “in vain”), and causing God's name to be slandered. So this is a sin of the third order, far worse than murder or adultery!
All of us have also seen how the rich or powerful abuse God's law to justify carnally ruthless forms of exploitation, to sin against the poor and powerless. Almost all pagans, especially the Greek and Roman secular humanists, have always devised unjust laws to enable their cruel, arrogant elite or upper classes to ruthlessly exploit others. They all established privileged hierarchies of men. And so has the church. In fact, the church has always preferred Roman laws for the flesh, never God's law. So, for example, worldly churches emphasize how God's law gives the “right” to “private property,” to use it in whatever ways one chooses, and that God said, “Thou shalt not steal.” Yet they mention nothing about how God owns the earth, and all that is upon it, even the souls of men. They mention nothing about how God's law treats all men as mere stewards upon His land, and how all men must allow the needy, and even the wild animals, to receive a portion of everything grown on their land— how all men must allow strangers to walk upon their land, at any time, even to eat any food growing there, and how they must allow the poor onto their land to glean a part of their harvest every year.
Therefore, I repeat, God's law is spiritual (Rom. 7:14). So, by definition, it cannot be a bunch of rules for the flesh. The ultimate purpose of His law is to teach and train our spirits, so we will learn to do God's will spontaneously, straight from the desires and wills of our spirits. Thus, God's law never makes one man, through the flesh, superior to another. As was already mentioned, God clearly stated that literally all human beings are sinners. Therefore, all are equally condemned. So all have an equal obligation to serve God, since all owe an infinite debt to God and all have an equal need for God's salvation. All equally rely on God for life and all that is in life. In fact, all we are and all we possess is from God. And God can take it all away again, at any time. Also, God commanded, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord'” (Rom. 12:19, ESV). Thus, only God has the right to take revenge. Yet the very foundation of all Greco-Roman law, which has now become both secular and church law, is man's revenge. Therefore, God's law has absolutely nothing to do with Greco-Roman law.
While God allows properly trained and appointed enforcers of His law to sometimes “bear the sword” (to coerce by force, or even use lethal force to kill those who unjustly kill others), this is only to restrain wilfully lawless and destructive souls. But the main purpose of His law was to teach, guide and correct as much as possible. Justice first reasons with the sinner. Only when a wilful sinner cannot be subdued through reason, should force be applied. And, if we need to apply force, we must remember that we are applying it to an equal sinner like ourselves. So the Greco-Roman idea of using God's law for selfish purposes—to esteem one person over another, or to take revenge on others—is very wrong. If any interpretation of God's law is for these carnal, pagan purposes, it must be cast aside and replaced with the interpretation God actually intended His own law to bear.
We need a full and correct interpretation of God's law. And, there are three criteria to keep in mind, criteria which Jesus often uses in teaching our spirits, when our hearts seek a right interpretation:
1. All God's law can be summarized by two commands of God, and these two define the whole purpose and intent of all God's law. Jesus told us these two were, in order, from the greatest to the least: (1) You shall love God, above all else, more than any person or thing, and; (2) You shall love your neighbour, that is, you shall love the one God places near you, the one God brings into the sphere of your life (see Mat. 22:36-40; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-37; Rom. 13:9-10; Gal. 5:14; James 2:8). Here the second commandment is like the first, and is really just an extension of the first—because you cannot help but justly and truly love those God places in your life if you truly love God. Therefore, if one does not interpret God's law in a way that applies just, pure, God-like love—the kind of love God defines in many places in His Word, such as in the 13th chapter of I Corinthians—then one's interpretation of God's law is wrong. If God's law is interpreted rightly, according to the way Jesus' Spirit teaches elect spirits to interpret it, it will always produce good, just fruit through love for God and love for those He brings into the spheres of our lives. And our loving works will be done spontaneously, straight from the love in our hearts, as our spirits faithfully love God's Spirit. Our lives will begin to produce just, good, long-term effects, spiritually benefiting everyone, especially our brothers and sisters in the Lord, which will be the fruits of just, pure, God-like love. And these fruits of Jesus' Spirit teaching our spirits will be: (a) a kind of steady inner joy that comes through serving God in spirit and in truth, and by serving His people; (b) a restored relationship with God, and peace in our hearts with Him; (c) a patient endurance of God's discipline; (d) a useful and kindly type of morality; (e) a beneficial goodness; (f) a faith that Jesus will teach and renew our spirits, providing all our hearts need; (g) a mild gentleness that never acts through selfish ambition to gain status, wealth or fame; and (h) the spirit's ability to control its flesh, to keep its flesh from deception and sin (see Gal. 5:22-23).
2. God's method of teaching us His law is firstly and primarily through His own actions done to illustrate His own interpretations of His own laws. He teaches us His meaning of His words either through real events in real life today, or else by providing examples of how He has acted throughout history, especially the historical events found in the Bible. Above all, we must look at how God’s actions, described throughout the Bible, interpreted and applied His own laws. If anyone’s interpretation and application of God’s law differs from the way God interpreted and applied it through His own actions, then that individual’s interpretation and application is wrong. For example, some churches say that every kind of divorce is a sin. Yet God Himself declared that He Himself wrote a decree of divorce (Jer. 3:8). Whether or not God said this figuratively is irrelevant. The only relevant detail is that God Himself said He divorced an unfaithful bride. And, if God Himself did this, then some kinds of divorce are truly just in God’s eyes. Some kinds of divorce are forms of righteous obedience to God, necessary to bring loving justice into this world and to undo the ruthless works of Satan.
A pagan law is usually an array of abstract principles that men interpret through the dishonest and self-serving intellects of their minds of flesh. But God has always expected His people to meditate, with the minds of their spirits, upon whatever He causes to occur in their lives, and upon the examples, illustrations and teachings He provides in His Word. We are to do this with His Spirit’s help, until we are able to extract the particular principles that apply to each situation, and until we determine how, how much, when and why each principle is applicable. Above all, we are to understand how those principles serve our hearts' desires to apply God- like love. Yes, God often states a principle as a commandment, but never in the same way the Greeks and Romans did. For, when God states a principle as a commandment, it is usually to summarize a number of other laws that are given in the form of examples or illustrations.
For instance, the abstract principles in the two commandments above (“love God” and “love your neighbour”) summarize all of God's law, where the greatest is the first commandment. For, if you truly love God, then you will also love His creation and those He puts in your life. Next, these two laws summarize the Ten Commandments, which are also arranged in order from the greatest to the least—where the first four relate to the love of God, the fifth relates to both a love of the spirit’s Father and a love of the flesh’s parents, and the last five relate to the love of those God places in the sphere of one's life. Then these Ten Commandments also summarize all the other laws God gave us through Moses, all 613 laws of the Old Covenant. Each of the Ten Commandments is an archetypal law representing a whole group of related laws. Yet each of these ten is not just a principle, but an illustration of what to do or what not to do. Each illustrates one of the ten most necessary principles of a loving life. And each one represents many specific principles which, in turn, represent even more specific laws of God.
For instance, the seventh commandments is: “You shall not commit adultery.” Of course, this forbids an act which could occur in real life. So it is an illustration of what not to do. But it represents a very general and common principle and summarizes a whole host of prohibitions against sexual impurity. It is actually exhorting us to maintain sexual purity, in order to preserve our spirits in our hearts—since heeding the desires of the flesh for sexual impurity leads to a “leprosy” of the spirit, a sin against oneself, making one’s spirit unable to feel, and causing a “palsy” of the spirit, making it unable to exert control over the actions of the flesh. So this commandment represents a whole array of more specific moral principles allowing for an appropriate and beneficial sexual gratification for the flesh. And one of these seventh- order commandments is this: “A woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak” (Deut. 22:5, ESV). Again, this also refers to an act which can be performed in real life. It is an illustration of what not to do, and teaches a specific principle related to sexual morality—about how to preserve a just, God-like love in the spirit when dealing with the sexual desires of the flesh. So the full meaning of this law is much deeper than it seems. Yes, it tells us not to wear clothing made for the opposite sex. And, for the simple, that may be enough. However, is that really all God was concerned about? Clearly not! It is a spiritual law. Therefore, it bears spiritual intent, and is designed to teach the mind of an elect human spirit. Since it is spiritual, for the spirit, this law teaches us much more.
Deuteronomy 22:5 actually provides an illustration which the minds of our spirits need to meditate upon. Our hearts must ask God why God hates us to wear clothing made for the opposite sex? So we seek God and His loving principles implied by this prohibition. For those principles will be the fulfilled meaning of this law, that which Jesus promised to write upon our hearts (teach our spirits) for our salvation. So what principles of a spirit's love does God want us to extract? First consider that, in those days, garments indicated one's religion, tribe, social status, occupation and character. But, in this context, a garment principally represents one's role in the flesh, as a man or as a woman. So God was declaring that He hates a woman to take a man's role or a man to take a woman's role. Then we ask “Why?”
Some think “science” has proved that a woman's mind of flesh is exactly the same as a man's mind of flesh, and that both men and women can perform the same tasks equally well. But the opposite is true. All truly scientific and unbiased studies of the human brain have proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the differences between male and female brains are greater than the differences between the other organs of their bodies. And real life, all around us, confirms this, although fake studies are invented by humanists every minute to counter this fact with their deceptions. In reality, even when men and women perform exactly the same tasks, or when they reason through to the same conclusions, their thought processes and their expressions of those thoughts are very different. And, in many circumstances, those very different thought processes lead to very different conclusions. Therefore, we must logically conclude that God created men to perform certain roles and functions better than a female is able to perform them. Likewise, God created women to perform equally important but different roles and functions, in a better way than a male is able to perform them. And a spirit cannot erase these roles ordained by God, not while flesh exists upon the face of the earth.
Therefore, bad effects will inevitably result from a spirit's rebellion against this law of God, because God did not design women to be men or vise versa. If people attempt to erase the differences between the roles of men and women, it will cause damage. Men must build social frameworks and structures. Women automatically accept those structures, usually without question, then build their lives within them. For women cannot build adequate structures for themselves. Every female focuses on the words and feelings of other people, then responds to that. An elect woman inwardly strives to respond with love and a non-elect woman responds with some selfish action. But the point is that women are hard-wired to be responders, helpers. Only some men are made to be initiators of responses, designers and builders of social structures. So, if God's law is ignored, men will no longer act wisely to provide solid, just structures for their families and society, or protect them from deception and decay. Men will go off to pursue whatever appeals to them, especially to their lusts of the flesh. Then women will be abandoned to care for their children without help. So their workload will be doubled, and they will be exploited in empty, lost, meaningless lives. Evil will pervade the land. Exploitation, oppression and injustice will rule a society that does this. Only a male role for a male—defined throughout God's Word by examples and commands— will produce a loving, effective, beneficial result for all. Likewise, only a female role for a female—defined in God's Word by examples and commands—will produce the best effects for all. Ultimately, this law must be interpreted through God-like love and according to God's Word alone—never through the Greco-Roman law, since it taught that men owned women.
3. All the penalties prescribed by God's law were maximum penalties. But God never set any minimum penalties. Rather, He commanded complete forgiveness for every unintentional sin and for every intentional sin that was followed by true repentance, in a way which did not require any penalty at all. Whenever an Old Testament law declared that someone who committed a particular kind of sin shall “surely be put to death,” or shall surely receive other kinds of punishment—even when God’s Word proclaimed that punishment or penalty must be administered without mercy—God always did so under the assumption that we knew it was the maximum penalty. God assumed that we knew every penalty was only applicable for the most extreme instances of one committing that particular sin. The punishment was only to be administered if that particular sin was done in a wilful way, with full malicious intent and without any godly sorrow or true repentance. It was strictly for a merciless, cold-blooded act of committing that particular sin. To Moses, and to most other people of the time, this was obvious. Since we all have fleshy anger when a sin is committed against us, we automatically assume the sinner did it with the most evil intentions we can possibly imagine. So God wrote His laws to address this assumption. Often our very first thoughts come from the mind of flesh, which first imagines very evil intentions of very wicked hearts, since the flesh naturally thinks that way. Therefore, since we read or hear God’s law with our eyes and ears of flesh, God told us the absolute maximum penalty for each particular kind of sin listed in His law.
Yet God also expected His people to then meditate upon His law, to think about it with the minds of our spirits and remember that all these maximum penalties were not to be always administered every time a person committed those kinds of sins. And God commanded His people to take all sinners and criminals to His appointed judges for a fair trial. The people were never allowed to administer justice themselves, as vigilantes. Then these judges were to serve God through their spirits, and administer His spiritual law through their spirits. So their job was not to simply determine whether or not a sinner was guilty of a sin. True judges were also supposed to determine the motives and intentions in the heart of each sinner. Then they were to administer whatever was best for all the people, whether it was teaching the sinner into true repentance that bore good fruit, or punishing an unrepentant sinner. And these judges were to administer God’s law in God’s way. Above all, all true judges were to realize that God's law reflects the very nature of God Himself, where God's administration of His own law was to be the ultimate example of how they were expected to administer His law.
No man has any authority or right to administer God's law and its penalties in any way other than the way God Himself administers it. Yet God always showed mercy and grace towards all who sinned unintentionally, and to those who truly repented away from intentional sins and into a knowledge of His truth. God required absolutely no penalty nor punishment for such sinners. God forgave blasphemy, idolatry, murder, sexual immorality and so on—if it was done without malicious intent, or when one of His elect children truly repented from the sin. So God expects His people to do the same. Since God had forgiveness, mercy and grace for unintentional sinners, and for those who truly repented, so must we. And, when God provided a maximum penalty for a sin, we must never exceed that maximum penalty either, as some suggest. Some say, in difficult times, they must hang thieves, instead of merely requiring them to pay back what they stole plus twenty percent, or whatever maximum penalty God required for that particular kind of theft. Thus, those who intentionally hang thieves are murderers with malicious intent, and are far worse than the thieves they hang.
Of course, in Old Covenant times, maximum penalties were emphasized, but only to prevent the lawless from disobeying God's law. Those who knew God's law, like Moses, king David and all the other prophets, realized that a sin could be forgiven by God, and thus by man, without requiring any penalty or punishment at all. They knew the severe penalties described in the law were only for the unrepentant, wilfully lawless ones. Yet, throughout most history, most Jews and Christians, who claimed to worship the God of Israel, forgot this forgiveness.
First consider again how God's Word declares that God intended that the “law,” including its dreadful punishments and penalties, was for the lawless (I Tim. 1:9). So these penalties were meant to bring fear to the ruthless and merciless, because those ones have no ability to truly follow God's real law with their hearts. They neither know nor fear God in any real or honest way. They cannot truly love anyone and care only about themselves. So God was forced to prevent these loveless ones from causing too much harm and death by making them afraid to do so with threats against their own bodies, against the only things they valued and loved.
On the other hand, God required absolutely no penalties for anyone who unintentionally disobeyed any of His laws, even His most important laws—through ignorance of the law, or by error, or by coercion, or by some other circumstance which caused a sin to be committed without any malicious intent. Then God further allowed for a total forgiveness of intentional sins through true repentance, through a change of the intentions of the heart, through a process which God can perform only inside His elect through their love for Him and His creation. Through repentance, an elect one's intentional sins become unintentional sins. Then God can forgive those sins. If the spirit of God's child lost control over one's mind of flesh, then committed a sin, it was indeed intentional. But later, after God's Spirit reasoned with the elect one's spirit in the heart, one might heed God's rebuke and respond with godly sorrow.
Through God's power, that elect spirit could regain control over the flesh and confess the sin was wrong, turning the heart's intentions against the sin, towards God's real truth. Since one's core intentions were turned against the sin, the sin now became unintentional and forgivable.
Either way—whether a sin was originally unintentional or became unintentional through repentance—God's Old Covenant law always allowed for the sacrifice of an animal to be made for the forgiveness of all such sins, in a way which provided for a full atonement, that is, a full restoration of the relationship between God and the sinner (e.g., see chapter four of Leviticus). And, of course, the animal sacrifice represented Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.
Thus, when the Israelites of the Old Covenant times placed faith in the animal sacrifice, it was faith in Jesus' sacrifice. Consequently, this animal sacrifice did indeed provide a real forgiveness of real sins and also provided a real atonement of their relationship with God.
Yet we must realize that, ultimately, this forgiveness and atonement was only for God's elect children. For all true forgiveness involves an inner sorrow of the spirit, acknowledging the wrongness of a sin by the sinner and a longing for a full r