BAD NEWS AND GOOD NEWS
First the bad news: No matter how sincere we are, no matter haw hard we work at obeying religious laws, and not matter how much we study the Bible, we won’t follow God’s spiritual laws. When the scriptures tell us that none of us are without sin, that means everyone — including observant Jews and faithful Christians. This even includes those who claim to be righteous because they have a salvation testimony. Our testimony of our own heart condition may mean something to others, and it may give us some comfort, but it means nothing to God. What matters to God is the condition of our heart.

Then the good news: God has provided a way for his spiritual laws to be written on our hearts. It is the New Covenant. Being in a New Covenant relationship with God means that we obey because the desire and ability to obey is in our heart — not as a result of religious laws. Obedience to  God’s spiritual laws is not a matter of legalism or rituals we do with our physical body (i.e. flesh.)  The kind of obedience God wants is with respect to his spiritual laws written on our hearts.

When we are in a New Covenant relationship with God, we won’t simply do the letter of the law with our physical body (i.e. flesh), we will keep the spirit of the law with our heart. It will not be work for us to keep checking the terms of the written law to be sure we are in compliance and then doing those things to make sure that we are in compliance. That is legalistic religion.  There are so many laws that we could not possibly keep track of them all nor could we possibly do them all. Deliverance from this checking and doing is what the Fourth Commandment rest is all about. That is what the good news of the gospel is all about: no more religious work. The Pharisees tried to keep the law religiously, but they could not do it, and Jesus said that our righteousness must exceed their righteousness.

The Pharisees were Old/First Covenant religionists. People who love God do not want to be Old/First Covenant religionists. They want to be New Covenant disciples. That is where the life is.

But there is more bad news. We can’t be in both an Old Covenant relationship and New Covenant relationship at the same time. Old Covenant is when we do religious things in order to be righteous. It is doing the letter of the law. For Jews, that meant working very hard to obey all the terms of the Law of Moses, but that was never good enough for God. But now, both Jews and Gentiles can achieve righteousness by faith instead of through futile attempts to obey the written law. New Covenant is when we believe that the law is written on our heart and no longer obey religious laws. That is good news.

Either we believe that the law is written on our heart or we don’t. If we do believe it to be true, then we stop doing those other things that we previously thought added to or confirmed our righteousness. For Jews, this means ending legalistic obedience to the Law of Moses. For Gentiles, it means ending all the religious activities they do to convince God, themselves and other that they are righteous and Godly. That includes church, synagogue and everything associated with all organized religious institutions. These organizations are unnecessary. They are all about religious works and not about faith — no matter how we may clothe those works in religious language. If we can’t do without our religious institutions, but still maintain that we are followers of Christ or the Torah, we are deceived and double minded. That is bad news.

Once indoctrinated, is very hard to disassociate with religion, but doing so is necessary to being in a true New Covenant relationship with God. The term the Bible uses to describe this process of resisting religious influence is overcoming.

That we can make this transition and overcome is good news — but it will not be easy. Nor will it be possible if we do not study the Bible and apply what we learn.