You make known to me the path of life

So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

At many levels our Sacred Scriptures are pretty hard to exactly understand. We have all sorts of barriers–cultural, translations across multiple ancient languages, convoluted grammar and missing punctuation, sinful wayward hearts–and a devil lurking, ever eager to toss flaming darts of discord and distraction. We start shouting and thumping text and take our eyes off of Him and His.

And that Law has lots of ugly bits that are very hard to mesh with our understanding of the Loving Father God who waits for the Prodigal with open arms and Who leaves the ninety and nine to search for the lost sheep because it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish with the Lawgiver who commands the people of Israel to take the women as plunder after killing all the men by sword.

And how do I answer this week’s question from Marco: So why should people believe those particularly horrible Laws as misinterpreted and the nicer ones as representing God’s message to His people?

Jesus.  The Catechism answer. When small children raise their hands and shout, “I know, I know.”

Jesus is God come to earth to proclaim and clarify God’s message to His people.  To clear away all the misunderstandings. He spoke it, He lived it, He gave ever-so-many-memorable examples and stories, and He affirmed what was clear to the rich young ruler who had spent a lifetime in study in order to be pitch-perfect: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus Who Did Not Come to Abolish the Law, but to fulfill it.  The Law describes our absolute smashed filthiness. Not a hope of doing it all on our own.  Or any of it, really.  Helpless.  Even those religious sorts who added heaps and heaps of directions that detailed the outward appearances, but could not touch the heart. Only One knows the heart of the Father.  Because they are One. And He gathered up all of that longest of scrolls scribbled with our failure and bore it on his slashed shoulders.  Forever and ever It is finished. 

This is the plumb line to which we line up our understanding.  And if it is crooked, we know who needs to readjust.

Holy fire, burn

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:48

I have been thinking on this one for a few days.  

In case anyone is left with any delusions of grandeur, any realm of possibility that it is possible to earn righteousness by following the Law, Jesus kicks up the bar–detailing the backstory of the heart of God captured in these carved tablets: clarifying adultery, murder, divorce and love to far beyond my reach.  

There is the little tricky translation problem here as well, because of course Jesus spoke Aramaic, which was then translated into Hebrew, then Greek, and then English.  Therefore, be shlemim (complete) even as is your Av shbaShomayim. Or perhaps, a reference to Leviticus 11:44, be kadosh (set apart) as I AM holy. Or is it t'mim (blameless), in reference to Genesis 17:1?

Or, there is another approach: When he spoke to Abram, God used the Hebrew word translated “perfect” in Gen. 17:1, taw-mam (תָּמַם). The best way to determine the meaning of an ancient word is to see how it is used in other contexts. The actual meaning of taw-mam is almost the opposite of what most Bible translations and the Bible reference books tell us it means. Taw-mam can actually mean expended, exhausted, depleted, spent, completely empty or to come to an end, as in “come to the end of oneself” (#8552, Strong’s Concordance)

Walk before Me and be perfect. (King James)

A more literal and accurate translation of Gen. 17:1 can be: Walk before My faces and be empty of yourself.

The Hebrew words for “Almighty God” in Genesis 17:1 are El Shaddai, the “All-sufficient One.” The contrast is obvious in the Hebrew. Abram, the completely empty one, the spent one, the depleted one, the totally reliant one is walking in the faces of the completely full and sufficient One. This is what Christians are supposed to be – totally dependent upon their Maker, not trusting in the arm of their flesh, especially for “righteousness’ sake.”

Remember, Isaiah calls the righteousness of men, all men and women, filthy menstrual cloths.

This is where Paul takes it. Let us become perfect in the same manner our father in the faith, Abraham, was perfect – let us pour ourselves out, that our Maker might fill us with the good works which He has before ordained that us should walk in.

This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

So. Jesus gathers His followers around Him, sits them down, and explains to them what true righteousness looks like, something far deeper and far broader than we, sinful man, can do on our own.  We absolutely need God the Father to reach down and be our provision, to fill us up with Himself.  

Thus, these words, Be perfect as I am perfect are not a command, but a promise. Jesus is telling us that when we have truly come to the end of self-effort – when we have emptied ourselves of the self-life, then we will find the promised rest. Then the LORD God will perform through us His very own words, works, ways and will. He is capable of loving His enemies, we in self, are not.

Stephen, his face like that of an angel, was able to fall on his knees as the rocks were pelting down and cry out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

Dear El Shaddai, may I walk before You today, empty of self.  

Holy Fire burn away,

My desire for anything

That is not of you and is of me,

I want more of you and less of me, yeah.

Empty me,

Empty me, yeah,

Fill, won't you fill me, 

With you, with you, yeah.

The old wineskins are shredded to bits

And the other brother.  Our family didn't have a television when we were kids, so we read and wrote a lot.

“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD."

Jeremiah 31:33-34

Alene and I went to seminary for a year right after we got married. We studied Systematic Theology and we studied the Bible, cover-to-cover. We studied Old Testament History and New Testament Epistles. We studied Prophets and Poetry and Revelation. We studied Apologetics and Hermeneutics and Liberation Theology. We read books and wrote papers and stayed up late memorizing the finer points of the Christian Faith.

This passage from the book of Jeremiah tells us about a new plan. The Lord says that the old covenant, which relied on people following the Law and the Protocol and the Tradition, basically didn’t work very well. We the People could not seem to walk a straight line. We messed it up continually. The new plan, says the Lord, is for the people to know God. Not “know” him like memorizing the finer points of the Christian Faith. Not “know” him like being experts in the Law and Protocol, or getting good grades in seminary. Just to know him as we know our friend–to know God in our hearts and lives. We will live in relationship with God.

So the question for us is whether this is possible. Are we living in the New Plan or the Old Plan? Are we trying to memorize the Law and the Protocol? Are we trying to discipline ourselves and study ourselves into the knowledge of God, or can we live in relationship with our Creator? Maybe we are doing both. I went to seminary for a year. I read the Bible. I read books about the Bible, and books about the books about the Bible.

What we can aspire to, though, is to live in such a way that our lives are infused with the love of God. I am thinking of a secure, living love that comes out of a real relationship, and not out of the book–any book. Maybe this love and relationship can become our first language–the means in which we live and think and experience life.

Dear loving God, we hope to know you. We hope to live in faith and love that comes from inside of us, where you have written on the flesh of our hearts. Please lead us into true life. Amen.