Chapter XXII

Chapter XXII

The Law

A.A.’s 5th step states that: We admitted to God and to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Romans 2:12-15, 3:21-28

    In the last chapter I wrote about just how much a learned man Paul was. In the last chapter Paul was confessing to another human being. Actually Paul was speaking before a courtroom filled with people. Paul knew the Roman law and knew it well. Paul was a Roman citizen and quoted their law in his testimony.

    In the book of Romans Paul discusses in legal terms just how God’s law works for and against us. It is time to stop making excuses for our failures and admit to the truth, so that the law (man’s) and God’s new law can work for us. God holds everyone of us accountable, because deep down we all know right from wrong, because God’s laws are written in our hearts. We all have a conscience, which either accuses us or excuses us. In this step we also need to admit to God that we have been wrong. You can not cover up your sins before God with alibis and excuses, they will not work. It is time to say, Yes, I’m guilty.   As we do this, we will be one step closer in our recovery. God will never reject us if we confess and accept his forgiveness. If we do not confess, Romans 2:16 says, The day will surely come when at God’s command Jesus Christ will judge the secret lives of everyone, their inmost thoughts and motives; this is all part of God’s great plan, which I proclaim.

    I had no idea why I had some of my innermost thoughts and motives. The fantasies and anger were removed when I confessed them. As I confessed them, studied and prayed over months of searching I have had healing after healing in my life.

    Romans 3:21-22, But now God has shown us a different way to heaven- not by being good enough and trying to keep his laws, but by a new way (though not new, really, for the Scriptures told about it long ago.) Now God says he will accept and acquit us- declare us not guilty- if we trust Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, by coming to Christ, no matter who we are or what we have been like.

    None of us could ever be good enough not to need God’s help, nor is anyone bad enough that they can not be forgiven. The price of our acquittal cost the shedding of the blood of God’s only son to buy our freedom. The King James version says, Romans 3:24, Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.   Since the gospel has come as written in the New Testament, man can be justified and made righteous without the law. If you could follow every law of God’s and man’s you could be declared a righteous man, but there is no man that has ever followed every law. If you break but one law you are declared unrighteous and guilty. The law is there so you can see clearly that you are wrong, that you are guilty. Then you can see the need to be saved from your unrighteousness and a need to be justified and made righteous. One must know and confess he is a sinner (a breaker of the law) before he can be saved. To be justified or acquitted is to be, declared not guilty in the court of heaven. Just by admitting sin and asking forgiveness you will be justified freely by grace through the redemption of Christ. Redemption: Greek apolutrosis; to redeem by paying the price, a deliverance by paying a ransom, deliverance from the penalty of sin, including forgiveness of sin. By confessing you can have an acquittal. Acquit: to pay off, to discharge completely (as from an obligation or accusation). Acquittal: setting free from the charge of an offense by verdict, sentence, or other legal process.

    Law righteousness demands perfect obedience, while faith righteousness asks only confession of sins and surrender to God, who, by the Holy Spirit sets us free from the law of sin and death. Faith fulfills in man the righteousness of the law and makes man righteous in Christ. Standing guilty before God and man is a dreadful place to be. We may be able to lie and put on a false face before man, but God can search the heart. The law is put here to convict and condemn us. The law used properly will open the wounds that our sins have caused to see the need for healing and the need for help. God will use the law, both His and man’s to bring you to a place to seek help. You must realize, if God is using man’s laws to bring you to your knees, it is still God’s grace because he loves you, he is allowing it to happen. The law can be used as His servant to minister to you. God leads us to repentance, he does not drive us like a beast, he allows us. It is goodness that leads us. If we do not listen God will use His servants of the law of man to get us to listen.

    Romans 3:25-26, For God sent Christ Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to end all God’s anger against us. He used Christ’s blood and our faith as the means of saving us from his wrath. In this way he was being entirely fair, even though he did not punish those who sinned in former times. (Those who died before the cross who only had their sins covered by sacrificed lambs.) For he was looking forward to the time when Christ would come and take away those sins. And now in these days also he can receive sinners in this same way because Jesus took away their sins.

    Many times when we look at ourselves we feel like we’re different from other people. We either feel we are much worse or much better. We look at others and feel that we are better or look down on ourselves and condemn ourselves as far worse. Maybe our addiction is socially acceptable. When we read the first chapter of Romans, many will take the beginning of the chapter and condemn all of the sexual sins and sexual addictions but will skip over the last few verses, which also condemn the acceptable sins like back biting, greed, hate, fighting, lying, bitterness, gossip, insolence, pride, and bragging. Paul speaks to these people also. Romans 2:1-3, Well, you may be saying, >What terrible people you have been talking about! But wait a minute! You are just as bad. When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are talking about yourselves for you do these very same things. And we know that God, in justice, will punish anyone who does such things as these.   We are all made of the same stuff. Our problems and faults are just acted out in different ways. In God’s eyes we are all the same. As we focus on admitting our own wrongs it will help us realize that we are all helpless and need God to help us. Admitting we need help will help us towards our recovery of whatever our faults are (acceptable of unacceptable).

    God is angry at all of us for the sin and faults that are in us. All of us are guilty. We have all been pronounced guilty. Since God is righteous and a fair judge who has all the evidence he needs to convict us, God would only be righteous in doing so. Now we have another problem. If God is totally just and God is the one who said It is impossible to please Him with our self righteousness.   How could God be just in condemning us if there is nothing in ourselves that can make us righteous. God made a way for us to be righteous. Romans 3:25b, He used Christ blood and our faith as the means of saving us from his wrath. In this way he was being entirely fair.   In the King James version of Romans 3:25-26 whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.   As you study this verse go back and meditate on it phrase by phrase, one phrase at a time.

    To propitiate: to gain or regain the goodwill or appease- conciliate. Propitiation: an atoning sacrifice. To conciliate: to gain (as goodwill) by pleasing acts, to make compatible: reconcile, appease, to become friendly or agreeable.

    All of the above words I can not earn. I can not be unless accepted by the offended. I offended God, my wife and many others I have hurt. With God, although I offended Him, he is the one who reached out to me with a way to reconcile to Him by propitiation. The conciliation I do now is based on his acceptance not on my earning it. When God reaches out to me I am now able to be compatible, become friendly, do goodwill and be agreeable. I can not earn propitiation from my wife unless my wife reaches out and forgives.

    I can not pay off the debt I owe to God or man. The law justifies a divorce. I can ask God to forgive me by admitting I am guilty and believe that God put my guilt on his son. I can be acquitted by God. Acquit: to pay off, discharge completely. Acquittal: a setting free from the charge of an offense by verdict, sentence, or legal process. I can not be acquitted by man, I can only ask for mercy. There is no one to take my place in punishment for my crime. If mercy and grace is shown, it would be undeserved favor. I can ask no more. Whether God’s law or man’s law, I plead guilty and confess with my mouth as charged for it is the only way for a righteous judge to show mercy and grace.

    Romans 10:9-10 KJV, That is thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness: and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

    Paul writes again about a legal document in Colossians 2:13-14 KJV, And you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, (uncircumcision meaning you need to cut away and discard the sin within your flesh) hath he quickened (made alive again) together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses (sin), blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross.

    In the time when this was written, when Jesus walked the earth, the handwriting of ordinances was the document, the affidavit, that followed you, the offender, wherever you went. The scribe of the court would write your charges and what you owed the state for your crimes on this document, then it was nailed to the door post of your cell.

    Arrest warrants ( handwriting of ordinances ) are not nailed to the door post of a cell today, they will follow you in a computer. They won’t need a trial to determine my guilt. I pronounced myself guilty with my own mouth. My store of guilt can only be verified by my own words.

    Backwards, you say?

    I’ll never grieve over it: over confessing! In confessing I finally found the meaning of my haunt: Confess your faults one to another...

    My handwriting of ordinances against me, which is contrary to me, is not finished.

    But listen to this. If this handwriting of ordinances had not been written against me, I would not know, or could not understand what the words, Confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed, and The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. mean for my life.

    I owe a debt to God for these same charges I am facing. I have sinned like King David did: against God Himself! But the debt I owe to God for my sin, according to Romans 6:23, is death.   For the wages of sin is death... (That’s what I deserve.)   ...But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

    The gift of God (our deliverance from death) is totally free to us, but that is because Jesus Christ already paid for it with His life.   But God commended His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

    They beat Jesus back with a cat of 9 tails- leather straps tied into a handle and having sharp bones and glass in the end of each strap. They blind-folded Him and pulled out His beard saying, Who did that to You? Prophesy. Tell us.   They made a crown of thorns for Him with 1 2   barbs in it, and pushed it down on His head.

    Why did this man Jesus go through all this? So He could take the blame and the punishment I deserve and expunge my sin from record forever.

    How could this happen to me? It happened when I sincerely asked Jesus to enter my heart, forgive, admit to my guilt, and asked Him to cleanse me. He did it. He came in and blotted out all of the handwriting of ordinances against me. Everything was expunged from my record forever.

    When someone served his jail term in Bible days and was about to be set free, a scribe would take a pen and write across the handwriting of ordinances against him, It is finished!

    What those words actually meant was, Now you are free!

    My debt? In God’s eyes, It is finished.   Paid in full! Expunged!

    Did you know that Jesus even had a handwriting of ordinances against Him? It wasn’t nailed to the door post of any jail cell. It was nailed over His head to the cross He was executed on, and all it said was, Jesus, King of the Jews, (Messiah).

    They lifted the cross up once they nailed Him to it, and then let it fall down into a hole in the ground, which ripped and pulled His joints. And then after He hanged there a few hours, He died. But guess what the last words He spoke before He died were.

    It is finished!

    With those words and His last breath, Jesus Christ wiped the slate clean for everyone.

    For He hath made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin: that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. (made as if we never had sinned) II Corinthians 5:21.

    This book from beginning to the end is a love story. It is a love story between God and man and how God made a way to reconcile to Him. It is a love story between Hosea and Gomer and how Hosea reconciled to his wife, and how God used there reconciliation to show all of us how he loves us. And it is a love story of my love for My Lady and her fallen champion. I do not know if I will be reconciled to My Lady, but I do know I have been reconciled to God through this study in Hosea, that I have put into writing for you the reader.

    About a week before I left My Lady I asked over and over, is there hope, is there hope? All hope was put on me to change. I put my thumb and index finger together with just a slight separation hold up my hand to My Lady and asked, is there just this much hope? My Lady said, Yes.   I took white ink and wrote on the cover of my black leather day-timer (calendar book) 100%. I said, if I have 1% with God and me I have hope. The problem was I was still striving to make it happen. I was still striving to please. I was still striving to change. It was wrong because the striving to please, and change for me is what got me into trouble to begin with. There is still one thing I do have though. I still have hope for tomorrow. I have hope however slim that a miracle could happen but my hope is in the Lord.

    If I hurt someone, is there anger justified? Yes. Just the same as God’s is justified. Can I be forgiven by those I love?

    Answer: Can the angels win the pennant?   It can happen, as a young actor states in the movie, Angels In The Outfield. And with God anything is possible.

The Solid Rock
Verse 1
My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;