This is my cat, Rudy.
His whole world is the inside of our home. He has no idea that his whole world is just a small portion of a ten acre farm. He knows nothing of towns and counties and states and countries and continents and planets and the universe. His entire existence revolves around what is contained within our house. The rules that apply to him here are pursuant to his experience and existence within these walls.
Rudy isn’t supposed to jump on the counter and he isn’t supposed to claw my furniture into shreds, and those are good rules. But if Rudy were to leave this house, the letter of those rules wouldn’t apply to him anymore because countertops and furniture aren’t out there. However, the principles behind those rules would still apply to Rudy. The principles of self-control and being considerate and respectful would carry on past the doorway of my home, out into the wide unknowns of wherever Rudy may travel.
In my quiet time with the Lord this morning, I pondered how this relates to us. I pondered how Old Testament laws that applied in one context but not another, were based on spiritual principles. I pondered how spiritual principles reflect moral absolutes, which are themselves eternal, because the standard of human morality is based on the character and nature of God Himself, Who is eternal and unchanging. I pondered how laws are a good thing in their proper context, but it is the spiritual principle behind them that is eternal, not the law itself.
Then I wondered how many of us, even now, may be clinging to the letter rather than the eternal principle. I wondered how many of us truly understand that the Lord is bringing us somewhere far beyond the doorway of our limited experience, into a vast unknown where only the eternal dwells and all that is not, is left behind.
(2 Cor 2:6) And He has qualified us as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
(Col 3:1,2) Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
(1 Cor 15:53-56) For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality…then the saying that is written will come to pass: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
(Heb 7:11,12) So if the priesthood of Levi, on which the law was based, could have achieved the perfection God intended, why did God need to establish a different priesthood, with a priest in the order of Melchizedek instead of the order of Levi and Aaron? For when the priesthood is changed, the law must be changed also.
