“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”
Galatians 3:12-14
What a great gift from God. We are actually redeemed from the curse! That means that no longer are we subject to the curse of the law because we missed keeping some portion of the law. No, we are now in the dispensation of grace, where Jesus has paid the penalty for our sins. He took on the curse, so that we do not have to any longer suffer under it. Our faith in Him, in His promises, has redeemed us from all that comes with the curse. Now instead, we are under the blessing! Praise God, what a wonderful gift from God. It is no longer by our effort that we receive this free gift; it is by our faith in Jesus. Now all we have to do to live in this freedom is enforce our victory by believing God’s promises and speaking them in faith over our lives!
The scripture says that “Faith works by love”. Therefore, in this new dispensation we must guard our love walk with all diligence. Keeping God’s love commandment is the key element to walking in victory and operating in the God kind of Faith! This new grace dispensation operates to its full potential on only one commandment – the law of love.
Galatians 5:14 says this: “ For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
Mathew 22:36-40: “Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Therefore, what has happened is our motivation has changed. Before, under the old covenant, people had a harder time keeping the law of love because they were not born again. They didn’t have a new nature on the inside of them. They had to have all kinds of regulations and requirements to tell them what to do. However, now that we have been born again, we’ve been given a new heart. Ezekiel 36:26 (NLT) says: “And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.”
In this dispensation of grace we look at everything through the law of love. We don’t steal from others because it violates the law of love. We do not commit adultery or have intimate relations outside of marriage because it violates the law of love. We don’t drink alcohol because it could be a stumbling block to someone else and because we have to always operate at 100 percent capacity in our ability to hear from God, so that we are always clear minded and instant in season. God created these moral laws out of love for us.
1 Corinthians 10:23: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient: all tings are lawful for me, but all things edify not.”
1 Corinthians 6:12: “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise us by his own power.”
We have a helper, the Holy Spirit, to help us keep the law of love. We know when we violate it because we have that still small voice tugging at our hearts letting us know what we did wasn’t right. When we get angry and give someone “a piece of our mind” we have less peace and notice an unsettling in our spirit, letting us know what we did was not right. We have that red light in our “gut” where our spirit lives and the Holy Spirit dwells, letting us know that our peace has been disturbed. We have a great way to know when we are walking outside the law of love. When the fruits of the spirit in us become lessened and suddenly we are walking more fleshly, then we are alerted that we must be stepping outside the law of love. If our peace is disturbed, or our joy is affected or kindness is lacking, it is an indication that we may have stepped pass the love line. We can tell when we are slipping out of God’s perfect love commandment by how fully the fruits of the spirit are operating in our lives. When we violate the love commandment over and over it’s harder for us to believe God’s promises for ourselves and as a result, even though Satan doesn’t have a right to put the curse on us, we can be more likely to allow it to come to pass because Faith works by Love. When we stay in love, we stay in faith and allow the blessing to operate fully in our lives. When we walk in Love we walk in agreement with God, for God is Love!
Therefore, to keep our faith operating at full speed, let us do our best to keep the commandment of love. When we miss it, we simply repent and thank God for His forgiveness and do our best to walk in love. Thankfully, when we give God our best, He always does the rest!
1 John 3:18-22 says: “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart condemn us, God is greather than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then we have confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.”
Galatians 4:22-23
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”
Galatians 4:22-23 (NIV)
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Against such things there is no law.”
Galatians 5:6
“For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.”
Further reading: 1 John, 1 Corinthians 13, Galatians 3
