Grace - From Shadow to the Light

"If you spend all your time looking at shadows, you will perpetually be in the dark.  The Light has come and it is Jesus!"

Hi Everyone,

I've made an observation and I have a question:  I've noticed that we, as people, generally like to have a list of what we should do and should not do.  I know that I am very much like this.  When someone is explaining something to me, I want the bottom-line facts.  I want to sift through the extraneous details and get to the information that I need in order to take action.  Tell me what you want me to know and to do!  I suspect that many of us have been trained to be this way--we want to know what we should do AND what we should not do!  That's very important to us, because we don't want to get things wrong.  So here's my question:

Adam and Eve were commanded NOT to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  How were they pleasing God if they didn't know what to do and what not to do?

I hope you get this question, because that screams at me!  Adam and Eve were to never take action based on knowing whether what they were doing was right or wrong.  I think we would agree that this life, based on the knowledge of good and evil, was far below God's ultimate plan for the life we are to experience.

Herein lies the problem:  we look to the knowledge of good and evil to decide what to do.  We think that makes us pleasing to God and that He desires to help us obey a list of dos and don'ts.  We constantly evaluate ourselves using the Ten Commandments.  We are ignorant that those are only a shadow.  Consider the following verses:

"The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship." Heb. 10:1

"The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." Matt. 4:16

"These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ." Col. 2:17

So, I would like to propose that we start looking to the life of Jesus in us, and this only, so we can see Him working in us and experience the partnership between us and Him as He lays hands on the sick and raises the dead through us.  He is our holiness, so we are perfectly holy.  He is our righteousness, so we are perfectly righteous.  Our mind needs to see that every need we have is fulfilled in Him.  There is no sinful habit that can withstand the life of Christ in us.  As long as we have some sort of list of things to do and not to do, we are not moving in faith.  You are pleasing and acceptable to God in the Beloved.  Make Him the focus; not yourself.

I pray that we all will stop looking at shadows, but rather see Christ in us and us in Him.

"In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.  For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.  For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ."  John 1:4, 16-17

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy