2 Chronicles 30:18-20 says “For a multitude of the people, even many of Ephraim, and Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet did they eat the passover otherwise than it was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, The good LORD pardon every one that prepareth his heart to seek God, the LORD God of his fathers, though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary. And the LORD hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people.”

Always the spirit of the Law, never the letter of the laws. Never once in the Bible does the Lord recognize someone positively for adhering to the letter of His word. Always the Spirit which inspired it. In Hebrews the apostle Paul makes it abundantly clear why, in 7:19 and 10:1, when he explains that the laws are a shadow of the Law, unable to make anything clean.

We focus on the letter of the laws, on what not to do. It’s darkness-focused death worship, and it yields nothing but the fruits of evil. Those who worship life and seek light observe the Law by matter of course, they don’t obey by matter of will. They make room for “violation” out of Love and understanding of their relationship to God. It is in the Cross that we see Jesus pull the eyes of we who sought shadow by performing an act that appeared the ultimate death-worship, in which He forcibly shifts our perspective to see that in it was light, life-worship. It was classic misdirection, an ultimate act of true stage magic, and was so convincing that He even tricked Satan into believing God’s own Son had fallen to his worship.

But we know that wasn’t true now. He’s shown us the truth of the Cross and of His life: dead words lead to death, but the living Word leads to Love worship, leads to eternal life. He freed us of the laws, not the Law. I heard it said well yesterday: “there’s a lot of dead ministers in the world speaking dead words to dead people.” The moment we’ve lost sight of that Light in favor of arguing the rules in terms dead people will understand we show that we never let go of death ourselves, that we never actually understood Jesus’ teaching. Change your conversations by changing your focus. The cliche about honey vs vinegar is true, but you’ve tuned it out; you’re not listening to it. You can never see positive results by starting from a negative approach. Don’t take my word for it; I was dead far longer than I’ve been alive. Ask Him.

Father, I pray that every eye that reads my feeble words is given Your eyes to interpret and Your heart to understand. In the mighty name of Your Word and my brother, Jesus, I pray. Amen.