The scripture for today, February 14, is Colossians 2:14 as found in the New Testament of the Bible:
“[God] having canceled the written code with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.”
This amazing scripture tells us that the Old Law of Moses was nailed to the cross. Why? Because it was against us; that is, it was impossible for us to keep perfectly. The Law of Moses wasn’t just ten commandments. It was over 600. Try reading Leviticus in the Old Testament. That’s where most of the old law (“the written code with its regulations”) is.
It’s tedious. It regulated nearly every part of everyone’s daily life. It involved what we could and couldn’t eat, having to kill animals to die in our place whenever we sinned, stoning adulterers to death, having a separate priesthood, tithing, reporting to priests if we had an open sore, use of candles, having to go to the Temple in Jerusalem 3 times a year, and on and on.
The book of Hebrews in the New Testament was written to help us understand that God’s new Law of Grace is much more spiritual.
Hebrews was written about the time the Temple in Jerusalem was permanently destroyed, thus making it impossible to obey several things in the old law. And a little time later the Jewish genealogies were destroyed, thus making it impossible to prove who was a Levite and eligible to be a priest.
The Old Testament of the Bible is not the same as the Law of Moses. The Law is a small part of the Old Testament. The rest of it is praise and wisdom, accounts of people who did or did not try to follow God, warnings and prophecies of good and bad. These are examples to us today.
Let us not neglect the Old Testament as so many people do. It includes the Law of Moses to help us know what to stay away from it in favor of the Law of Grace. If God wanted us to continue any part of it, he repeated it in the New Testament. It is full of examples that we need to know about. And it is full of prophecies of a Savior who would save them and us some day ~ Jesus. Thank God for the Old Testament.
“For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”
“If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us.”
“Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind, nothing was gained under the sun.”
“Out of the same mouth comes praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be.”
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”
“Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.”
“He holds victory in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless.”
“To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.”
“…the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the Word of Truth, the gospel.”