Today's Sermon: Perfect in Every Way

I. Christ and the Law

A. Christ Affirms ....

B. Christ Came to ....

II. The Christian and the Law

A. The Law Leads Us .....

B. The Law is .....

C. The Spirit of the Law is ....

Scripture is insistent that obedience is not simply good advice for those who have faith—a desirable but not required outcome of faith in our lives. Nor is it to be added along the way as evidence of a prior faith, or as the next step toward a “deeper Christian life.” And the purpose of God’s commands is not merely to show us that we are sinners. Simply put, faith and hope do not exist without obedience, since obedience to God’s commands is the flowering of faith itself!...The inescapable demand of the Gospel is nothing other than obedience to God’s commands-Scott Hafemann, The God of Promise and the Life of Faith

Two Dangers:
1) Legalism

2) Libertarianism

Our future—who we are becoming, where we are going—matters more than our past—where and who we have been. Our future has more power to name us and define us than our past. Consummation swallows origins. Destiny, not history, is the ultimate ground of our identity How does a prostitute named Rahab, a Moabite outsider named Ruth, an incestuous schemer named Tamar, an adulteress named Bathsheba, end up in the birth line of Jesus? Because in God’s economy the person we become, not the person we have been, is the person we truly are.-Mark Buchanan, Things Unseen