Simply Jesus

DEVOTION

HEBREWS

SIMPLY JESUS

Heb 13:9-10

9 Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by ceremonial foods, which are of no value to those who eat them. 10 We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.

NIV

We can be sure that in the course of the new church, there were men who wanted to bring alone the rules and regulations of the old Levitical laws and incorporate them into the Gospel of Christ. It is not much different today in the sense there are some who would what to add to the Gospel of Christ all sorts of rules and regulations which would seem reasonable since most of them are from the Levitical laws as well. However, it is not appropriate nor scriptural to add anything to the Gospel of Christ. Jesus Said that he made a new covenant and that He put away the old one, which is to say we cannot live the law of the old covenant but must live by the grace of the new. Why do some insist on dragging in rules and regulations in order to develop a list of do’s and don’ts to judge their level of spiritually and that of others by? It is of no value to have some ceremonial system of cleaning ourselves from the burden of sin. We have the grace of God to cleanse us from that burden. It is true that we must live a life which pleases God, in fact we are told to find out what pleases God. The greatest form of pleasing Him is to accept His Son as our Savior. Our life, at least in the human condition, is incapable if living without sin, and thus not able to please God. We can make up as many rules and regulations as we like which we could fulfill and think we are pleasing God by living according to these rules, but they have nothing to do with the Gospel of Grace. In addition, we have to acknowledge the simple fact God gave all those laws to His people to prove to them they needed Grace, that people needed Jesus. So why do we want to add them back in? Why do we insist they still apply to us today? Yes, yes, we need to live a moral upright life, serving our Lord in all we believe, think, and do. Yes, we need to live in a manner which serves our Lord. But there is no math which is correct that tries to add anything to Jesus. It is not Jesus plus. It is simply Jesus.