This is part 5 of a series; The Fall Of Man is part 1.

Everything I’ve said so far has been about doing good to your neighbor or not; fine stuff perhaps, but you’re probably thinking “But I’m a New Covenant Christian! That doesn’t matter to me!”

To some extent that’s true – but do you really know what the New Covenant is? Are you sure? How – exactly – is it different from the Old Covenant? Are you positive you know the difference?

Hebrews 8:8-13 (WEB) … “Behold, the days come," says the Lord, "that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; … this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days," says the Lord; “I will put my laws into their mind, I will also write them on their heart. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

This is the only place a new covenant Christian is defined in the entire Bible! And it says a Christian is a person who has the laws of God written in their heart and in their mind! Let that sink in for a moment!

Every today says “I’m a New Covenant Christian!”, and they believe that means that they are done keeping all laws, but that’s the exact opposite of what the Bible says!

The ONLY Biblical definition of a New Covenant Christian is a person who has the laws written on their heart which is so much MORE than an Old Covenant Israelite ever had to do!

INTERNAL VS. EXTERNAL

One simple way of expressing this is that the Old Covenant regulated external actions – murdering someone, for example – while the New Covenant regulates internal actions ­– hating someone which could lead to murder.

Matthew 5:21-22 (WEB) “You have heard that it was said to the ancient ones, ‘You shall not murder;’ and ‘Whoever shall murder shall be in danger of the judgment.’ But I tell you, that everyone who is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment; …

So was this Jesus repealing the laws against murder? Do you even want the laws against murder repealed? No, of course not. On the contrary, Jesus was adding to the external law against murder – making it an internal law as well as an external one!

Matthew 5:27-28 “You have heard that it was said, ’You shall not commit adultery;’ but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.

The Old Covenant law said “thou shalt not commit adultery”. Adultery is an external act that takes place outside the body. So it’s something you should not DO. But that law said nothing about THINKING! It said nothing about wanting to commit adultery!

So you could dream about adultery all day long and that was none of God’s business because that wasn’t part of the old external covenant! Only if your lust left your heart and turned into an action were you guilty of sin!

But Jesus said that wasn’t good enough! He expected MORE from New Covenant Christians! So He told us a new, deeper meaning of that law – “thou shalt not look upon a woman to lust after her”. Why? Because if you do, you have already committed adultery in your heart!

This is not really a different law! It’s the exact same law – “do not commit adultery”. The only difference is WHERE you commit adultery! Do you do it in the real world, where others can see? Or hidden in your heart, where only God sees?

The covenant of Moses only applied to things you actually DO. But the new way, Jesus’ way, applied the same exact commandments to things you FEEL. When you broke Moses’ law, you committed an external sin. When you break Jesus’ new law, you commit an internal sin!

So, far from repealing the law against adultery, Jesus was adding another fence around it, by making the thoughts that lead to adultery forbidden! And this new fence is what the book of Hebrews called the New Covenant!

THE NEW LAW

This new law Jesus brought no longer applies just to the flesh, to things you actually do – it ALSO applies to your heart, to things you only WANT to do! “for the Lord's view is not man's; man takes note of the outer form, but the Lord sees the heart”. (1 Samuel 16:7).

James 1:14-15 (WEB) But every man is tested when he is turned out of the right way by the attraction of his desire. Then when its time comes, desire gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is of full growth, gives birth to death.

Note the progression there; first comes lust; then lust, if tolerated, leads to sin; then sin, in time, brings death. Thus, to avoid death, the best place to start is to nip it in the bud with lust! BEFORE it becomes sin! Thus the new law Jesus brought, the internal law, is the first line of defense for external sins!

Just think about it; who ever committed adultery and didn’t first think about committing adultery? Who stole, who was not first envious? Wanting comes before taking!

Which means if you can control envy, you will not ever need another law to control theft – for theft cannot exist without first desiring something which belongs to another!

If you are “content with such things as you have” (Hebrews 13:5), you cannot possibly steal – for who can steal what they have not first coveted? 1 Timothy 6:9-10.

Long before you murder someone, you must first hate them or be angry with them or jealous of them! Long before you lie, you must fear what people will say or do to you! (Isaiah 57:11).

Before you break your oath, you must first make an oath! So if you “swear not at all” (Matthew 5:33-37), you cannot possibly take God’s name in vain, for you can’t break an oath you never made!

So if someone can learn to “take every thought captive so that it is obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5), then there is no chance that they will ever actually DO evil, for where does evil come from?

Mark 7:21-23 (WEB) For from within, out of the hearts of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, sexual sins, murders, thefts, covetings, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and defile the man."

The old law treated the symptom – the act itself. The new law treats the cause – the feelings and thoughts which led to that act! These are the exact same laws, but applied INTERNALLY as well as externally!

The beauty of Jesus’ new law is that external sins cannot happen without first committing an internal sin! This is why the New Covenant is greater, more important, because it is impossible to break the Old Covenant without first breaking the New!

FEEL UNTO OTHERS

“Do unto others” is the highest principle of ethics in the universe, and all the laws of the old covenant were based on that law. Keeping these laws, in the letter, was the Old Covenant!

But Jesus came to add a whole new layer on top of that principle! He didn’t relax the requirement to DO unto all men as you would want DONE unto you… on the contrary, He taught us also to FEEL about people the way you would want them to FEEL about you!

That is the greatest principle of the New Covenant, from which all spiritual laws are derived! If the Old Covenant can be summed up in the phrase “do unto others”, the New Covenant can be summed up with the phrase “feel unto others”!

Do you like it when people don’t forgive your mistakes? No? Then forgive theirs! (Luke 11:4). Do you like it when people flatter you with their lips, but don’t do what they promise? Then don’t do that to God! (Matthew 15:8). Do you like other men ogling your wife? If not, then you shouldn’t fantasize about theirs!

Do you like it when people hate you? Then don’t hate them! Do you like it when people belittle your accomplishments out of jealousy? Then don’t do it to them! Do you like it when people spread rumors about you, airing your dirty laundry in public? Then don’t gossip or spread rumors about them!

All these things, and an infinity of other things you wouldn’t like felt about you, are the New Covenant!

1 John 3:15 (WEB) Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.

Obviously, hating people doesn’t actually kill them, or the Earth’s population would be a LOT smaller. Like, one dude! But for God’s purposes hating and murdering are the same thing; becauseby hating them you are murdering them in your heart. And that is where all New Covenant sins take place!

Murdering him DOES to him what you would not want done to you. Hating him FEELS about him the way you would not want him to feel about you! And feeling is more important, because feeling leads to doing!

James 1:14-15 (WEB) But each one is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. Then the lust, when it has conceived, bears sin; and the sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death.

Lust is an internal emotion, and if tolerated by your soul becomes an internal sin; when that lust “grows up” it becomes an external action – an external sin. That, in turn, leads to death (Romans 6:23). Thus, to control lust is to avoid death!

This is why not only must we not steal, but we must not WANT to steal; not only must we not commit adultery, we must not WANT to commit adultery. Not only must we not kill, we must not even hate – and in a nod to the positive side of the commandments…

…not only must we make alive, but we must LOVE!

THE OTHER SIDES OF EACH LAW

Every law has four aspects, which are different for every law. Take the 6thcommandment, “don’t kill”. The internal version of that commandment is “don’t hate” – Jesus said so. Both of these laws are negative, based on the words “thou shalt not” hate or kill. Therefore both of these laws must have a positive side, in order for them to be a WHOLE law!

As you learned in the article The Positive Law, the positive side of “thou shalt not kill” is “thou shalt make alive”, and the positive side of “thou shalt not hate” is obviously “thou shalt love” (Luke 6:32-35).

This law is now a complete law – and so now it is even more clear that keeping only ¼ of the law, as the Pharisees did by not actually killing someone is not “keeping THE law”. It’s not even half-keeping it! It’s keeping ¼ of it!

And just as no more egregious rebellion against this law is possible than what Cain did, in murdering His own brother; no truer act of obedience to this law is possible than what Jesus did, in dying for those murdering Him! (Romans 5:8).

Another great example is “thou shalt not steal”. This is a “don’t do”, thus an external negative law. We can find it’s corresponding positive and external very easily; for the positive side of don’t take stuff is do give stuff! Which the Bible clearly tells us is the opposite!

Ephesians 4:28 (WEB) Let him who stole steal no more; but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have something to give to him who has need.

Moving internally, it’s clear that you shouldn’t desire your neighbor’s goods and that you should desire his good! All clearly implied by the four sides of the law!

This can be done for every commandment and every sub-law in the Bible! And in most cases, you will find you already knew all these principles, you just didn’t realize they were connected to each other by reason and law!

KEEP DIVIDING THE WORD

It doesn’t stop with the Ten Commandments, or the four ways each one of them applies; each of the laws can be subdivided again and again in many different ways. For example, “thou shalt make alive” can be taken literally, physically, or metaphorically, spiritually.

Because you help someone live physically by feeding them. But you can also help them live spiritually, by giving them spiritual food. So you could break that into two separate laws “thou shalt make physically alive” and “thou shalt make spiritually alive”.

Those, too, each contain implied sublaws within them; for when you really think about what “thou shalt make spiritually alive” means… Doesn’t it directly imply the command Jesus gave the disciples to “go to all nations and teach the gospel” (Matthew 28:19-20) – for who can be spiritually alive, who has not heard the gospel?

The commandment to “be ready always to give an answer” (1 Peter 3:15) is also implied – for how else can you shine your light before men? And of course to be able to do that, you must “study to show yourself approved” (2 Timothy 2:15), specifically, as that verse says, by rightly dividing the word of God – which is exactly what we’re doing to these commandments by dividing them!

But “be ready always to give an answer” can be understood as a positive and a negative. This scripture gives the positive, for it contains the idea of “doing” – giving an answer. So what is the opposite of that? “thou shalt not deny Jesus before men” (Matthew 10:33).

Each of these commandments and a plethora of others is contained within “thou shalt make spiritually alive”, which is derived from the internal aspect of the positive side of the 6th commandment, itself derived by dividing “thou shalt love thy neighbor as yourself”, derived in turn from “do unto others”! Which is why David said…

Psalms 119:96-101 (WEB) I have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commands are boundless.

YOUR WHOLE HEART

And to give you just a taste – and it’s only a taste – of just how true that verse is, consider this; according to Paul, the tablets of stone which bore the ten commandments represented the hearts of Israel (2 Corinthians 3:3). Two tablets… which according to (Exodus 32:15) were each written on both sides!

So not only did the original tablets have four sides, but the commandments written on them can be expressed in four ways! Do, don’t; feel, don’t feel! But now the really cool part: the human heart – where the New Covenant will write these laws – has four chambers!

But we’re just getting started! The English word for spirit is an archaic word that simply means “air” (John 3:8); and when God put “spirit” – air – into Adam’s lungs, it made him alive “and he became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). Basically, divine CPR. And when Adam started breathing, his air – his life, his spirit – was in the bloodstream (Leviticus 17:11).

One of the principle jobs of the heart is to pump blood through the lungs to reoxygenate it. We die in minutes if this blood can’t be recharged with oxygen. So this oxygen-poor blood is received at low pressure into the right atrium.

Since oxygen is air, and air is spirit, you could say this is blood without the spirit, fleshly blood, at negative pressure. This lifeless blood is sent to the right ventricle, which squeezes it, gives it a positive pressure, and sends it to the lungs. There the blood is “revived” with a fresh dose of spirit.

This oxygen rich blood then returns to the heart, to the left atrium – again at a relatively lower pressure, where it passes to the left ventricle and from there, this “spiritual” blood gives life to every cell in the body!

So there is a negative pressure on the incoming sides and a positive pressure on the outgoing sides. And there is a side of the heart full of blood that is poor in spirit, and thus, leads to death – and a side of heart full of blood mixed with spirit thus, spiritual blood leading to life!

The oxygen-poor (spirit-poor) blood represents the spirit-poor law, the external law – in negative and positive pressures! The oxygen-rich (spirit-rich) blood represents the spirit-rich or spiritual, internal law – in negative and positive!

Thus the human heart itself is a picture of the external and internal covenants, with both the positive and negative sides! Isn’t that cool?! These laws are literally written there, in the very pattern God followed when He designed your heart! And He expected us to learn from that pattern (Job 12:7-9, Romans 1:20).

And now you see why it is necessary to serve God with ALL YOUR HEART! Because it pictures keeping the WHOLE LAW, all four sides!

SUMMARY

I hope you’re beginning to see that the laws are SO MUCH MORE than a list of don’ts! Because it’s possible to perfectly obey the “do”, without ever obeying the “feel”.

Which is why in the New Covenant, God judges you not only on the action, but on the intention! Because good actions will follow from good intentions; and evil actions will follow from evil intentions.

Luke 6:45 (WEB) The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings out that which is good, and the evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings out that which is evil, for out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks.

Preventing evil deeds is, ultimately, a losing battle as the Old Covenant proved. Men can think up bad things to do far faster than you can write down laws to stop them! So it’s wiser to prevent evil thoughts, which will make it so evil deeds can’t exist.

Because the sad thing is, we didn’t really need any of these sub-laws if we had just thought about the golden rule. You could have simply asked yourself, for example, “if I were in darkness, wouldn’t *I* want someone to ‘study to show himself approved’ so that he could bring me the light?”;

And since the answer is obviously yes, you would be required by the simplest and greatest of all commandments to do that for others! See, no scripture necessary – just common sense!

In fact, all laws are unnecessary, Biblical and otherwise, if you merely bind yourselves to that one rule, because every good thing that happens is a result of obedience, whether consciously or unconsciously, to the golden rule in it’s full expression:

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and feel about others as you would have them feel about you”.

Every law in the Bible can be expressed as some fraction of that principle; every conceivable act, good or evil, can be derived through a strictly logical process of “rightly dividing the word of truth”; which proves that all the law and the prophets are indeed summed up in that one saying precisely as Jesus said they were!

And if you really ARE a New Covenant Christian, then that principle is the highest law by which you rule your body AND your spirit (1 Corinthians 6:20) – for that law is written on your heart and in your mind!