“For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”
John 1:17 KJV

I'd been Christian for a number of years, more than 20 years when I received a revelation of God's grace; His unconditional love and grace; His unmerited, undeserved favour. I realized that, that I don't have to do anything for him to love me, that he just loves me, anyway! When I realized that I'm accepted because of Jesus, not because of my actions, it changed my life radically. I  had been a Christian, as I said, for, for many years. I've been serving God. I had been involved in church. I had been reading my Bible. I had been praying, and I knew that if I died I would've been going to heaven, but I was really on a treadmill of religion, um, and in works based Christianity. And it was tough. Some of you know what I'm talking about. It was tough. You know, I would, um, uh, always be beating myself up because I was either doing the wrong thing or I wasn't doing enough of the good things, you know? And that's not what God wants for us. That's not how he wants us to live. If we're living empowered by his free-flowing grows, that means that it's not us empowering ourselves.

I did everything that I needed to do to try and become a better Christian and be a better person to live in victory and it didn’t help at all. Okay, let me say there was probably a little bit of benefit to those things, but it didn't accomplish the desired result and it didn't, um, help me grow in my relationship with God. I really just want to share with you the things that have impacted my life and changed my life. And I want to help you, uh, to, to walk in freedom. To learn so that you can live the abundant life. And I mean, that's what we all want as believers, don't we? John Chapter one let’s start off with John Chapter one verse 17, it says, the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. This scripture is speaking of two different covenants. When we speak about covenants, we're talking about different ways of relating to God. This verse is saying that there's Moses on one side and then there’s Jesus on the other. There's Moses, which is the old covenant. And then there's Jesus, which is the new covenant. If you look at that verse, it says, the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. The word “but” divides this verse into two showing that, you know, the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth comes from Jesus. They're not the same thing. They're not on the same page, okay? I had grown up as a Christian. I remember receiving Christ when I was about five years old, and I loved God. I was passionate about God. Um, but you know, I didn't understand the difference between the old and the new covenant, the old and the New Testament.

I thought that everything in the Old Testament was for us today. Um, and you know, I got confused because it says some stuff in there that is a bit heavy, you know, and it's amazing how people who don't understand the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant, they're just confused and don’t know it. You can call it a covenant confusion. Covenant confusion makes everything complicated because now you're trying to live for God by following the 10 commandments and all the other commandments. Scripture says, you know, that you shouldn't mark your body or a tattoo yourself. So now all of a sudden, people who tattoo themselves are evil and it's are living in sin. Uh, but in the same passage of scripture, it says that you shouldn't be trimming your beard. And it's like, well, which laws do we follow and which don't we? And then the old covenant speaks about how we shouldn't eat pork because it's unclean. Then you're look in the new covenant in the Book of Acts and you see how Peter has a vision, a heavenly vision of this, this, cloth coming down and there's all sorts of animals and reptiles and all sorts of things on it. And he hears the Lord speaking to him and the Lord says, kill and eat. And what does he say to the Lord? He says, I can't touch something that's unclean. I can't eat it. And God says to him don't call unclean what I've made clean.

We can eat pork because we're in the new covenant. Amen. I love pork. Nothing like a good roast gammon. Amen. The point is, is that we get confused between the old covenant and the new covenant, and that causes us to live out our Christianity and our relationship with God the wrong way or really in bondage. We're not experiencing the abundant life because we're trying to live according to Moses and not according to Jesus. The old covenant was based on the law, which came through Moses to the Jews. The new covenant was based on grace and truth which came for all people through Jesus. Yeah, sadly many Christians are ignorant of this truth. They're trying to live their new covenant Christianity under the Old Covenant Principles. So good question to ask ourselves is, are we disciples of Jesus or are we disciples of Moses? If we're disciples of Jesus, we follow Jesus. If we're disciples of Moses, we follow Moses, okay? If we're disciples of Moses, we follow the law. If we're disciples of Jesus, we follow grace and truth.

Coming to know this will help us to walk in freedom and live the abundant life in Christ. We're going to look more at this in our next episode. Have a wonderful day.