love your neighbor

556. Why Jesus Taught Two Covenants (Part 13): The Good Samaritan & Self-Justification

July 10, 2016 by Mike Kapler and Joel Brueseke

What inspired the story of The Good Samaritan? A lawyer was testing Jesus with a question about the law that came through Moses. The Scripture states he was trying to do what other Jews did under the law — they attempted to justify themselves. In order to truly justify himself, the lawyer was told to do according to what the law says. The problem with this? Nobody had ever done it before. While the world has encouraged us to be the good Samaritan, Jesus is actually the one represented by this person in the parable.

527. Is the Law An Expression of God’s Character?

December 13, 2015 by Mike Kapler and Joel Brueseke

It has often been taught that the law that came through Moses is an expression of God's character. We frequently begin to assume such phrases are actually found in the Bible. If this is an accurate statement, we should ask the question as to whether God went through a change or if his character went through some sort of transformation. Of course, we know God doesn't change, but with the New Covenant replacing the first one, we find there was a change of priesthood (Jesus Christ) and therefore a change of law occurred. Although the law was a reflection of God's perfection, we should avoid comparing it with God himself and realize it was Jesus (grace) who was manifested as an expression of God's character.

510. The Ten Commandments in the New Testament

August 16, 2015 by Mike Kapler and Joel Brueseke

Legalistic Christians who feel our message of free and unlimited grace is considered erroneous and hyper, will argue that all of the top ten commandments are found in the New Testament. They'll reason that this means they are meant to be included as a part of the New Covenant. Jesus stated one of the greatest commandments was to love your neighbor as yourself, which is not one of the Ten. So just exactly how many of the 613 laws within the law are we supposed to abide by? This week, we'll take a look at some of the context surrounding the references to these commands found in new covenant writings and reveal the true intent of the entire law.