SWORD OF THE SPIRIT                                                                                               1052

“Not One Iota”

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18)

I am disheartened when preachers and evangelists, people that I have admired, suddenly take a turn in their theology and begin to compromise the Truth of the Word of God in order to make it more palatable or relevant to current societal trends and norms. One such Pastor recently taught that Christians need to unhitch from the Old Testament and another is teaching that there is no such thing as Hell among other heretical statements.

In my finite, simplistic mind I view the Old Testament as a new coloring book with white pages covered in black stencil imagery. The message on each page is clearly conveyed as the outline of the Gospel plan of God. Then with the advent of Jesus Christ in the New Testament each page is brilliantly colored in. Not one iota or dot was changed – only fulfilled. Jesus filled in the blank spaces in Living Color.

So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law. (Galatians 3:24; Romans 3:31)

Our government has been systematically distancing or unhitching our society from the Law of God for decades. Must our churches also fall into that trap? Our government is removing references to the Ten Commandments from all public places. Will we take them out of our churches too?

When society seeks to deny God’s plan for salvation through Jesus it must also remove the Law whose purpose is to drive us to Christ. The logic is evident albeit flawed: Take away the Law and there is no transgression and therefore no need for Jesus.

For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.… if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” (Romans 4:15; 7:7)

Martin Luther stated it this way: ‘The principal point of God’s law is to make men not better but worse; that is to say, it shows unto them their sin, that by the knowledge thereof they may be humbled, terrified, bruised and broken, and by this means may be driven to seek grace, and so to come to that blessed Seed.’

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. (2 Timothy 3:16)

Test everything preached, weighing it in the balance against the Truth of the Word. But test everything; hold fast what is good. (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

May you stand on the solid Truth of the uncompromised whole Word of God – the rock that is Jesus.