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This is the Age we are living in now. The remnants of law still dominate our beings in our soul and body, and believers struggle to live, move and walk according to the Spirit, according to dependence on God. We often insist on using the old rules to judge by, as if the debt hadn’t been paid, as if there was still something that needed to be done in order to enter into union with God. It’s important that we understand that when Jesus said, “It is finished,” He meant it. Time was “up.” And more importantly, when the Father raised Him from the dead, we were raised with Him completely, not partway. Just as Jesus paused to dwell on earth for 40 days before ascending to His Father, so too are we simply pilgrims and ambassadors, passing through our sojourn here on this earth, on our way to fully dwell with our Father.

The law was given for a purpose and will never change until it has completed its work on this earth. So thank God He changed us! According to Paul, in Romans 6:14: “you are not under law, but under grace.” We can’t be both under law and under grace! So since the law has done its part, we shouldn’t try to bring it with us. The law is like a crossing guard, protecting us and guiding us in the right path. Once we are on the other side of the street, we continue on to our destination, motivated now out of our new inner nature, rather than outward direction or instruction. The crossing guard remains at his post, left behind to continue his job.

Jesus wasn’t sent to earth to die for our sins. He was sent to do a new thing — give us Life. But you can’t put new wine into an old wineskin. He had to start over. In order to do that, the law had to be completed, fulfilled, and date-stamped.

The Age of Grace had dawned, but mankind was still not ready for it. As great and awesome and wonderful as the Crucifixion was, it only concluded God’s purpose for the previous time period (Age of Law): It didn’t start something new. It wasn’t until the Resurrection that the Tree of Life was made available again to any who were without sin (all sins were paid for, even those not yet committed). It was this Tree, Jesus, which changed the very nature of man, making him a new creature, not a re-newed one.

[excerpted from “Practical Christianity”]

For our purposes we are referring to this particular transition time as a separate age since the events that demark it are of such significance. On one end, its beginning is the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, by which the full debt of the law was paid. The Father didn’t forgive the debt; it was a real debt, and had to be paid in reality. Jesus PAID it; the bill has been stamped “paid in full.” It is “finished.” Jesus’s sinless death was the full recompense necessary to conclude the period of law. The temple veil, the boundary separating God from man, was torn in two. One day God’s people were sacrificing animals in the temple, and it was acceptable; the next day — the day of the Resurrection — the sacrifice was no longer acceptable or sufficient as atonement for sin.

[excerpted from “Practical Christianity”]

During the Age of Knowledge, everyone did what their personal knowledge told them to do. During this time period there were judges, priests, kings, prophets, seers, and other leaders God would occasionally raise up in order to instruct and guide the people. Over time the list of boundaries, or laws, expanded to include everything from what to eat, how to treat one another, how to worship and how to go to war. When God, through whatever means, instituted a law, it was at that point in time that the people were held accountable. One day it was “legal,” the next day, “illegal.” The Age of Knowledge, or Law, was in effect until every statute was fulfilled in reality, which occurred at the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. These boundaries, laws and requirements were necessary because man could not know God on His terms, which were limitless, because in Adam the Spirit-life had been lost, and with it, the capability to have true communion with God.

We have no idea how long Adam and Eve were in the garden. But we do know that at a certain point in time God kicked them out. During the time they were in the garden, certain rules applied: don’t eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for instance. They could eat of the other trees, and we’ll assume that they ate of the tree of life. But after they had eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God set a new boundary to keep them from eating of the tree of life. A new era, or age, had begun: What was okay one day was not okay the next. Though the specifics vary, we can see this pattern repeated as one time period transitions into the next.

If you are a fan of science, you may have run across the notion of how time and space relate to one another. There is the theorem, seemingly proven, that the closer you travel to the speed of light the more time slows down. (Please excuse this extreme simplification.) The “Twin Theory” states that if you sent one twin into outer space at the speed of light, and another stayed here on earth, when the space twin returned 50 earth years later, the earth twin would have aged 50 years, while the space twin would have aged a few months. We can at least conclude that we don’t know everything about time, that it is not an “absolute,” and that some of our beliefs that involve time and the boundaries it represents are probably incorrect.