Spirit of the Law

MONTHLY TEACHING LETTERHISCOMINGKINGDOM.COM T FIRST HARVEST MINISTRIES INTERNATIONAL  •  THE APOSTOLIC ASSEMBLIES OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL F R O M T H E D E S K O F T H E F O U N D E R & A P O S T O L I C O V E R S E E R THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW Why the War Between Law and Grace Never Existed A L E T T E R F R O M Rev. John Shane Vaughn Founder & Apostolic Overseer, First Harvest Ministries International Author of The Layers of the Law Beloved of the House of Israel — last month I showed you how a Roman tax taught the church to run from the Law. This month I want to heal the other half of that wound: the war between Law and Grace that never existed at all. Read it slowly. It will change the way you open your Bible. When another writer arrives at the truth from the opposite direction here are moments when you discover that another writer has approached, from an entirely different direction, a truth you have been trying to explain for years. I recently experienced one of those moments. One of my favorite books in my library is a massive work of political philosophy written nearly three centuries ago: Baron de Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws. His name is pronounced MON-tess-kyoo, and since it will appear often in this letter, let us settle that at the outset. It has sat on my shelf for years the way certain books do — respected, dusted, and quietly unread. Recently, as I passed by it, that book seemed to plead with me to stop and give it a careful reading at last. I felt compelled to peruse its thick body of pages. I always know when the Spirit is about to reveal something to me. And before long, I found it. Now understand me clearly. Montesquieu was not writing a theological treatise. He was analyzing human government, civil society and jurisprudence — a French nobleman studying magistrates and monarchies, not a Hebrew teacher expounding Sinai. So let me establish that distinction immediately. MONTESQUIEU IS NOT MY AUTHORITY ON THE LAW OF YAHWEH. THE SCRIPTURES ARE. But sometimes a man studying one field discovers a principle that illuminates another. A physician describes a symptom and a farmer recognizes it in his soil. An engineer explains a load-bearing wall and a pastor suddenly understands his own congregation. Truth has a way of echoing across the rooms of creation — because there is only one Creator standing behind all of them. And Montesquieu turned on a floodlight. 1.A Law Is More Than the Sentence Containing It In Book I, Chapter 3 of The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu makes an observation that immediately arrested my attention. He taught that a law cannot be examined only by what is written in it. The words on the page are not the whole of the law. He argues that laws must be examined in their relationships to many things — the society, the government, the circumstances, the customs, the religion and the conditions surrounding them. Then he says that laws have relationships: “to their origin, to the intent of the legislator, and to the order of things on which they are established.” And then comes the sentence that explains the title of his enormous work: “These relations I shall examine, since all these together form what I call the Spirit of laws.” — Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Book I, Chapter 3 There it was. I closed my eyes and thought: MY YAHWEH — THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I TAUGHT IN MY BOOK, THE LAYERS OF THE LAW. Because years before I ever considered Montesquieu's argument, I had been teaching this very principle from Scripture — and I had already put it in writing under that very name. And suddenly this old French philosopher had handed me another language with which to describe something I had been attempting to teach students of Torah for a very long time. Montesquieu calls our attention to the relationships constituting the spirit of laws. I have taught believers to search for the layers of the Law. The disciplines are different. The authorities are different. But the conceptual intersection is fascinating: YOU CANNOT FULLY UNDERSTAND A LAW SIMPLY BY READING ITS WORDS. Those are my words, not Montesquieu's, and the distinction matters. But consider the principle. If you want to understand a law, eventually you must ask: Who gave this law? Why was it given? What was the Lawgiver protecting? What evil was He preventing? What good was He preserving? What principle produced the commandment? What does the commandment reveal about the character of the Lawgiver? And ultimately — what is the spirit of this law? That is when the Bible begins opening in dimensions many believers have never seen. Passages you have skipped for twenty years begin to breathe. Chapters you called tedious begin to preach. The offerings, the measurements, the field laws — they stop being religious furniture and start being the fingerprints of a Father. 2.This Is What I Mean by the Layers of the Law This is the thesis I have tried to communicate through my teaching and through my book, The Layers of the Law. Divine Law possesses depth. Not six different laws — six depths of the same law, the way a man may look at one well and see the bucket, the water, the spring, the aquifer, and finally the rain that filled it all. ONE  THE LETTER OF THE LAW What Yahweh actually commanded. TWO  THE APPLICATION OF THE LAW The immediate circumstance addressed. THREE  THE PRINCIPLE OF THE LAW The enduring truth embodied within the commandment. FOUR  THE PURPOSE OF THE LAW What Yahweh intended to produce or to protect. FIVE  THE CHARACTER BEHIND THE LAW What the command reveals about Yahweh Himself. SIX  THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW The divine wisdom, intention and righteousness toward which the commandment points. You do not leave a layer behind in order to reach the next one. You carry it with you. These layers are not enemies. One does not abolish another. The deeper layer does not destroy the surface layer. Rather — the deeper layer explains why the surface command exists. And this immediately exposes the weakness of two opposite theological systems. The legalist can possess the LETTER while missing the SPIRIT. The antinomian — that is the lawless believer, the man who insists the commandments no longer apply to him — can claim the SPIRIT while rejecting the LETTER. Both are wrong. One possesses the container and throws away the contents. The other claims to possess the contents while smashing the container Yahweh placed them in. Hear me, beloved — there are two ditches on this road, and the devil does not care which one you land in. One ditch is full of men who kept every rule and never knew the Father. The other is full of men who claim to know the Father and will not keep a single one of His words. ❖Biblical obedience requires us to respect BOTH.❖ 3.A Lesson from Mississippi Law Let me illustrate what I mean from the State of Mississippi, where our ministry is based. Mississippi law specifically protects funeral and memorial services against certain intentionally disruptive conduct. Under Mississippi Code §97- 35-18, a person acting with intent to disrupt a funeral, graveside service, memorial service or funeral ceremony may not protest or picket within 1,000 feet during the statutory period surrounding the service. Now here is something interesting. The preceding provision, Mississippi Code §97-35-17, separately makes it unlawful willfully to disturb a congregation lawfully assembled for religious worship. But the Legislature did not place the same 1,000-foot funeral buffer into the worship statute. But now quit looking merely at the number and ask the deeper question: why does the funeral law exist? Why 1,000 feet? Did the Legislature discover some great moral difference between 999 feet and 1,001 feet? Of course not. THE DISTANCE SERVES THE PURPOSE. The law recognizes something about the nature of the event being protected. There are solemn assemblies where intentional disruption inflicts a peculiar injury upon those assembled. Some moments in human life are simply too sacred to be shouted down. And Mississippi separately recognizes another protected interest by prohibiting the willful disturbance of people assembled for religious worship. Now we are beginning to distinguish the words of a law from the principle that animates a law. The letter determines precisely what the State has prohibited. But examining purpose helps us understand why the prohibition exists. And this is where an old expression becomes useful: What is understood should not always have to be spelled out. Let me guard that carefully, because a good tool in a careless hand becomes a weapon. I am not suggesting that judges should invent crimes based upon what they believe legislators probably meant. I am making a much deeper theological point: principles can be broader than the particular circumstance through which they were revealed. And if we understand that when studying the imperfect legislation of men, why would we ever refuse to search for the principles contained within the perfect Law of Yahweh? 4.Paul Proves the Method Perhaps someone objects: “Pastor Vaughn, that sounds dangerous. If we start looking beneath commandments for principles, couldn't we make the Bible say anything?” Excellent objection — which is exactly why we do not invent the method. Paul uses it. Moses wrote: “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.” — Deuteronomy 25:4 Now stop and read only the words. What is the law about? An ox. What is the animal doing? Working grain. What may the owner not do? Muzzle it. If the letter exhausts the meaning of the Law, then we are finished here. Farmers, take note. Preachers, turn the page. But Paul does not turn the page. He takes that commandment straight into a discussion concerning the material support of ministers. He quotes Moses and asks: “Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether for our sakes?” — 1 Corinthians 9:9–10 Wait a minute, Paul. Moses said OX. You are talking about MINISTERS. Where did you get that? HE FOUND ANOTHER LAYER OF THE LAW. The immediate application concerned an animal. The underlying principle concerned labor. The ox participates in producing the harvest; therefore the ox must not be prevented from benefiting from the harvest. And Paul recognizes the enduring principle inside it: do not receive the benefit of labor while denying the laborer participation in its fruit. The letter said OX. The principle reached MAN. Paul did not abolish Deuteronomy. He did not spiritualize the commandment into meaninglessness. He did not correct Moses. Paul went deeper into Moses. And notice what he never did — he never told Israel that oxen may now be muzzled. The letter stands. The principle simply traveled farther than the letter's first address. ❖The words were the doorway. Paul walked through them and found the principle.❖ 5.Yahshua Did Exactly the Same Thing Now return to the Sermon on the Mount. YAHSHUA says, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill...” (Matthew 5:21) — and then He starts talking about anger. Wait. The commandment says murder; Yahshua reaches anger. Why? Because murder is the fruit, and hatred is closer to the root. Then He says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Matthew 5:27) — and proceeds to deal with lust. Again: adultery is the fruit, lust is at the root. What is Yahshua doing? Is He abolishing Torah? No. He is revealing its depth. The legalist asks: DID YOU ACTUALLY KILL HIM? Yahshua asks: WHAT IS IN YOUR HEART THAT COULD PRODUCE MURDER? The legalist asks: DID YOU PHYSICALLY COMMIT ADULTERY? Yahshua asks: WHAT IS IN YOUR HEART THAT PRODUCES ADULTERY? Yahshua did not weaken Torah. He made it deeper. Read the Sermon on the Mount honestly: every single time He touches a commandment, that commandment becomes harder, not easier. If He came to abolish the Law, He chose the strangest possible method — He extended its jurisdiction from the hand to the heart. Which is precisely why He could say: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” — Matthew 5:17 He was not burying Torah. He was opening it. And then He added the sentence men always rush past: “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law.” Look out your window, beloved. Heaven and earth are still here. So is every jot. So is every tittle. 6.The Pharisees Had the Letter and Missed the Lawgiver This explains the great tragedy of the Pharisees. They knew commandments. They debated commandments. They constructed rules around commandments. They tithed meticulously — down to the garden herbs weighed on a kitchen scale. And Yahshua nevertheless told them: “Ye... have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.” — Matthew 23:23 Notice those words: weightier matters OF THE LAW. Not matters outside the Law. Not matters that replaced the Law. Apparently everything in Torah does not exist upon a perfectly flat interpretive surface. There are weightier matters. There are priorities, purposes, principles, relationships. Judgment, mercy and faith were never New Testament imports — they were layers the Pharisees never descended to. And notice something else. Yahshua did not tell them, “Forget those little commandments and concentrate on love.” He said, “these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” There is the balance: keep the commandment, discover the principle, develop the character. THAT IS MATURE TORAH OBSERVANCE. 7.The Sabbath Was Made for Man Yahshua gives us another magnificent example: “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). There is purpose language. Why does Sabbath exist? The legalist can become so obsessed with technical Sabbath observance that he forgets why Yahweh gave the Sabbath at all. The antinomian commits the opposite error: “If Sabbath exists for man's benefit, then Sabbath isn't important anymore.” That conclusion is equally absurd. If I tell you the seatbelt was made for the driver, have I abolished the seatbelt? Have I given you permission to throw it out the window? No — I have told you why it is there, and in doing so I have made you want it. PURPOSE DOES NOT ABOLISH COMMANDMENT. PURPOSE EXPLAINS COMMANDMENT. So what is inside the Sabbath? Rest. Worship. Separation. Remembrance. Dependence upon the Creator. Freedom from endless economic production. A weekly interruption of man's slavery to commerce. Equality — the servant rests too. Holiness — time itself can be separated unto Yahweh. Suddenly Sabbath is far larger than don't work. The commandment is the vessel. The divine intention is the treasure inside it. Destroy the vessel and eventually you lose the treasure. Keep the vessel while forgetting the treasure and you have empty religion. That is exactly what I laid before you last month — a church that broke the vessel to escape a Roman tax, and then spent seventeen centuries wondering where the treasure went. F R O M T H E PA S T O R ' S L I B R A R Y The Layers of the Law This teaching letter is a doorway. The full study — commandment by commandment, layer by layer — is the book that gave this ministry its method of reading Torah. If this letter opens something in you, the book will keep opening it. Available on Amazon — search John Shane Vaughn  •  Free teaching at HisComingKingdom.com 8.Now We Can Finally Destroy the False War Between Law and Grace Christianity has spent centuries arguing LAW OR GRACE? — and I submit to you that the question itself is defective. LAW AND GRACE WERE NEVER ENEMIES. Grace is not Yahweh changing His mind about righteousness. Grace is not Yahweh abolishing His definition of sin. Grace is not Yahweh discovering that His commandments were unreasonable. And the Law was never offered as an alternative Messiah. Paul asks the question plainly: “Do we then make void the law through faith?” If modern theology's caricature of Paul were correct, his answer should be, “Absolutely. Faith replaced Law.” Instead: “God forbid: yea, we establish the law.” — Romans 3:31 Then Paul asks again: “What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace?” And again: “God forbid.” — Romans 6:15 Why? Because Grace is not permission to continue practicing the very thing from which Grace came to rescue us. ❖Modern Christianity has built an entire theology upon a war Paul twice refused to fight.❖ 9.Grace Itself Teaches Obedience Listen carefully to Titus: “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly...” — Titus 2:11–12 Grace teaches. What does it teach? Lawlessness? No — Grace teaches men to reject ungodliness and to live righteously. Therefore Grace is not Yahweh lowering His standard. Grace is Yahweh redeeming the man who violated that standard, and then transforming him so that he can increasingly live according to Yahweh's righteousness. And press the logic one step further, because no honest man escapes it. What is Grace forgiving? Sin. And what is sin? John tells us plainly: “Sin is the transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4). So follow the chain: NO LAW NO STANDARD ➤ NO STANDARD NO TRANSGRESSION ➤ NO TRANSGRESSION NO GUILT ➤ NO GUILT NOTHING TO FORGIVE Remove the Law and you have not liberated Grace — you have dismantled it. If there is nothing to forgive, Grace becomes meaningless — a pardon signed for a crime that was never a crime. Grace does not prove that Law disappeared. Grace proves that man transgressed it and needed redemption. You cannot celebrate a pardon while insisting there was never a legitimate law against the crime. You cannot magnify the blood while erasing the reason it was shed. Calvary makes sense precisely because righteousness matters. 10.The Problem Was Never the Law Paul tells us, “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (Romans 7:12). Then where is the problem? Man. The Law can reveal righteousness. The Law can expose sin. The Law can identify transgression. The Law can reveal the character of Yahweh. But words standing outside of a rebellious human heart cannot themselves transform that heart. A mirror can show a man his filth; a mirror has never yet washed a face. And no man in history has ever blamed the mirror. This is also the honest answer to the objection men raise about the handwriting of ordinances nailed to the cross. Ask the layered question: what exactly was against us — the command, or the debt we incurred by breaking it? A man in debt does not celebrate when the bank is abolished; he celebrates when his note is stamped paid. What was nailed to that tree was the certificate of debt standing against a guilty man — not the definition of good that revealed he was guilty. Paul removed the CURSE of the Law from the believer. He never removed the CHARACTER of the Lawgiver from the believer's life. And that brings us to one of the most beautiful layers of the Law anywhere in Scripture. 11.The New Covenant Does Not Remove the Law Listen to Yahweh describe the New Covenant: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.” — Jeremiah 31:33 Christian theology has somehow turned the New Covenant into “I will remove my law.” But Yahweh said “I will put my law in them.” Notice the pronoun He never surrenders: my law. Not a different law. Not a replacement law. The same instruction — given a new address. The New Covenant is not the removal of Law. It is the relocation of Law. From stone — to heart. From merely external instruction — to internal agreement. From “Yahweh says I must,” toward “I have come to love what Yahweh loves.” Now we are finally approaching the destination of Torah. The old problem was never that Yahweh's righteousness was defective; the problem was the human heart. So His answer was not change the Law. His answer was change the man. THAT IS GRACE. 12.The Spirit Does Not Lead You Away from the Statutes Ezekiel makes the matter even clearer: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you...” (Ezekiel 36:26). Wonderful. Here comes the Spirit! Surely now the statutes disappear. Keep reading: “And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.” — Ezekiel 36:27 There it is. What does the Spirit cause people to do? Walk in His statutes. The Holy Spirit does not rescue you from the character of Yahweh. The Spirit produces that character in you. This is why Paul's statement, “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Corinthians 3:6), cannot possibly mean LETTER = BAD TORAH and SPIRIT = NO TORAH — because the same Paul also writes, “For we know that the law is spiritual” (Romans 7:14). The Law itself is spiritual. A man does not call a thing spiritual in one letter and bury it in another. THE SPIRIT TAKES RIGHTEOUSNESS INTO THE HEART. The letter identifies murder. The Spirit confronts the hatred. The letter identifies adultery. The Spirit confronts the lust. The letter commands generosity. The Spirit produces a generous man. The letter commands Sabbath. The Spirit creates a man who longs for it. The letter commands truth. The Spirit makes a man who cannot bear a lie. ❖The letter tells you what righteousness looks like. The Spirit makes you the kind of man who wants it.❖ 13.The Greatest Layer Is the Character of the Lawgiver And here, for me, is where everything comes together. Montesquieu taught me to think about the relationship between a law and “the intent of the legislator.” That phrase is extraordinarily useful to me as a student of Torah. Because if intent matters when interpreting the legislation of fallible men — what about the intent of Yahweh? Who is our Legislator? What is His character? Is He arbitrary? Cruel? Capricious? Does He wake up one morning and invent random restrictions simply to see whether His children will obey them? No. Therefore when I encounter a commandment I do not yet understand, I have only two honest options. I may conclude that the commandment is unreasonable — which is to accuse the Lawgiver. Or I may conclude that I have not yet descended far enough into it. Beloved, I have chosen the second option for thirty years, and it has never once failed me. Because every commandment is a self-portrait. Tell me not to move my neighbor's landmark, and I learn that Yahweh defends the man who is not in the room. Tell me to build a rail around my roof, and I learn that Yahweh holds me responsible for a stranger's safety on my own property. Tell me to return my enemy's wandering ox, and I learn that Yahweh will not let my grudge starve an innocent animal. Tell me to leave the corners of my field, and I learn that Yahweh feeds the poor without humiliating them — they still gather with their own hands. Tell me to keep honest weights in my bag, and I learn that Yahweh audits the transactions no man will ever see. Every one of them opens. Every one of them is a window — and behind every window is the same face. You will never again read Leviticus and call it tedious. You will read it and hear a Father talking. 14.Two Objections, Answered in Layers Someone will write me this week with two objections, and both of them deserve an honest answer rather than a sermon shouted over their heads. “But Galatians says we are not under the law.” Read Galatians in layers and the fog lifts. Paul is not fighting men who kept the Sabbath. He is fighting men who taught that a Gentile must be circumcised in order to be saved — that a work of the flesh could purchase a righteousness which only the blood can give. Paul's fury is aimed at a method of salvation, not at a manner of living. Nobody is saved by keeping Torah. Everybody who is saved is being remade into a creature who keeps it. Those two statements are not contradictions. That is the whole Gospel in two sentences. “But Acts 15 settled it.” Acts 15 settled the entrance requirement for Gentiles coming out of raw paganism — four immediate prohibitions, so that new converts could be received into fellowship at once, without delay and without argument. And then James adds the sentence men always skip: “For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day.” The council was not closing the book of Moses. It was telling brand-new believers where the classroom was — and what day it met. The apostles never debated whether Torah was righteous. They debated how quickly a man coming out of paganism could be expected to learn it. 15.The War That Never Existed So let us put the whole thing back together. Law is not a stack of sentences. It is a relationship written into words — and behind every word stands a Lawgiver with a mind, a purpose, and a character. Grace is not the abolition of that Lawgiver's righteousness. Grace is His answer to the sinner who failed it, and His power to produce in that sinner the very obedience the Law required. The Law tells you what Yahweh loves. Grace forgives you for failing it. The Spirit writes it inside you so that you will fail it less. They are not three armies. They are one Father, doing three things at once, for the same child. ❖There never was a war between Law and Grace. There was only a war between man and his own heart — and Yahweh sent Grace to end it.❖ Beloved, the restoration of all things is not merely the recovery of forgotten commandments. It is the recovery of the mind behind them. Anyone can memorize a rule. It takes the Spirit of the living Elohim to make a man think like his Father. So do not let anyone hand you that false choice ever again. Yahshua refused it, and so must we. Take the letter — it came from Yahweh. Search the principle — it reveals His righteousness. Find the purpose — it reveals His heart. Know the character — it reveals Him. And walk in the Spirit — because that is where He is walking. The Law was never the enemy of Grace. The Law is the portrait. Grace is the Artist restoring the man who defaced it. Until He comes, Pastor John Shane Vaughn Founder & Apostolic Overseer • First Harvest Ministries International The Apostolic Assemblies of the House of Israel  Free Teaching & Books www.HisComingKingdom.com Find all of our FREE EBOOKS here. www.AskPastorVaughn.com Search Pastor Vaughn's massive teaching archive. On Amazon: search John Shane Vaughn Every published book in one place — including The Layers of the Law.  Join Us Live LIVE Preaching every Sabbath 12:30 Central YouTube — @FirstHarvestMinistries Roku — download First Harvest Ministries Mobile App — First Harvest Ministries on the Play or Apple Store Live Zoom Bible Study every Friday 7:00 Central — link at HisComingKingdom.com ✚ Support This End-Time Work First Harvest Ministries P.O. Box 2757 Bay St. Louis, MS 39521 CashApp$DrVaughn45 PayPaljthanv32@gmail.com Venmo@Shane-Vaughn-16 Zellebrothervaughn@gmail.com ✉ Write to Pastor Vaughn brothervaughn@gmail.com Your letters, questions, and testimonies are read and welcomed. Many of the teachings in this letter began as a single sincere question from a believer just like you. C O N T I N U E I N T H E W O R D Follow Pastor Vaughn & Receive More Teaching “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” Rev. John Shane Vaughn Founder & Apostolic Overseer • First Harvest Ministries International HisComingKingdom.com  •  TheTruthTv.tv  •  Waveland, Mississippi T H E A P O S T O L I C A S S E MB L I E S O F T H E H O U S E O F I S R A E L