The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2 Corinthians 3:6)
If you want to know the mind of
the Spirit about anything, you will know it by quickening, by
Life in that direction. If you want to know what the Spirit is
against, you will know it because there is death in that
direction in your spirit, you have no Life, you say, in that
direction. All right, that means you know the Lord, you know the
Spirit, you know what it is to move on the basis of the law of
the Spirit of Life in Christ. The Father governed Him by that
law. He governs us by exactly the same law when we are joined to
the Lord, one spirit. Guidance, direction, is a matter of Life in
the Spirit, Life by the Spirit. The Lord Jesus had His life
ordered, governed, conducted, arranged in every detail by the
quickening Spirit; the Spirit of Life in Christ.
These Jews came along and said: "Here is the
Scripture, and the Scripture says You ought not to do certain
things, and You are doing them; You are all wrong because the
Scripture says this!" When Christ so acted was He violating the
Scripture? Or was He giving God's meaning to the Scripture? When
God gave that law, did He not have a fuller meaning than what men
see just on the surface? Was there not a spiritual
interpretation? Was it not pointing on to something, which when
it came was to supersede – I do not mean break, but transcend –
simply because higher, fuller, deeper meaning was reached? Christ
is God's Sabbath. It is in Christ that God comes to rest in all
His works; His new creation. But they said, "You must abide by the
letter!" We put it in that way to show the difference between
taking the letter and having the Holy Spirit's illumination of
the letter. Life and the letter are often contrasted in the Word.
The letter killeth, the Spirit maketh alive.