Kingdom Principles

Kingdom Concept #5

Laws are built into creation. And laws always carry conse quences for violation. If you try to defy the law of gravity by stepping out of a second-story window, you are in for a painful shock— if you survive the fall! When we violate the law, we receive the due penal ty. God doesn’t have to judge us; the law carries its own built-in “judgment.” Remember, the king’s word is law in his kingdom. When it is written down, it is called a testament, and when repeated verbally, constitutes a commandment:

When Moses went and told the people all the Lord’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.” Moses then wrote down every thing the Lord had said (Exodus 24:3-4).

The “words and laws” Moses spoke to the people were the Ten Commandments and related laws that are recorded in the preceding chapters of Exodus. Like all of God’s laws, the Ten Commandments are not religious dictates. They are laws established by the King of creation to determine how all the natural realm should function and how human beings should relate to God and to each other. THE MEANING OF LAW What exactly is “law”? The most basic Hebrew word for “law” is torah , which also means, in addition to “law,” direction and instruc tion. In time, the word torah was used to refer to the entire body of law that Moses received from God on Mt. Sinai and passed along to the Israelites. In this usage, torah means “the law,” “the direction,” and even “the Law of the Lord.” 1 In the New Testament we find two basic Greek words used for “law.” The first of these is nomos , which means “to divide out, distribute” and also “that which is assigned.” It gradually came to mean “usage” and “custom” and, eventually, “law

149