The Law of Heaven’s Kingdom

The last claim in this part of the book differs from all the others. It runs: “The born-again are citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Just as an American ambassador follows American law while working in Korea, citizens of heaven follow the law of heaven. That is living by faith.”

For once there is no need to push back, because the comparison is right.

An ambassador lives in a foreign country. He shops in its markets, drives on its roads, and learns its language, but he does not belong to it. His citizenship lies elsewhere, and so does his law, for he answers to the government that sent him. Scripture says the same about believers:

Philippians 3:20 For our politeuma πολίτευμα pol-it'-yoo-mah(commonwealth-citizenship) is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Yeshua Messiah;

The word is politeuma (πολίτευμα), the life of a commonwealth, the citizenship and the way of life that belong to it. Paul says that ours is “in heaven,” and the Greek word is ouranos οὐρανός oo-ran-os'. We live on this earth as ambassadors, but our citizenship and our King are in heaven.

The claim is right, then, that citizens of heaven live by the law of heaven. The only question left is the one it does not ask: what is the law of heaven?

Whose Law Book?

Return to the ambassador. If someone asked him what American law is, he would not answer, “Whatever I feel an American would do,” or, “I decide it for myself, in my heart.” He would point to something written, to the constitution and the laws passed by the government that sent him. An ambassador does not write his own country’s laws; he receives them.

In a kingdom, the law is the word of the king. To learn the law of heaven, then, we look for the word of heaven’s King.

Psalm 119:89 Forever, O LORD, your word stands firm in the heavens.

The word of the LORD is not a passing local rule that changes with the seasons. It stands fixed in heaven, forever. There the believer’s citizenship is held, and there the law of that citizenship is settled.

Yeshua taught His disciples to pray for the same thing:

Matthew 6:10 Your kingdom come. Your thelema θέλημα thel'-ay-mah(will) be done, as in heaven so on earth.

In heaven, God’s will is done, and the prayer asks that the same will be done here. A citizen of heaven living on earth is someone who wants the King’s will done where he lives, just as it is done in the King’s own country.

As we saw in Chapter 8, the new covenant does not give heaven’s citizens a different law. It writes God’s Torah on their hearts (Hebrews 8:10; Jeremiah 31:33). The King’s law goes with His ambassadors wherever they are sent.

The Nations Go Up

Isaiah saw a day when people from every nation would come looking for that law:

Isaiah 2:3 And many peoples shall go and say: "Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths." For out of Zion shall go forth Torah, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

The nations come asking to be taught, and what goes out from Zion to meet them is Torah.

The word Isaiah uses is torah תּוֹרָה to-raw'. In the prophet’s picture, when the peoples of the world at last turn to the God of Jacob, what they receive from Him is His Torah, and what they do with it is walk in it. They do not come to Zion for a feeling. They come to learn His ways and to walk in them.

By Faith They Obeyed

The claim ends with the words “That is living by faith,” and that is right as well. But Scripture should be allowed to show what living by faith looks like. Hebrews 11 is a long roll of people who trusted God for what they could not yet see, and each of them did something:

Hebrews 11:7 By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events not yet seen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household; by this he katakrino κατακρίνω kat-ak-ree'-no(condemned) the world and became an heir of the dikaiosyne δικαιοσύνη dik-ah-yos-oo'-nay(righteousness) that comes by faith.

Noah had never seen a flood. He was warned “concerning events not yet seen,” and his faith took the form of hammer and wood, for he “constructed an ark.” By faith he became “an heir of the dikaiosyne(righteousness) that comes by faith.” Here righteousness comes by faith, a faith that built.

We met Abraham in Chapter 9: “By faith Abraham obeyed” (Hebrews 11:8). Then comes Moses:

Hebrews 11:28 By faith he kept the pascha πάσχα pas'-khah(Passover) and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.

The faith of Moses kept a commandment of God. He did exactly what God had said, blood and all, and it was that act of faith that kept the Destroyer away from the people.

In Hebrews 11, faith is never a feeling that replaces obedience; every example of faith there is a person doing what God said.

The City at the End

The very last chapter of the Bible tells who goes into the King’s city:

Revelation 22:14 Blessed are those who do His commandments, so that their exousia ἐξουσία ex-oo-see'-ah(authority) will be over the tree of zoe ζωή dzo-ay'(life) and they may enter through the gates into the city.

The word for commandment is entole ἐντολή en-tol-ay'. At the end of the whole story, the citizens of heaven are described not as those who have finished with God’s commandments, but as those “who do His commandments.” And they enter “through the gates into the city.”

The End of Part One

This book began with the picture of a software update, in which version 2.0 installs itself and wipes out the old code of version 1.0. Grace, the story goes, replaced the law.

Over these eighteen chapters we have tested that picture against the text, one claim at a time, and what we have found is an order rather than a replacement. Everyone has sinned. God justifies the sinner who repents and receives Messiah, by grace through faith in His blood, and never by works. The one who has been justified then walks in God’s commandments, the life Scripture calls sanctification. Grace did not delete the instructions. It brought us home to the One who wrote them.

It would be a sad thing if, in our eagerness to embrace grace, we threw away the very instructions God wrote to show us how to live in it.

One great objection still stands in the road, and every honest reader has felt it: “Even if all this is true, nobody can keep the commandments. They are too many, too hard, and too heavy. Is that not the whole point?” That question is the subject of Part Two: Commandments Within Reach.