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Love Compels to Discipline, but Law Compels to Punish

Love Compels to Discipline, but Law Compels to Punish

“God is love” (1 John 4:16). His law is love (Matthew 22:36–40). And love is not self-seeking (1 Corinthians 13:5)—love doesn’t seek to get for self but to give in order to uplift others. This reality has existed from eternity past and will exist to eternity future, for God never changes (Isaiah 57:15; Malachi 3:6; James 1:17), and His design laws for reality are His love built into the fabric of the universe; they are love in action, the fixed laws of heaven and earth that do not change (Jeremiah 33:25).

But what does it mean that “God is love”? Is it the same thing as “God is loving”? You and I can be loving, but we are not love. Love is more than a feeling; it is functional, and it functions by giving, by beneficence, by outward movement of energy for the good of others. Love is not selfish; it is altruistic, other-centered, healing, and restorative.

What do you think about not only God’s nature being love, but also God’s law being love? Does love function by force, coercion, threat, and inflicted punishments? Can you generate love in people by making up rules for them and then threatening to punish them if they disobey your rules? What happens if one makes up rules that we call “laws” but that are not design laws and then uses external pressures to force compliance? Fear, distrust, and rebellion result—the destruction of love! This is how reality functions. And this is why the kingdoms of the world are Satan’s—because they all function in made-up laws that are enforced by external punishment, which ultimately destroy love and incite rebellion (Matthew 4:8, 9; John 18:36). This is why throughout the history of the world, every government that has ever existed is eventually overthrown and replaced. But God’s kingdom is an eternal kingdom—it will never be replaced (Daniel 4:3; Luke 1:33; 2 Peter 1:11).

God’s design laws are expressions of His nature of love. To break that law breaks the very protocols of life and will result in pain, suffering, and death unless healed by God. As the Bible teaches, “The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction” (Galatians 6:8 NIV84). Breaking the laws of God is breaking the laws upon which life is built and destroys the lawbreaker unless healed by our Creator.

One of God’s design laws for intelligent beings is the law of truth. We cannot have health in lies, in falsehood, out of harmony with truth and reality. Thus, the Bible teaches that love rejoices in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6) and God is also truth—the infinite source of truth (John 3:33, 14:6, 16:13). In God there is no darkness, no lie, no deceit (1 John 1:5). Thus, love always operates with the truth, speaks truth, applies truth, moves forward in the truth, for the truth heals and sets free (John 8:32).

Love exists only in an atmosphere of freedom. Thus, as the Bible teaches, “The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17 NIV84). This is the law of liberty, a design law that governs the operations of hearts and minds. Individuality, development, love, and growth occur only in freedom.

 

God, Discipleship, and Punishment

God’s laws are not like the laws of creatures; God does not govern by made-up rules enforced through coercion and externally inflicted penalties, because such methods violate liberty, damage love, incite rebellion, and destroy individuality.

But the Bible teaches that God disciplines those whom He loves; further, the Bible documents that God gave many different types of rules or laws (Hebrews 12:6). So, if God’s law is not like human law and God does not enforce law like humans do, how do we understand all the examples in Scripture of God using law and external power—the destruction of the world by a flood, Sodom, the firstborn of Egypt, and others—with the fact that God says He disciplines those He loves?

Discipline comes from the root word “disciple,” and it means to teach. Thus, love will intervene with artificially imposed consequences to educate, teach, illustrate, protect, and bring lessons home to the heart and mind in order to bring children, the immature, to repentance, to understanding, to comprehension so they will freely choose to turn their hearts and minds around. Such discipline is a mediation, an intercession, a stand-between, an artificial intervention that is placed between the wrongdoer and the true, ultimate results of reaping what a choice would cause without intervention. Why? Because love is other-centered; it seeks to save, protect, and redeem children from destroying themselves.

Punishment comes from the same root as “punitive” and means to exact vengeance upon, to enforce, to inflict punishment—not to redeem but to uphold the law and the authority of the ruling system. There is nothing redemptive about punishing. Punishment is not for the offender; it is for others—so the community will not rebel, so the sinful community will feel “life is fair,” so the sinful community will not seek their own vengeance, so the offended will feel satisfied that the offender got what they deserved, and so those in power can keep power and prevent the people from rebelling.

God is love, and God, when dealing with rebellious, unrighteous, selfish, sinful people, set up a system of rules with legal authorities and mechanisms to inflict artificial stand-between external punishments in order to restrain the unloving, the unrighteous, the ungodly from abusing and exploiting others, to limit the self-destruction of the wicked of hardening their own hearts through such sinful actions, and to keep open the avenue for the Messiah and the outworking of the plan of salvation.

God’s instructions in providing imposed laws, like the Ten Commandments, was for the purpose of discipline, education, restraint, and redemption of each criminal/sinner/rule-breaker—but also to protect the community from the sin in their lives leading them into greater envy, jealousy, lust, acting out on anger, desire for vengeance, and to believe in some form of accountability and fairness, to provide some social order in a sinful world while God worked out His plan to bring Jesus to heal hearts and minds back to His ideal.

All the Old Testament laws given through Moses are intended only for those who have not been reborn, for the rebellious, and for the reborn immature infants, the children who don’t yet know better, who without a rule would still play in the street, not brush their teeth, or worship Baal thinking it is right.

 

The Added Law

The apostle Paul was constantly dealing with this same conflict, the legalistic Jewish leaders who believed God’s law functions like human law and who went around trying to impose rules on people and, thereby, caused confusion. So Paul had to write to the Galatians and remind them that for the need of people, God’s written laws, including the Ten Commandments, were added because of sin (Galatians 3:19–25).

But perhaps Paul was most clear when writing to Timothy:

The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm (1 Timothy 1:5–7 NIV84, emphasis mine).

Paul makes clear that God’s kingdom is the kingdom of love, which functions upon the living laws, protocols, of love, that operate in the heart. However, the teachers of the law don’t know what they are talking about. They are promoting rules and rule-enforcement, the kinds of laws creatures make up and which will lead to rebellion if the heart is not converted to love. Force violates liberty, which destroys love. And this is what all legal religions do: They destroy love and incite more rebellion against God. Thus, Paul makes it clear that God’s written law is NOT for the righteous; rather, it is for the immature, selfish, unconverted people:

We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me (1 Timothy 1:8–11 NIV84, emphasis mine).

The Bible teaches that the written law was added because of our sin to reveal that sin to us—to convict us, to diagnose us, to convince us of our terminal sin-condition—and to lead us to Jesus, our heavenly Physician, for healing. The written law, including the Ten Commandments, was added for our need and has operational benefit only in a world of sin.

In a world where God has restored His living law of love, truth, and liberty into hearts and minds and eradicated fear and selfishness (the carnal nature), there is no written law—for it is not needed! When love rules in the heart as God intends, there is no imposed law that instructs not to murder, steal, commit adultery, bear false witness, avoid other gods, etc., because the righteous are repulsed by even the thought of such things. The righteous live the law of God as the driver and motivator of their actions. The Ten Commandments law has purpose and function only in a world of sin. God’s eternal design laws (love, truth, freedom, etc.) exist and function over the entire universe through all eternity, past and future.

 

When God Destroys

Then what about the times and places in the Bible where God did use power to destroy? Isn’t that evidence of Him using imposed laws with imposed punishments? Not at all—instead, it is evidence of God working to restrain the destructiveness of sin for the purpose of fulfilling His promise in Genesis 3:15, the promised Seed to destroy sin, death, and Satan and redeem humanity.

When Adam sinned, he changed himself, taking himself out of harmony with God and God’s law for life. Adam’s condition became terminal, dead in trespass and sin. Without Jesus, the promised Seed, Adam would die eternally. But God is love, and love compels action—so God’s love compelled Him to act to save and to heal.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him (John 3:16, 17 NIV84).

Without Jesus coming, no human would live because all humans are infected with this terminal condition (Psalm 51:5). Thus, throughout the entire Old Testament narrative, we see God working in love, mercy, and grace to keep open the avenue for the birth of the Messiah, and Satan warred against God, seeking to destroy that branch of the human family.

For a more detailed exploration of how love works to restrain, to excise pathology, to keep open the channels of blessings, but is never the source of inflicted pain and death, see our blogs:

The Flood and Questions of Whether God Kills—Part 1

The Flood and Questions of Whether God Kills—Part 2

The Death Penalty in Old Testament Times

God’s Wrath Versus Satan’s Wrath

The Truth About Hell

I invite you to reject the worldly view of law and embrace the eternal law of love from our Creator God as your motivator for life. It is the love and truth of God, as manifest in Jesus, that heals and transforms:

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view (2 Corinthians 5:14–16 NIV84, emphasis mine).

Be transformed by the truth and love of God and you will no longer view things through the lens of this world, with its made-up, imposed-law legal system, but through the truth as it is in Jesus!

 

 

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Hearing Dr. Jennings’ presentations in person came at a pivotal moment in my spiritual journey that began about nine months ago, when the fault lines inherent in my belief system began to crack under questions that most reasonable people end up asking about God and His nature. These were questions I couldn’t find answers to, and they shook my faith. I was unable let it go any longer and be satisfied. My Christian experience became distant. I was afraid; the fear in me rose like thorns, pushing me away from Jesus. And then someone heard my questions and introduced me to this ministry, and my life has totally changed.

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I walk this path now without fear. I see people differently, and the Holy Spirit burns in my heart. Many call Dr. Jennings’ message false and compromising, but it isn’t false, because I’ve seen the fruits within my mind and body. It is not compromising, because in this message is the only road to holiness that makes any sense. No longer do I behold a pagan god who is always angry and suspicious. Instead, I behold a God who is freeing and loving, always working for our good, and giving me every reason to love my enemy even to my own death, just as Jesus pleads with us. God is good.

Anthony L., CA, USA

 

Testimony 66

I am incredibly grateful for the transformative impact you’ve had on my life, and words cannot fully express my appreciation. Over the years, I have been an avid listener and follower of C&R and extend my heartfelt thanks for creating the C&R mobile app. It has allowed me to immerse myself in your lessons repeatedly, enabling me to grasp the profound significance about the Character of God, Design Law, the protocols for life, the reasons behind the current chaos, and Christ’s mission to restore everything. They have deeply touched me. Having studied with various churches, I came away with the perception that God is no different from the deities of ancient Greek or Roman mythology—demanding sacrifices and taking pleasure in bloodshed. Thanks to your transformative teachings, I have experienced a profound awakening to the true nature of God and the immense power of His love. It is truly a remarkable and liberating sensation to finally grasp the truth and embrace the empowering nature of God’s laws. My self-perception has become brighter and more infused with love. My journey of growth continues on a daily basis.

Chris P., Lake Mary, FL, USA

 

Testimony 30

God lead me to your book “The God-Shaped Brain” while I was searching for another book about the brain and then to your interview about your book on HeartWise Ministries [where] I found out about [Come And Reason Ministries]. I’m now devouring the webcasts of your Bible studies. I have been so greatly blessed and I thank God so much for your courage to speak the Truth in love no matter what. Listening to you contrast the two opposing systems (laws) and digging deep to unearth the hidden treasures in the Bible makes me so incredibly happy and I feel very blessed to be part of your Bible Study Group although I live far away. I am just so excited that there is a group of people that is spreading the Truth about the character of God and it saddens me how few realize what our Father in Heaven is really like.

Kessy B., Australia

 

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My husband is a pastor and I listen to your lesson almost every week. Thank you for helping me in my study life and to help me love the “real” God more.

C. F., NC, USA

 

Testimony 38

Since November 2015, when I started studying Gods word from this God Is Love point of view, my life has been transformed. My troubled marriage of 15 years has been healed and my husband and I are truly happy for the first time in 15 years. Now When I read the word of God I understand it so much better and I can’t help but see Gods love radiating through the pages to humanity. Gods word is living and active and I am blessed beyond measure to be having this amazing experience. God has given me a beautiful understanding of Jn 3:16 that amazes me more and more each day. Thank you again for your ministry.

Helen D., London, England

 

Testimony 47

I can’t even begin to thank you and your ministry enough for introducing me to the Truth about a loving and merciful God! I have my daughter and her in-laws to thank for sharing with me “The God-Shaped Brain” as well as your website. I listen to the Bible study class lessons on my daily walk. May God continue to bless your thirst-quenching ministry!

Liz H., Port Angeles, WA, USA

 

 

Testimony 33

I was invited over a friend’s house to see the “God and Your Brain” seminar today. I became [a christian] 36 years ago at the age of 19, but have struggled with the concept of God taking His ‘pound of flesh’ out on His Son to be appeased. Wow. Your seminar has been an incredible revelation and breath of reason and fresh air! I have your book, “The God Shaped Brain,” and it is SO eye opening. Finally, after 36 years enlightenment has come! Praise the Good Lord! What can I say, but that the Real Gospel is truly “Good News!” Thank you for your efforts in giving the Gospel a clear sound!

Paul C.,  Springfield, MA, USA

 

Testimony 65

I have been tuning into your weekly study classes for a while now and wanted express my appreciation for the teachings that ha been a huge blessing in opening up the true message of the word. Viewing scripture under an imposed law theory always, without fail, raised more questions, concerns, and conflicting scripture interpretations that were discouraging at the very least. Looking at scripture through the design law lens has brought more truth to light for me personally and an understanding of our Heavenly Father that places Him “above all others,” where I am now more than thrilled to witness and serve Him.  I “stumbled” across this ministry a year or so ago and would only watch a few minutes at a time. But the more I listened and the longer I paid attention, the more my spiritual eyes were opened to the ever present truths of scripture. The comprehension of the great controversy and it’s origin by the lies perpetrated and perpetuated throughout the Bible on the attack of God’s character and government is truly priceless. Keep up the Good Work! Your servanthood is desperately needed in such a time as this!

Jeff D., Reading, MA, USA

 

Testimony 35

I am so pleased with the response your message is receiving at my church from the middle-aged to the young adults. I have given out 100 copies of the first two seminars and there are more request every week. One of my [class members] came to me after viewing the series, grateful and impressed with how easy the message was retained. He had been a Seventh-day Adventist in fear all his life, and felt like the scales were removed from his eyes after viewing the seminars. I am so impressed by the change I see in members who have received this message, we are in one accord. However, I am sadden by the negative response of the older people. I am verbally attacked anytime I talk about imposed laws, but I believe my mission is to enlightened everyone I can. I watch your Bible Study Class on YouTube every Friday night and I feel like I am apart of the class. All of you are in one accord and I am so blessed to have found you. I pray that all of you continue to spread this message and I am committed to doing my part.

Clara S., Westfield, MA, USA

 

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I have found your Bible study class lectures to be very inspiring and useful as I prepare to teach class every other week. I subscribe to the podcast and download your notes on the weeks I teach. The audio and notes are such a great help in preparing. My own understanding of God’s character has grown as I teach the class. Commendations on the thought-provoking and well-prepared material Come and Reason provides. Personally, I get excited by the tie you make between the spiritual and mental/physical domains.

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I am absolutly on fire with the message at Come and Reason! I can’t get enough! I’ve read your book, blog, and articles. I’ve listened to your Bible study podcasts, your radio show, and your series – all excellent! It wasn’t until the past couple of years that I have I like I’m becoming “healthy,” with more to share with others than just beasts and commandments! I used to be a Bible worker and preached when the pastors were gone until I had had enough. I didnt realize at the time what the problem was, but i know now… the message wasn’t properly focused. Now my flame is rekindled. All of your little examples are so perfect in explaining something “complicated” and making it easily understood! Now I’m trying to shape it into a life changing evangelistic series! Thank you!

M.T., USA

 

Testimony 52

Your unique way in spreading the truth is what we all need today. Most of us don’t recognize the contamination coming from all the lies and selfishness in the world. Because of our fear of death, we forgot how to live. Lies left and right. I was losing hope and faith, because of so many ideas that are always contradicting each other – so many questions answered by other, more complicated, questions – until I found your channel on YouTube.

You did not just give me answers, you also taught me how to answer new questions that arise in my mind. Now I see things differently. I see God’s mercy, grace, and Love everywhere, in spite of all the chaos that we all have done as humans. I don’t fear death anymore. Accepting the Truth and Love about God is truly a genuine Freedom from all the confusions, sufferings, selfishness, pain, and death.

I just wanted to say, thank you, sooooo much for revealing the real Remedy for our infected life. I have a new hope and now see the world in a different perspective!

Wheinny P., University Place, WA, USA

 

Testimony 2

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Testimony 20

I just wanted to personally thank you for your teachings and insight into scripture. I came across your website via my cousin who suggested I look into “Healing the Mind” information. My youngest daughter has been struggling over the last couple of years and it all came to a head this spring. When I started listening to the “Healing the Mind” lectures my own life began to be transformed. I began sharing with all my daughters the concepts you laid out so clearly. I ordered your book and soaked it up. I just want to say “Thank You!” My walk with the Lord has been refreshed and renewed. Your obedience to the Lord is a blessing to so many.

R. K., Anderson, SC, USA

 

Testimony 23

I would just like to add my voice to the many people who, I believe, must have contacted you to express their appreciation for the “Healing the Mind” DVDs. I’ve been listening to your Bible study class discussions for many years and I’ve been personally blessed by your research and teaching about the character of God.

L. G., Oakland, MI, USA