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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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Testimony 40

I was brought up in a different faith and have been petrified my whole life of God. I believed that I would burn in hell for eternity. When I was 12 I started pursuing the things of this world, but for the next 45 years the Spirit was always calling me, as I knew there was a God through nature. I could see the vast sea of stars in the universe and knew there was something bigger out there. Five years ago, through a Revelation seminar, I was blessed to learn about God’s character and government.

Then I found Come and Reason Ministries and have come under some extreme pressure when I speak about the ministry. One time a member sent me an internet article titled “Whats wrong with Tim Jennings?” I asked her what she thought of it and she said “I don’t know, I didn’t read it.”

I have always wanted to find out for myself the truth about God, so I stayed with the Design Law construct and have been liberated to understand the big picture. Once we consider Design Law, all other Bible stories and prophecies seem to fit perfectly. It is truly beautiful to see people grasping how God operates this Universe of Love and the liberation it has provided in their lives. It blows my mind to see how consistent Design law is with what our founders believed. I hear statements like “This makes so much sense.”

Tom W., Mt. Pleasant, MI, USA

 

Testimony 28

I have been following your Bible study class for about a year now. I must say I am impressed with how your ministry has grown. I took it upon myself to listen to all your lesson podcasts from the past and they have both enriched me physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I have learnt a lot from this class. I have also noticed how the class has grown in spiritual strength. One of the things that benefited me is that now I am not afraid of God. I use to be, but now it has melted away. The second thing is that you helped me to have a real life relationship with God. Now He is my friend that was always there and I love having him with me all the time. Thirdly, because of this class, it inspired me to take over and lead a class. I have called it “Let Us Reason Together,” adapting your inquisitive style and creating a class of free thinkers.

T. Banda, Malawi, Africa

 

Testimony 56

I cannot thank you enough for opening my understanding to the beautiful truth of God’s Law of Love and how it applies to everything. I have been a Christian for over forty years, but I feel like I am only now seeing with my eyes open. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!

Tammy Cinzio, Australia

 

Testimony 18

The Healing the Mind DVD set tarted me on a journey that has changed my relationship with our loving God more significantly than any other study, and brought me to your book and Bible study podcasts, which I now listen to daily, thanks to the availability of archived content on your site and on iTunes.

Anonymous

 

Testimony 60

Just watched watched lesson 10 in the 1st quarter 2021 bible study classs on Isaiah. I want to thank you for your intellectual spirituality; it’s not an oxymoron! From the point of view of a teacher I also enjoy seeing how much personal pleasure you clearly take in not just tasting, but feasting on God’s word – it reminds me of Jeremiah not being able to hold it in! It makes me smile that your cup is so full and overflowing that you make it to Tuesday’s lesson (on a good day). It just goes to show the richness of God’s Word.

God bless the Come and Reason Team from our church here in Great Britain.

Andrew H., Great Britain

 

Testimony 24

I wanted to thank you very much for presenting your understanding of God. I’ve always been troubled by this question: Why did Jesus have to die? Since my conversion I understood that The Father & Jesus are one, I did not have issues with that. But was there not any other way to save us than for Jesus to die? I guess I actually had a question about God – if He is so wise, how come He did not find another way? I did not see the real ‘beauty’  in the cross. Only when you explained the picture in the medical context, Jesus providing medicine for my selfishness, have I started to finally ‘see the light’. Thank you so much. Your seminar, “Healing the Mind,” are absolutely marvelous & have shared them with my family and many other people, including colleagues at work. Thanks, thanks, thanks. May God bless you abundantly in your ministry.

M. W., Australia

 

Testimony 37

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.

I can tell you that this new, “present truth” message is far grander and life-changing than when I shifted from being an agnostic and then a nominal Christian. It has radically altered my worldview, because it reveals a God that makes sense. It is a revolution. I believe that Dr. Jennings’ message is the final message that must go to the world. If any message could be called “righteousness by faith,” as abused as that term is by the right and the left, this is that message, because Jennings’ biblical message identifies a God who is different, whose character isn’t an impossible contradiction.

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 27

Your teachings about our heavenly Father have changed my life. Thank you sooooooo very very much! I know He’s doing some serious healing in my heart and life and I look forward to each new day to learn something new about Him and to just hear you speak about Him. Thank you, forever.

Nancy S.

 

Testimony 50

After coming into contact with Come And Reason Ministries, I can finally say that many of my unanswered questions have fallen into place. I discovered that my view of God’s Law was “imposed laws and rules” with “imposed punishments” and that this was the major culprit of my many unanswered questions. Thanks be to God for using you and those around you to help us who have struggled with this “infection” of thought. I have now rejected the “imposed law” concept to fully embrace “Design Law”… to look thru “Design Law,” instead of “imposed law,” is a relief.

Viliami L., Australia

 

Testimony 71

When I was 9 years old, I remember setting at our devotional table with a hunger and thirst for God that wanted more, deeper, BETTER. I can remember literally crying and pounding on the table, “I know these teachers didn’t mean to give us error. They taught what THEY had been TAUGHT, but didn’t ANYBODY READ THE BOOK?!?!?” It mattered to me then. It mattered to me as a teenager. It matters now as I teach bible classes. It didn’t have to be so hard as I watched so many give up and lay God’s great plan and gift of salvation aside as being “impossible.” Then, a friend sent me a link to Come And Reason’s website. I grew excited. YES! FINALLY! Then another friend told me to stay away, saying her son had just broken up with a girl because she was involved with Come And Reason and that “Tim Jennings preaches a false gospel.” But, AFTER many years of developing an authentic and, dare I say FUN relationship with Jesus, through the Holy Spirit I see this message has been around a LONG time, since the apostle Paul, Ellen White, Graham Maxwell, Ray Foucher, and yourself (though I admit, you’ve made me back up, rewind and replay the clips, and get out my well-worn Bible on a few things.) I’m so thankful I have found LIGHT during these DARK days. I am not alone.

Vicki DiNitto

Testimony 76

Warm greetings from Tanzania! I just wanted to take a moment to thank you and your team at Come And Reason Ministries for the amazing work you do. Your teachings have opened my eyes to deep biblical truths and how to live them out in real life. I started following the ministry back in 2018, and ever since, my walk with God has grown so much stronger. I’ve found freedom from fear-based faith and now live with more peace and trust in Him. I’ve also been sharing what I’ve learned, especially through Bible School discussions. Your lessons are so insightful and well-explained that I try not to miss a single one. May God continue to bless the work you’re doing.
Elisha M., Tanzania, Africa

Testimony 15

I have been sharing Come And Reason Ministries Bible study lessons with several folk. You have such a beautiful view of the plan of salvation. If we had this message preached when I was young, my generation would still all be in church.

H. R., New Zealand

Testimony 61

I grew up in a prominent protestant church and had what I like to call religious anxiety. I’ve always had questions about God and Salvation that no one could seem to answer.  I didn’t know how to find resolution. During 2020, at the height of my anxiety, I fell to my knees and begged God to show me truth and light and to give me the hope that I’ve been longing for. Days later, I stumbled upon your online videos and it was like a veil was lifted and EVERYTHING made sense! For the first time in my almost 39 years of life, my religious/spiritual anxiety has lessened. I feel a sense of freedom and peace I’ve NEVER had before… and it’s all because my view of God has changed. Thank you!

Ashleighn C.

 

Testimony 69

After reading your book, ‘Could It Be This Simple,’ someone was explaining Christianity in a way that made sense to me for the first time in my life. One morning, I simply prayed “I’m sorry and I love you.” As soon as I silently said that, I could literally feel God’s presence and light flood down on me from above and fill me up with love and joy. I sat there crying my eyes out, because I was so overpowered with this feeling of love and joy. It was just so incredible. I hope that more people can read this book and get a blessing from it. It’s really amazing.

Rachael H.

Testimony 41

I have been blessed by your ministry. I have experienced personally, and deeply resonate with, the God of love and the beautiful picture of God’s character that you present. I have seen your seminar series on YouTube, read ‘The Journal of the Watcher’ book, used your mobile app, and also listen/study the bible study lesson with you each week. I concur with many of the thoughts and perspectives that you share. I understand your conclusions on natural laws vs imposed law and the legal/penal substitution (incorrect diagnosis). This makes perfect sense to me.

Bless you for all you do.

Melissa L.