Parable of the Cake's Ingredients

How much of the Law should believers observe?

Answer: none of it and yet all of it.

Illustration:

A mother tells her mistress that she wants the children to have proper nutrition. She desires that they lack nothing.

So the mistress writes a note with instructs for her mistress's children:

1. Your mother says you need carbohydrates. So I want you to go out and grow some wheat. After it grows and is harvested, winnow it into flour.
2. At the same time, your mother says you need protein. So I want you to begin rearing some chickens, and when they grow into hens, collect some eggs.
3. I also want you to collect some salt, sugar, milk and butter from our cows - oh, and get some cinnamon as well. It's all good for you!

For days, week and months, her children labour to gather all those things - but it isn't easy, because of their weakness.

One day the mistress scolds their children, "You haven't collected enough carbs! You haven't collected enough proteins! carbs? Have you eaten everything I told you to eat! " They weren't capable enough to gather all those ingredients. It wasn't working.

But one day, her beloved son came along, just in the nick of time. He was stronger, and he was able to collect everything. He got wheat, eggs, sugar, milk, butter, even cinnamon - he missed nothing out. Then he mixed all the ingredients into a delicious cake. Then he freely gave pieces of the cake to all his weaker brothers and sisters. They ate and enjoyed it and were nourished.

Then the mother came along and asked the children, "Have you eaten everything you need to eat?"

Yes! By eating the son's cake, the son's free gift - they also ate everything the mistress had instructed, even without working for it. Because all of the ingredients that were written in the mistress's list went into the son's cake. The cake was the fulfilling of the ingredients!

Christ fulfilled the Law. By being in Christ and having Christ in us, we therefore fulfill all of the Law too.

We don't have to think about which ingredients of the Law we must put into our lives and which ones we are permitted to leave out. No. We just have to eat the cake (partake of Christ), because He (the cake) had ALL THE INGREDIENTS (of God's Law) in Him. Hallelujah!

And there will always be a practical overflow of that into all aspects of our lives, as we walk in the Spirit.

By love - by the Spirit - we fulfill the true meaning foreshadowed by the Law.