The Law

In preparing for tonight's lesson, I had been thinking a lot recently about this whole idea of the fulfilling of the law of Christ by carrying each other's burdens. My thinking up until this point was that with the life, death, burial and resurrection of Christ, that the law was a thing of the past and was/is only useful in pointing out our need for Him by illuminating our sinful state. We all know that He came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it and that we now live under grace, but what if through His work of fulfillment and redemption we are now held to requirements that are much more difficult to satisfy than the over 600 different codes of the Mishnah? I may be splitting hairs, but it seems that the ceremonial/civil laws that ruled the ancient day may have been at least a little less dangerous than the laws on which they all hang and the law of heavy burden lifting (of others) that Christ left us with. Although more numerous, the ancient ways built a formula in God pleasing that left us cold and indifferent to others and possibly even to Him, while what we have today is seemly more difficult and definitely more dangerous. I mean, what could be more dangerous to commit to loving a god who is wild and compassionate in His relationship with His children and is uncontrollable? What could leave us more defenseless, than opening up to our brothers/sisters for their support and for us their's? What could be more time consuming and inconvenient than investing ourselves in each other for the building up of the body? To me, it's almost as if Christ fulfilled the law and left a grace which almost seems harder to deal with than the later. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely glad that He did, it's just that maybe we sometimes breathe a sigh of relief with the dismissal of the law and totally forget the still daunting task that lay ahead. If we are dealt with in grace and a compassionate love that passeth all understanding, how much more are we to do the same to our brothers, sisters and neighbors? Pretty tough stuff.