New Programming

By Dick Evans

When I first began my life as a programmer of large IBM computers a half a century ago, we would fix up the programs we had written by adding what we called patches. They were bits of code that jumped out of the code we had written to perform new code to get around the original errored code. When the patch was finished executing it woulds then jump back into the old programming and continue. Nowadays they are not called patches, but updates and we all deal with them on our computers today as Microsoft sends them to us. The result is the same--new programming mixed in with old programming.

We all come from different religious backgrounds and we've all been programmed in the process. We learned how to pray to God, how to please God, how to follow the rules set forth in the Old Testament under the old covenant to keep God happy with us. We learned how our mistakes, our sins, could make our Father upset with us. And how our sins could bring sickness in our lives.

And then we became born again. But instead of throwing out the old programing and rebooting with a whole new program, the program created when Jesus went to the cross and took all our sins, all our old programming, all our diseases, all our sicknesses, all curses from all of us for time forever, we tried to have both the old and the new coexist. (Matthew 8:17)

We got a new start, a new program. We do not need to hang onto the old programs. Christianity is not about patching or updating old programming. It is about giving up the old and claiming the new program. It is about walking forward as a new man or woman with the DNA of Jesus. His time on the cross gave us complete freedom. (Luke 4:18) Freedom from all old programming. All religious programming.

Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, lives in us. We are righteous in Christ. We find ourselves immersed in the grace of God. When God looks at us He only sees his son Jesus. It is about time we understood this and walked it out daily. Jesus defeated Satan. The enemy is beneath our feet. It is time to stop giving him credit for the challenges in our lives. It is time to go, preach the good news, disciple those that believe, and lay hands on the sick seeing them recover. (Mark 16:15-18)

The only work we have is to believe on Him who the Father sent. (John 6:29) We are to love our Father God above all else and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. (Mark 12:30-31) We are living in the age of grace, not the age of law. Jesus came to fulfill the law. (Romans 13:10) He ushered in the age of grace. If we continue to practice the traditions and laws of the last age are we not discounting the cross?

Jesus did not come so that we would continue in old traditions. We do not have to perform in the ways of those looking to Father God for his approval. Under grace, God only sees us through the love He has for His only Son. We are in Jesus and He is in us. We can't live on both sides of the street. We can't dual boot, one day booting into the old programming and then the next booting into the new programming. We have to give up the old and fully walk in the new. Grace is it. Grace is the New Covenant program.