Holy Bible - An instructional manual to constraint life, or a freedom to life?

One day a very dear spiritual friend of mine once commented: "A long time ago, I used to like the Old Testament, because it is better written. The New Testament is like a manual. I have extreme low interest in clicking with it."

I have been contemplating on the comment for a few weeks, at the back of my brain, and information about such subject was flying into me in all directions since then. Friday (21-APR-2006) morning I was on the skytrain reading my PDA Bible as usual, when the train arriving Main Station, Holy Spirit dawned on me about this subject. Much thanks to this dear spiritual friend “PY”, I have been enjoying the contemplating process very much.

In term of manual flavour, actually Old Testament was the real manual (laws and orders to follow for constraining sins), New Testament was the era to crucify and set free of such manual which was about setting free from sins. So far, I can see following items that Jesus had crucified while He died on the cross to mark the era of New Testament:

(1) 600 something old Jewish laws and orders (recorded in the Old Testament books of Exodus (part of), Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) of constraining people to be obsolete:

• "one who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life (Hebrews 7:16)"
• "he former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God. (Hebrews 7:18-19)"

(2) Abolish the slavery of sins and conquered eternal death

• "If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with,[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. " (Romans 6:5-10)

(3) Restore the relationship between man and God that man can directly relate to God through Christ without going through any earthly priests like in the Old Testament - in fact the curtain between the sanctuary and the inner sanctuary (the holiest place where only high priest can go in) was torn apart by Jesus' blood at the moment Jesus died on the cross (I don't think the event was of any coincidence and such incident clearly recorded in 4 books of the New Testament by different authors at different time), so that all Christ's people can directly relate to God without any fleshly priests anymore:

• "At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split." (Matthew 27:51)
• "The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom." (Mark 15:38)
• " for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two." (Luke 23:45)
• "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek." (Hebrews 6:19-20)

In term of the manual flavoured stuffs in the New Testament I think mainly were selections from the New Testament books (1Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians) written by Paul to church bodies after Christ's resurrection. From the background of those books, they were written because of turmoil (being pulled away from Holy Spirit) within the church bodies, and targeted towards solutions which were forced to have an instructional manual flavour - as people failed to allow holy spiritual when dealing with life events then the level had to be stepped lower. When level was lower, then step-wise manual process crept in.

Personally, I don't think manual instruction was the essence of New Testament - the essence of New Testament was to live-by-holy-spirit-driven mode: personal transformation toward the will of God (repentance, bearing fruits of the holy spirit – “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” Galatians 5:16-23), and letting others (who are aware of own sins) know about the good news of salvation and accept Christ as personal saviour, therefore allow others to experience personal transformation and peace being set free from sins, which was the original intend of the New Testament.

Generally, adults in church usually had a tendency thinking that children or youths could not able to grasp the concept of freeing sins and transformation. Therefore, usually books written by Paul were greatly emphasized as they thought children and youths could only follow instructions, and that was what children and youths should be doing in order for adults to feel "comfortable". Indeed not all children and youths could handle holy-spirit-driven lives, some of them required instructions as guidance. When I think of it... I sometimes found some adults had problem dealing with live-by-holy-spirit-driven mode to face daily lives and had to fall backward to live-by-instructions/manual-driven mode. Now, it alarmed my thought further... I guess I should be more sensitive to each AWANA clubber in my handbook class to observe if their spiritual growth of any exception that he/she can start shifting into live-by-holy-spirit-driven mode, instead of only shoveling instructional scripture written by Paul into their throats. Now I need to contemplate how I could observe such as I only face them an hour a week.