It would be hard to overstate how important I think this is, and not just for Christians. This concept is deeply radical: If it doesn’t jar you, you probably haven’t grasped it. And at the same time it’s deeply transformational. I know that once I wrapped my mind around it, one important understanding after another followed behind it.
The philosophy that Jesus left us – not a theology, but a philosophy – stands ready to revolutionize human life.
Jeremiah 17:9-10 NKJV
“The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings."
The first Covenant defined the law external to a person. The law the Messiah outlined showed the application of that law to the heart. The issue trying to be reconciled, however, is typified by Jeremiah. The heart is deceitful which was the sin in the garden.
The heart is composed of water, which is blood, and fire, which is the pumping force that pushes it around. Both must be in balance. The old Covenant had become, in Israel, an externalized institution that was not mindful of the water. The Messiah brought the water into balance with the fire which causes the heart to work as it ought to.
So, it was not necessarily a new morality the Messiah was posing or even a philosophy as such. It was a direct medicine and intervention of the heart of man, and a fulfillment of the Covenant as God originally intended. It is a form of being, and man cannot say it could not be done as it was accomplished by Messiah which is why the directive "Go forth and sin no more" was given.
Everyone’s favorite line Jesus wasn’t a white dude like the picture in the Bible