The close Spirit of Christ and Moses

“And He said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. 

And he said unto Him, If Thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence. 

For wherein shall it be known here that I and Thy people have found grace in Thy sight? Is it not in that Thou goest with us? So shall we be separated, I and Thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.” (Exo. 33:14-16).

The relationship that Jesus had with Moses was one of perfect openness and kinship, “The LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” (Exo. 33:11). It is what Jesus had with Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. And He wanted to have it with every pre-flood Adamite and post-flood Hebrew, every Israelite and Christian. That relationship was heart to heart, Christ’s Spirit with Moses’ spirit, which was the ideal since Adam and Eve. Its still the same that Jesus desires to have with every son and daughter of God today. “He that is joined unto the Lord is one Spirit.” (1Cor. 6:17).

By this union with the Spirit of Christ, which is Christ Himself, Moses interceded with the Lord for all the children of Israel who didn’t have that union and its resulting spirit to obey the high standard. They were so ignorant of it that they had no need or desire of it for themselves. Daily they saw that union in Moses’ walk with Jesus. But they disdained it, in deference to what they saw among themselves by the prevailing ignorance, crudeness, and earthy mindedness. It was unbelief and atheism that they preferred. Even Aaron had difficulty conceptualizing the spiritual life of his beloved brother. But over time he began to see it and reach out in the dark for it. Near the end of his life Aaron did obtain that spiritual union, and it led him to sacrifice himself, as we see during the plague that Jesus sent to the hosts of Israel for their backsliding into the old perverted appetite for flesh-eating. There Aaron, at the command of Moses, ran out into the plague with his anointed censor, standing between the living and the dead, and stopped Jehovah’s messenger of destruction. Aaron passed the test of self-forgetfulness that Moses had been passing the whole time.

Moses, though dressed in drab shepherd’s clothes, and not Aaron in the splendid garb of the sanctuary priesthood, had been the real high priest all along. Yet, both revealed Christ’s ministry to us before the great God, the original Jehovah, the original self-existent One. Christ had appeared with a like glory of every other member of the angelic hosts. He identified with them, and they truly appreciated Him for it. Like the Son of God among His angelic hosts, Moses in common garb, went in and out among the people, yet he garnered their utmost reverence, and for some of them, their utmost loving appreciation. Aaron also garnered their love, but without so much reverence, except that he wore the priestly vestments, and on special occasions, the whole high priestly uniform and regalia, which was designed to gain their highest respect.

Thus Aaron, in a different way than Moses’ veiled holiness and demeanor, also revealed Christ. The Lord Jesus would accomplish, for Adam’s redemption, a full equality and authority with the great God and Father of all. His Law-loving mercy proved equal to, and able to mediate against, His Father’s determination of justice. And this was His Father’s provision. Because of Christ’s self-sacrifice from Gethsemane to Golgotha, Aaron’s glorious high priestly garments typified the Son of God who would be adorned with honor and praise from His great Elohim Father and from all the angelic hosts, in a way not known before His great atonement at Calvary. A new glory would attend this spotless Red Heifer burnt offering who had received the whole wrath of God until it burned His soul down to spiritual ashes. Aaron’s ministry helps us to see this. Being raised from His demise in the tomb to administer His omnipotent sacrifice before His great God in the heavenly sanctuary, Jesus’ poured out burned up soul, mixed with the water of His everlasting, proven love for lost mankind, had the authority to cleanse every humbled and contrite one from their darkest stains of rebellion. His sacrifice would suffice to put down the autonomy of sin and the accusations of Satan forever, not only during the remnant of sin’s reign in humanity, but throughout all future existence of the eternal kingdom of God. What the Son accomplished satisfied the Father’s yearning for a total abolishment of the spirit of Satan not only for time, but for all eternity. And the glory of Christ would exceed all of His former glorying.

But, aside from the outward expression of inward glory, let us take a closer look at the inward powers that bound Moses and the Son of God, as type, like it did the divine Father and Son in antitype. It was this inner, invisible, spiritual union that authorized the swaying of justice toward Moses’ unworthy, rebellious people. And Moses knew love can do this. He knew that bending justice was the natural outgrowth of righteous love. The self-denying love between Christ and Moses had created the same love between Moses and his Israelite people. To a lesser power the same Spirit of self-sacrificing love pervaded both unions. Because via Moses law and grace existed between unholy rebels and the holy just One, Christ knew that He had a true, sealed, faithful shepherd in Moses, so that He could atone for Israel before His great Father God. Moses would be trustworthy with the powerful leadership skills that Christ had vested in him for feeding the children of Israel their God’s justice and mercy. Moses’ perfect blend of both would perfectly represent that of His God. Therefore, when bargaining for Israel’s life, the deep union between Moses and Christ could be effective toward the twelve tribe’s continued existence, so long as they would remain cognizant of the strong intercourse between Moses and Jehovah. Without the appreciative cognizance in the hearts of the people the grace used in their mediation would be without faith, which the everlasting covenant and gospel has never authorized. In the provision from God through His Son, for His people’s eternal life and existence, nothing less than grace bound to faith, both working simultaneously, have ever been the requirement of God. But, “salvation” by grace without humbled, repentant faith has always been Satan’s counterfeit for the true gospel.

Beyond the Christ-Moses powerful insight, lies another powerful truth. When Moses returned from each intercession with Christ, the glory that shone upon Moses remained upon his face. That glory from Christ was His Spirit. This is what Jesus prayed for in His last prayer with His disciples. “And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.... And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them [His disciples]; that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that Thou has sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me.” (John 17:5,22,23). Like Moses enfolded in Jesus’ presence, Jesus wanted to be enshrouded by His Father’s presence, as had been Their habit since the days of eternity. And the same love that Moses wanted for Jesus to have with his Israelites through Moses’ ability to reconcile them, Jesus wanted His Father to have with His disciples gathered around Him that night, and all the disciples who would ever trust in God for Christ’s reconciliation until His return in power. 

“O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self.” “God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24). Because God is Spirit, His “own self” is “Spirit”. God’s glory comes from His own self, which is Spirit. Therefore, His glory is the outshining of His invisible Spirit. Never can there be the one without the other. His glory and His Spirit are co-existent, and even synonymous. This Paul understood. 

Paul also knew that the truth and Law of God are equally God’s representatives. So in writing to the Corinthian believers, Paul speaks of not only the letter (and ink or tables of stone) of the Law but he also speaks of the Spirit of the Law. The letter of the Law alone, i.e. the letter without the Spirit, was not the whole will of God. Of course, neither was the Spirit of the Law by itself the whole will of God. Both visible and invisible aspects of the Law together represented God’s will, the visible letter for keeping the Law concrete in the minds of His children while they continue to own their wretched bodies of death until Jesus redeems them at His return, and the Spirit of the Law for allowing the Law to go deeply into all the issues of obedience. The spiritual and tangible qualities of the Law are immutably and perpetually bound together.

Thus God’s requirement for worshiping Him must include both the Spirit and the written Law, both the minutest and the biggest picture of the issues of obeying the gospel, both the glorious impressions and the dutiful expressions of obedience. Both are gleaned from John’s understanding. “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments: and His commandments are not grievous.” (1Jn. 5:3). The love from the Spirit of God flowing through Christ makes all obedience to cross-bearing easy and light, and never grievous. “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” (Matt. 11:28-30).

Paul never gave an inkling of abrogating the authority and force of the Law, and its condemnation of sin. “The Law is spiritual” (Rom. 7:14), he wrote. “Wherefore the Law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” (Rom. 7:12). “To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be.” (Rom. 8:6,7). “...(as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come... whose damnation is just.… Do we then make void the Law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the Law [make the Law stand].” (Rom. 3:8,31). For Paul, obedience was not to all the Law except one commandment. Or, all the Law except two commandments. It was obedience to the whole Law, but written in fleshy tables of his heart. To Paul, it was the whole spiritual and practical aspects of godliness that the Law contained and enforced.

In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul was not putting forth any abrogation of the Law, but an exaltation of the Spirit to counteract the non-Hebrew religion that the Jews had brought with them out of their Babylonian captivity. And the Spirit’s prominent and central place in the new covenant could only be had because the promise given by the prophets was attained through the terrible Golgotha conditions over which Christ had remained victorious for humanity’s continued existence and for our blessedness. The people of God now had the Law written in their hearts; their stony hearts were taken away and hearts of flesh were given them, along with Christ’s new Spirit plunging into and quickening their spirit, thus begetting thousands of new creations. Their having surrendered to the God of Israel, He could give them all that He had promised upon the reception of God’s required gifts of a new heart and spirit. Now, the Corinthians were “washed,...sanctified,... justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” (1Cor. 6:11). Being made new subjects to these powers of the world to come, and having received new power as sons of God to yield themselves servants to obey, as powerful, new subjects of God’s Law, they especially brought honor to God, through Jesus filling them with His Spirit of life, and hope.

Any abrogation of God’s Law was the furthest thing from Paul’s mind and message to his churches, but rather a new exaltation of God’s newly reconciled Spirit toward sinful man. So, follow Paul’s thought process in the text below, and keep your eye on his linking close together glory, the Spirit, and the Law.

“Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart....

[God] Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. 

But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away [rendered useless by the magnitude of the glory from its replacement]: 

How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? 

For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. 

For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth [in the ministration of righteousness (obedience)]. 

For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious. 

Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech: 

And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished: 

But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ. 

But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart. 

Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away. 

Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2Cor. 3:3,6-18).

Glory was shining out of both Law and Spirit, both old and new covenants. Therefore both covenants existed together as Spirit and truth. The glory of the old covenant would be greatly overshadowed by the glory of the new covenant. Then the covenants are directly compared to the union Moses had with Jesus compared to the lack thereof between the Israelites and Jesus. The Israelites’ lack of relationship didn’t derive from Christ, but from the people. They were afraid to look at Christ’s glory (Deuteronomy 5:5) or the glory shining from Moses’ face. What caused their unfounded fears? Their ignorance of the righteousness of God. Surrounded by the continuing influence of Egypt in the memories among the adult generation, the love for idolatry kept back a love for holy things from arising in their hearts.

The veil over Moses’ face was representative of the blindness from willing ignorance that held the children of Israel in unbelief and under the reign of Satan. Their minds could not see Jesus in the Torah or in any succeeding inspired writings, even though it all testified of Him. They didn’t want to come to Christ for true life because they felt more satisfied with the idolatrous drudgery of mundanity. “I need five eggs!” perfectly represented the life of provincial, ancient Israel. While all along the appeal to spiritual things was called for from Moses, “Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.” (Deut. 8:3).

The literal, temporal veil over Moses represented the spiritual blindness to eternal things that the new covenant and these Corinthian believers had. The Spirit of the Law that had always been missing from the people of the old covenant was now restored in the people of the new covenant. And that Spirit was Christ, who the old covenant people could rarely ever see. This has been an ongoing problem for the world. “Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him.” “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.” (John 14:17; 1:10).

Therefore in a concise conclusion of this subject as it relates to the whole gospel message, Paul writes,

“But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart. 

Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away. 

Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2Cor. 3:15-18).

This is why we can arrive at the doctrine that the Spirit of the Law is Christ in the Law, or the Spirit of Christ in the Law. The things of God and of Christ are the fruits of the Spirit. The Spirit is the Spirit of God perfectly united with the Spirit of Christ, as we saw happening between Christ and Moses. The power and authority and authentication of full advocacy in the union between Christ and Moses exists on an infinitely greater scale, between God the Father and His only begotten Son, within the veil of the skēnē tabernacle, the door into the Holy Place.

“But Christ being come an High Priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building.” “Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an High Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.” “For such an High Priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.” “Called of God an High Priest after the order of Melchisedec.” (Heb 9:11; Heb 6:19,20; Heb 7:26; Heb 5:10).

“Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.” “Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. ” (Heb 8:1; Heb 7:25).