Don’t you realize, brothers and sisters, that laws have power over people only as long as they are alive? (I’m speaking to people who are familiar with Moses’ Teachings.)
You, Ezra, using your God’s wisdom—the Teachings you hold in your hands—will appoint judges and administrators for all the people who know your God’s Teachings and live ⌞in the province⌟ west of the Euphrates River. In addition, you will teach anyone who doesn’t know the Teachings.
I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that I often planned to visit you. However, until now I have been kept from doing so. What I want is to enjoy some of the results of working among you as I have also enjoyed the results of working among the rest of the nations.
But now we have died to those laws that bound us. God has broken their effect on us so that we are serving in a new spiritual way, not in an old way dictated by written words.