For the Christians: This 1775 Bible Proves We Live In a Lie
(www.youtube.com)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (17)
sorted by:
"grow into" is an eisegesis. Read it for what it says, not what you want it to say. Even the edict to abstain from certain foods was later changed by Paul. We are not bound by the law of Israel. Take the yoke off
Thanks for your response. Jesus's yoke is easy. If I were preaching modern rabbinical law, it would be a hard yoke on others, a heavy burden as Jesus said; but it's much easier to accept that our righteousness must exceed that of those Pharisees, and then to recognize that that righteousness is God's gift to us in Christ. Yoked with him, he bears the hardest work and we ease alongside.
Eisegesis is adding unwarranted things, exegesis includes necessary implication. Since James emphasized the existence of Sabbath, and since he did not say it had changed for the Jews, he continued to uphold it as a cultural practice of the Jewish nation, as a necessary implication. That also implies the ongoing practice of proselytizing Gentiles into Jewish culture remained unchanged, which includes if they want to come to synagogue and keep Sabbath.
Since you also admit the principle of necessary implication, when you argue (correctly) that Sabbath is not a burden, you would also need to accept the full import of James's including Sabbath in elaborating on his judgment.
Keystone: If you believe that any of the Hebrew saints of old got into heaven as a reward for shouldering a burden of law, why it would make sense for you to see that Christ carrying the burden is a different covenant. But that would mean that works religion was once valid. Instead, I learned in covenant theology that the old saints believed in a Messiah to come, just like Adam and Eve believed in the promise of the Seed of the Woman. So there was always a robust covenant community who followed the laws in faith and gratitude instead of to earn anything. Jesus then taught that the burden was so much greater than anyone knew that only he could carry it.
So the church council didn't lay a burden of works religion, but a burden of an honor code of gratitude. From this we can see that the faithful also looked on the whole law of Moses as a more detailed honor code applicable to Jewish culture.
There is no evidence that the law of God ever changes. Either kosher law is the law of God for everyone, or it was a law of man imposed only upon those in its jurisdiction. In neither case would Paul or Peter have changed it. Therefore my approach is to practice whatever it looks like Jesus would uphold as the moral law. He never said to stop resting on the seventh day, or to eat earthly unclean animals. (Peter's vision referred to animals from heaven, which would have been clean animals just like the Edenic animals were.) So I tell people it's eschatological and we don't argue about eschatology: whatever Jesus says when he gets back is the Law, and I'm just practicing it ahead of time in case!