Are we really saying that some aspect of Jewish law is still in force to keep people out of heaven if they don't obey it? Why do people want so badly to have rules to obey? Is the freedom of faith so scary?
I have been in churches where the pastors dragged up some tenet of Mosaic law saying we were in trouble if we didn't observe it, and I will tell you this, if you try to retrofit Mosaic law into the new covenant you will ruin both and neither will do you any good.
Did you even listen to what he said? Its got nothing to do with keeping people out of heaven. Its about a small change in your life (hack) that will make your life so much better.
Show me where exactly Charlie says anything about getting in trouble? Dont try to project your pastors' words to what Charlie was saying.
Fair point. I concede that Charlie never said that, but I stand by what I said on the general issue because many Christian pastors do make obedience to some point of Mosaic law a requirement for salvation while at the same time saying we are saved by grace. Otherwise they require obedience to some point of the law to obtain the blessing that comes of obedience to the commandment they selected and separated out of the law, saying that believers will be cursed if they don't comply. But you can't obey part of the law without obeying all of it, and Paul makes it clear that a human can't be saved by the law. The Jews of his day wanted him to include just one Mosaic commandment in the Gospel to make it acceptable, just one, but he wouldn't budge an Inch because he knew where it would lead.
How can they say we can be cursed by not obeying the law when Jesus nailed the law to his Cross. His blood doesn't just cover our sin, it eradicates it in an exchange in which we receive a gift of righteousness through our faith. We don't need an external law because the law is written on our hearts according to Jeremiah 30:33. In this passage God said he was going to make a new covenant that wouldn't be like the one he made with the fathers who died in the wilderness after they left Egypt. He said it wouldn't be "according to" that previous covenant and that means it wouldn't operate on the same principles. We have to get this right. The new covenant, everything in the new covenant, is accessed by faith, it is grace that teaches us to walk righteously, and the love of God is our pattern for righteous living.
I have no problem with people observing days if their conscience tells them they must, but I do have a problem with people telling other people they must, and I have a problem with people offering a free gospel of grace and then slapping on the chains of the law as soon as the church door closes behind them.
Organised religion is a control system. You dont need a pastor to tell you what to do. If you read just the Gospels, you will already feel inside your heart and know what Jesus wanted you to know.
I have been in churches where the pastors dragged up some tenet of Mosaic law saying we were in trouble if we didn't observe it
“brb, murdering some schmucks and stealing their wives, daughters, and property, and celebrating by sodomizing a goat. If anybody asks, I didn’t do it.”
The entire NT is based on the OT. If you delete the “OT”, you delete the foundations of the NT, many of which were assumed by the apostles and not even covered, as a large part of what they were doing was addressing errors.
Sure, my example above is taking it to an absurd point, but one point that we see that is actively being taught, presently, and causing extreme division in many churches, is “sodomy is just an expression of love”. They’re able to teach that because the foundations have been removed in peoples’ minds.
Instead of calling it the “Old Testament”, and “New Testament”, which is not how it became structured from the time of Christ, call it the “Teachings/Law, Prophets, and Writings”, and the “New Covenant”, which did not abolish the former, but fulfill it, by Jesus’ own words, where “fulfill” means “walked it out in perfection and as an example”.
Note that one thing that was “abolished” in a sense was the old sacrificial system, but only by a superior method being provided for the its purposes, and not by the tenets of it being destroyed.
Galatians 2:16 nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.
The law says do not go faster than 35 mph in a residential area
The enforcement (condemnation) of that law is removed
Is it now acceptable to drive 180 mph in a residential zone?
Does driving 35mph result in salvation through obedience, or is that obedience an outward manifestation of a will that is naturally concerned for others?
“Faith” = “Obedient Action resulting from Belief”, and not “Belief” alone.
Obedient action according to what resulting in belief from what?
If we are members of the Kingdom of God, we should constantly be concerned for what is best for our fellow members. Where are those things defined, biblically?
If we are the temple wherein the Spirit of the Lord desires to indwell, are we not thereby under obligation to perform the priestly duties? What are the duties that the priests are called upon to perform for temple worship?
Correct, abstaining from stealing from your neighbor does justify us. Attending congregation does not justify us. Faith does. If we are faithful we will try to obediently observe those things.
There are simply more things to observe than what is taught in Christian pulpits.
Is it not odd, that of all the Torah teachings, that one of the few non-Decalogue teachings the church has retained is the Tithe (which can’t even be observed today)?
I knew this would open a can of worms. It always does when you give a religious opinion. People who need other people to believe as they do in order to feel secure can get pretty angry with folks who don't agree. It's no different from the reactions of the woke folks, and that should tell you that this kind of defensive reaction comes from something that is common to humanity, and not so righteous as some suppose.
I am not advocating the destruction of the Mosaic law or saying that people can't find relevant good in it that will shed light on the New Covenant (so called in Jeremiah 31:31). Nor am I saying that people should abandon or change the law to embrace sin. What I am saying is that you can't retrofit the law into the Gospel of Grace. You can't say you are saved by grace but you must also do this commandment of the law or be cursed.
God writes the law on our hearts according to Jeremiah 31:31. It went from outside to inside. It might still be relevant for teaching righteousness to sinners, but no one should be using it to put fear into believers. Paul said we have not been put in bondage again to fear, and he was talking about the fear that comes from the law. We are completely accepted in Jesus through His blood, and I won't compromise on that issue. The law did teach us what sin is, but now Grace should be teaching us what righteousness is, pulling our focus away from sin to behold what is holy and good in heaven.
For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:17 NKJV)
People who need other people to believe as they do in order to feel secure can get pretty angry with folks who don't agree.
I’m not angry here, fren. Just addressing words as I see them, with understanding as I have it, but it’s also true that words can be tricky things to actually convey meaning with. If you understood anger rather than passion out of my emphases, apologies.
What I am saying is that you can't retrofit the law into the Gospel of Grace. You can't say you are saved by grace but you must also do this commandment of the law or be cursed.
Agreed. That simply (obviously) wasn’t what I understood from your statements. Allow me to rephrase that last statement for what I was trying to say.
You should keep and do this commandment of the law as a fruit of salvation.
Many have stepped past that to preaching, “trying to keep the law is legalism”, to the point that it is mainstream to have that position.
We are completely accepted in Jesus through His blood, and I won't compromise on that issue. The law did teach us what sin is, but now Grace should be teaching us what righteousness is, pulling our focus away from sin to behold what is holy and good in heaven.
Conveying the nature of walking these lines can be a tricky thing, indeed. I do agree with this, and am trying to add the balancing side of the statement.
Thanks for your very kind reply. Balance away, my patriot frien. (Boy, the spellcheck really doesn't like that.) I didn't mean to insinuate that you were insecure. I really didn't. I just picked your post to reply, and it was more of a general statement. I was trying to make the point that people often excuse their anger when religion is involved, and their passion can blind them to their own confirmation bias. (i.e. using scripture to confirm something they want to believe or were taught to believe instead of taking it for what it says.)
Tricky indeed.
I'm glad you aren't angry. It's not so pleasant to have a conversation out of doors where the rabid people are.
@ u/The_Greeat_Ship_Pilot I don't think that is what the issue is here, though I voted you up for a good question!:
We can't get to Heaven on our works, because our work misses the mark of both action and intent: See Matthew 5: 48 Even the Ten Commandments cannot both be kept in letter or spirit without the Holy Spirit.
There was always a way for those who committed unintentional sin to show repentance, both under the Law and under Grace. Jesus never rebuked anyone for keeping the Law, the rebuke was for prioritizing the traditions of man over the Law of God., and for not keeping it, while acting as if keeping it.
The Law of God serves three purposes:
a) To show us what God's standard of living is
b) To reveal to us our missing the mark of that standard
c) to point us to Jesus our Messiah and Lord, who did meet the standard perfectly!
As Paul points out in Romans 7, the Law as an overriding emphasis will cause your old sinful nature to come out in spades - and every other suit! This is why our focus is to be on Christ, and not on the Law in and of itself - and we know that the Law is not the problem, because Paul says the Law is holy, just and righteous .
We are the problem! As Pogo put it: "We have met the enemy, and he is us!"
see point 4)
The context is in relation to fasting - NOT the Moral Law!:
Then the disciples of John came to Him, asking, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?”
And Jesus said to them, “The [fn]attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
“But no one puts [fn]a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for [fn]the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results.
“Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Thank you in advance, all readers of this comment for your patience with this rather long explanation. I appreciate all who take the time to read it!
When Jesus says that the greatest commandments are love God and love neighbor and that all of the law hangs upon these two things, he isn't negating the law, he's telling us that God's law is how you love God and love neighbor.
We're not justified by the law anymore, we're justified by grace under the New covenant but the general equity of God's law is still relevant today. Our founding fathers knew and understood this which is why they based the Constitution and the Bill of Rights off of the general equity of God's law.
God didn't rest on the 7th day because he needed to, he did it because it was good.
So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.
James 2:12
Our character is formed by the daily decisions which we make. These decisions will always have a foundation of morality, and morality will always be dictated by a law. There can be no freedom without law, and therefore there can be no love
without law, for love is a choice afforded by freedom. Thus while freedom is to do what is wanted, true freedom, dubbed liberty, is when the freedom to do what is wanted is in harmony with the will of God, which is the sanctification of the
living soul (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5). The Sabbath is the only day to explicitly recognize such sanctification (Ezekiel 20:12).
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
Isaiah 1:18
Now the faith of Jesus is reasonable, and reasoning is part of our design. Our frontal lobe, the pre-frontal cortex which sits in our forehead, is the seat of the decision making center, being the reasoning center, of the brain. This is the
seat of authority which God will sit in if we choose Him and His character.
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Genesis 2:7
The word here for “breath” is “nᵊšāmâ”, a feminine noun meaning “spirit, divine inspiration, intellect”. Our design has the dust of our physical being acting as the temple for the Spirit of God (John 4:24). The merciful Voice speaking in our
conscious, the Divinely inspired feelings of righteousness which sit in the seat of our intellect, are the works of none other than God Himself. If there was no law, then why does your conscious sting when you do something wrong? If there was
no law, then why does your conscious sing when you submit yourself to Jesus and allow Him to make the right decision for you? The mind is then the connection between heaven and earth: the dust represents a piece of earth, the breathe represents
a piece of heaven, and it is only through the reasoning of God being fed through our mind that we can choose to allow God to work His saving works. This is faith, even a faith that works.
For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
James 2:26
Now what is being reasoned over in Isaiah 1:18 is verily a description of the Ancient of days, being God the Father: just as Isaiah 1:18 mentions “white as snow” and “as wool”, so too does Daniel 7:9 use these adjectives when describing the
Ancient of days.
I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire.
Daniel 7:9
And without the Sabbath, as the Fourth Commandment of the Decalogue, it is impossible to understand the character of God. This is because the Ten Commandments, the Law of God, is a transcript of His character. Both the law and the character are described using the very same adjectives: just (Romans 3:26; 7:12), true (John 3:33, Nehemiah 9:13), pure (1 John 3:3, Psalm 19:7-8), liberty (Psalm 119:45, James 1:25), light (1 John 1:5, Proverbs 6:23), faithful (1 Corinthians 1:9,
Psalm 119:86), good (Nahum 1:7, Romans 12:7,16), spiritual (1 Corinthians 10:1-4, Romans 7:14), holy (Isaiah 6:3 & 1 Peter 1:15, Exodus 20:8 & Romans 7:12), truth (John 14:6, Psalm 119:142,151), life (1 John 14:6, John 12:50 & Matthew 19:17),
righteous (Jeremiah 23:6, Psalm 119:172), perfect (Matthew 5:48 & Hebrews 13:8, Psalm 19:7, James 1:26), and eternal (John 8:35 & Hebrews 13:8, Psalm 111:8 & Luke 16:17).
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Jeremiah 17:9
So it is reasonable to accept the character of God and His selfless law in the place of our own selfish character and the desperately wicked laws of our own heart. This is true freedom.
He must increase, but I must decrease.
John 3:30
True freedom is not found in keeping the law in order to be saved as if earning salvation as wages, but true freedom is found in keeping the law as the acknowledgment of being saved, even as the desire to be in the image of His perfection as self fades into oblivion.
And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.
Luke 16:17
Because listening to the wicked and deceitful heart is verily denying the law and is thus verily denying Jesus Christ.
By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.
1 John 5:2-3
Are we really saying that some aspect of Jewish law is still in force to keep people out of heaven if they don't obey it? Why do people want so badly to have rules to obey? Is the freedom of faith so scary?
I have been in churches where the pastors dragged up some tenet of Mosaic law saying we were in trouble if we didn't observe it, and I will tell you this, if you try to retrofit Mosaic law into the new covenant you will ruin both and neither will do you any good.
Did you even listen to what he said? Its got nothing to do with keeping people out of heaven. Its about a small change in your life (hack) that will make your life so much better.
Show me where exactly Charlie says anything about getting in trouble? Dont try to project your pastors' words to what Charlie was saying.
Fair point. I concede that Charlie never said that, but I stand by what I said on the general issue because many Christian pastors do make obedience to some point of Mosaic law a requirement for salvation while at the same time saying we are saved by grace. Otherwise they require obedience to some point of the law to obtain the blessing that comes of obedience to the commandment they selected and separated out of the law, saying that believers will be cursed if they don't comply. But you can't obey part of the law without obeying all of it, and Paul makes it clear that a human can't be saved by the law. The Jews of his day wanted him to include just one Mosaic commandment in the Gospel to make it acceptable, just one, but he wouldn't budge an Inch because he knew where it would lead.
How can they say we can be cursed by not obeying the law when Jesus nailed the law to his Cross. His blood doesn't just cover our sin, it eradicates it in an exchange in which we receive a gift of righteousness through our faith. We don't need an external law because the law is written on our hearts according to Jeremiah 30:33. In this passage God said he was going to make a new covenant that wouldn't be like the one he made with the fathers who died in the wilderness after they left Egypt. He said it wouldn't be "according to" that previous covenant and that means it wouldn't operate on the same principles. We have to get this right. The new covenant, everything in the new covenant, is accessed by faith, it is grace that teaches us to walk righteously, and the love of God is our pattern for righteous living.
I have no problem with people observing days if their conscience tells them they must, but I do have a problem with people telling other people they must, and I have a problem with people offering a free gospel of grace and then slapping on the chains of the law as soon as the church door closes behind them.
Organised religion is a control system. You dont need a pastor to tell you what to do. If you read just the Gospels, you will already feel inside your heart and know what Jesus wanted you to know.
“brb, murdering some schmucks and stealing their wives, daughters, and property, and celebrating by sodomizing a goat. If anybody asks, I didn’t do it.”
The entire NT is based on the OT. If you delete the “OT”, you delete the foundations of the NT, many of which were assumed by the apostles and not even covered, as a large part of what they were doing was addressing errors.
Sure, my example above is taking it to an absurd point, but one point that we see that is actively being taught, presently, and causing extreme division in many churches, is “sodomy is just an expression of love”. They’re able to teach that because the foundations have been removed in peoples’ minds.
Instead of calling it the “Old Testament”, and “New Testament”, which is not how it became structured from the time of Christ, call it the “Teachings/Law, Prophets, and Writings”, and the “New Covenant”, which did not abolish the former, but fulfill it, by Jesus’ own words, where “fulfill” means “walked it out in perfection and as an example”.
Note that one thing that was “abolished” in a sense was the old sacrificial system, but only by a superior method being provided for the its purposes, and not by the tenets of it being destroyed.
Galatians 2:16 nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.
Absolutely.
To put the reasoning another way:
“Faith” = “Obedient Action resulting from Belief”, and not “Belief” alone.
Obedient action according to what resulting in belief from what?
Correct, abstaining from stealing from your neighbor does justify us. Attending congregation does not justify us. Faith does. If we are faithful we will try to obediently observe those things.
There are simply more things to observe than what is taught in Christian pulpits.
Is it not odd, that of all the Torah teachings, that one of the few non-Decalogue teachings the church has retained is the Tithe (which can’t even be observed today)?
I knew this would open a can of worms. It always does when you give a religious opinion. People who need other people to believe as they do in order to feel secure can get pretty angry with folks who don't agree. It's no different from the reactions of the woke folks, and that should tell you that this kind of defensive reaction comes from something that is common to humanity, and not so righteous as some suppose.
I am not advocating the destruction of the Mosaic law or saying that people can't find relevant good in it that will shed light on the New Covenant (so called in Jeremiah 31:31). Nor am I saying that people should abandon or change the law to embrace sin. What I am saying is that you can't retrofit the law into the Gospel of Grace. You can't say you are saved by grace but you must also do this commandment of the law or be cursed.
God writes the law on our hearts according to Jeremiah 31:31. It went from outside to inside. It might still be relevant for teaching righteousness to sinners, but no one should be using it to put fear into believers. Paul said we have not been put in bondage again to fear, and he was talking about the fear that comes from the law. We are completely accepted in Jesus through His blood, and I won't compromise on that issue. The law did teach us what sin is, but now Grace should be teaching us what righteousness is, pulling our focus away from sin to behold what is holy and good in heaven.
For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:17 NKJV)
I’m not angry here, fren. Just addressing words as I see them, with understanding as I have it, but it’s also true that words can be tricky things to actually convey meaning with. If you understood anger rather than passion out of my emphases, apologies.
Agreed. That simply (obviously) wasn’t what I understood from your statements. Allow me to rephrase that last statement for what I was trying to say.
Many have stepped past that to preaching, “trying to keep the law is legalism”, to the point that it is mainstream to have that position.
Conveying the nature of walking these lines can be a tricky thing, indeed. I do agree with this, and am trying to add the balancing side of the statement.
Thanks for your very kind reply. Balance away, my patriot frien. (Boy, the spellcheck really doesn't like that.) I didn't mean to insinuate that you were insecure. I really didn't. I just picked your post to reply, and it was more of a general statement. I was trying to make the point that people often excuse their anger when religion is involved, and their passion can blind them to their own confirmation bias. (i.e. using scripture to confirm something they want to believe or were taught to believe instead of taking it for what it says.)
Tricky indeed.
I'm glad you aren't angry. It's not so pleasant to have a conversation out of doors where the rabid people are.
@ u/The_Greeat_Ship_Pilot I don't think that is what the issue is here, though I voted you up for a good question!:
We can't get to Heaven on our works, because our work misses the mark of both action and intent: See Matthew 5: 48 Even the Ten Commandments cannot both be kept in letter or spirit without the Holy Spirit.
There was always a way for those who committed unintentional sin to show repentance, both under the Law and under Grace. Jesus never rebuked anyone for keeping the Law, the rebuke was for prioritizing the traditions of man over the Law of God., and for not keeping it, while acting as if keeping it.
The Law of God serves three purposes:
a) To show us what God's standard of living is
b) To reveal to us our missing the mark of that standard
c) to point us to Jesus our Messiah and Lord, who did meet the standard perfectly!
As Paul points out in Romans 7, the Law as an overriding emphasis will cause your old sinful nature to come out in spades - and every other suit! This is why our focus is to be on Christ, and not on the Law in and of itself - and we know that the Law is not the problem, because Paul says the Law is holy, just and righteous .
We are the problem! As Pogo put it: "We have met the enemy, and he is us!" see point 4)
The context is in relation to fasting - NOT the Moral Law!:
Thank you in advance, all readers of this comment for your patience with this rather long explanation. I appreciate all who take the time to read it!
God's law is a reflection of God's character.
When Jesus says that the greatest commandments are love God and love neighbor and that all of the law hangs upon these two things, he isn't negating the law, he's telling us that God's law is how you love God and love neighbor.
We're not justified by the law anymore, we're justified by grace under the New covenant but the general equity of God's law is still relevant today. Our founding fathers knew and understood this which is why they based the Constitution and the Bill of Rights off of the general equity of God's law.
God didn't rest on the 7th day because he needed to, he did it because it was good.
Our character is formed by the daily decisions which we make. These decisions will always have a foundation of morality, and morality will always be dictated by a law. There can be no freedom without law, and therefore there can be no love without law, for love is a choice afforded by freedom. Thus while freedom is to do what is wanted, true freedom, dubbed liberty, is when the freedom to do what is wanted is in harmony with the will of God, which is the sanctification of the living soul (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5). The Sabbath is the only day to explicitly recognize such sanctification (Ezekiel 20:12).
Now the faith of Jesus is reasonable, and reasoning is part of our design. Our frontal lobe, the pre-frontal cortex which sits in our forehead, is the seat of the decision making center, being the reasoning center, of the brain. This is the seat of authority which God will sit in if we choose Him and His character.
The word here for “breath” is “nᵊšāmâ”, a feminine noun meaning “spirit, divine inspiration, intellect”. Our design has the dust of our physical being acting as the temple for the Spirit of God (John 4:24). The merciful Voice speaking in our conscious, the Divinely inspired feelings of righteousness which sit in the seat of our intellect, are the works of none other than God Himself. If there was no law, then why does your conscious sting when you do something wrong? If there was no law, then why does your conscious sing when you submit yourself to Jesus and allow Him to make the right decision for you? The mind is then the connection between heaven and earth: the dust represents a piece of earth, the breathe represents a piece of heaven, and it is only through the reasoning of God being fed through our mind that we can choose to allow God to work His saving works. This is faith, even a faith that works.
Now what is being reasoned over in Isaiah 1:18 is verily a description of the Ancient of days, being God the Father: just as Isaiah 1:18 mentions “white as snow” and “as wool”, so too does Daniel 7:9 use these adjectives when describing the Ancient of days.
And without the Sabbath, as the Fourth Commandment of the Decalogue, it is impossible to understand the character of God. This is because the Ten Commandments, the Law of God, is a transcript of His character. Both the law and the character are described using the very same adjectives: just (Romans 3:26; 7:12), true (John 3:33, Nehemiah 9:13), pure (1 John 3:3, Psalm 19:7-8), liberty (Psalm 119:45, James 1:25), light (1 John 1:5, Proverbs 6:23), faithful (1 Corinthians 1:9, Psalm 119:86), good (Nahum 1:7, Romans 12:7,16), spiritual (1 Corinthians 10:1-4, Romans 7:14), holy (Isaiah 6:3 & 1 Peter 1:15, Exodus 20:8 & Romans 7:12), truth (John 14:6, Psalm 119:142,151), life (1 John 14:6, John 12:50 & Matthew 19:17), righteous (Jeremiah 23:6, Psalm 119:172), perfect (Matthew 5:48 & Hebrews 13:8, Psalm 19:7, James 1:26), and eternal (John 8:35 & Hebrews 13:8, Psalm 111:8 & Luke 16:17).
So it is reasonable to accept the character of God and His selfless law in the place of our own selfish character and the desperately wicked laws of our own heart. This is true freedom.
True freedom is not found in keeping the law in order to be saved as if earning salvation as wages, but true freedom is found in keeping the law as the acknowledgment of being saved, even as the desire to be in the image of His perfection as self fades into oblivion.
Because listening to the wicked and deceitful heart is verily denying the law and is thus verily denying Jesus Christ.
This is going into my “top handshake posts” collection.
u/#Correct