robert skynner
I respect the Bible but religion is damaging
In Romans 6:14, the first half of the verse explains the second half in that there is something about the law that we not under that has to do sin no longer having dominion over us, which is not the case with the Mosaic law. Paul said that God's law was not sin, but that is revealed what sin is (Romans 7:7), that the law was holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12), that he sought to do what is right and good, but that sin that dwelled within him was causing him not to do the good that he wanted to do, (Romans 7:13-20), that he delight in the Mosaic law (which is the same thing as that David repeatedly said he delighted in obeying throughout the Psalms), but that there was another law waging war in his members against the law in his mind that was making him captive to the law of sin that dwells in his members (Romans 7:22-23), and that he served the Mosaic law with his mind, but with his flesh he served the law of sin (Romans 7:25). In 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Paul confirmed that all OT Scripture, which primarily referred to the Mosaic law, is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness, and equipping us to do every good work. So the law that Paul was describing where sin had dominion of him, which no longer had dominion over us when we are under grace, is the law of sin (Romans 6:14).
In Romans 6:1-14, Paul said that we died to sin, that we were baptized into Christ's death so that we might be raised to walk in newness of life, that the old self was crucified was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin, so we are being set free from transgressing the Mosaic law, and that death no longer has dominion over us, so we are no longer under the law of sin and death. Paul went on to say that we should not let sin reign in our mortal bodies, that we should not present our members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but to present ourselves to God as instruments of righteousness, for sin will no longer have dominion over us because we are not under the law but under grace.
The Mosaic law was given to reveal to us what sin is, without it we wouldn't even know what sin is (Romans 7:7), and sin is defined as the transgression of the law (1 John 3:4), so it doesn't make any sense for Paul to say in Romans 6:12-15 that we should do what God has revealed to be is righteous and we should refrain from doing what He has revealed to be sin, but we are no longer under the Mosaic law that reveals to us what is righteous and sin, so we don't need to obey it, yet being under grace doesn't mean that we are permitted to do the things that God has revealed in His law to be sin. Furthermore, God's grace trains us to do what God has revealed to be godly, righteous, and good and to renounce doing what God has revealed to be ungodly and sinful (Titus 2:11-14), which is what the law was essentially given to instruct us how to do, so what sense does it make to say that being under grace means that we are no longer under God's law? Rather, the law that we are not under is the law of sin and death. We have been set free from sin so that we can be free to become obedient servants of God, not so that disregard His instructions for how to do what is righteous and avoid sin (Romans 6:15-19).
There is a theme throughout the Bible that we must obey God rather than man, so we need to be careful not to mistake something that was only against following the laws of man as being against following the law of the God that we follow. The Mosaic law does not require all Gentiles to become circumcised and does not even require Jews to become circumcised for the purpose of becoming saved, so the requirement in Acts 15:1 was purely a man-made requirement as part of the customs of Moses, and by rejecting it they were upholding God's law, though God's law does require circumcision for the purpose of being a sign of the covenant. According to Isaiah 45:25, all Israel will be justified, which to many Jews meant that Gentiles had to become Jews in order to become justified, which involved going through the man-made process of becoming a Jewish proselyte, which involved circumcision, and which involved becoming part of the group that agreed at Sinai to do everything that Moses said (Exodus 20:19, Deuteronomy 5:22-27). According to them:
“Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it Joshua. Joshua transmitted it to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly. They [the Men of the Great Assembly] said three things: Be deliberate in judgment, raise many students, and make a protective fence for the Torah.” (Mishna 1(a))
By the time of Messiah's day, the people who had this authority passed down to them were referred to as sitting in Moses' seat (Matthew 23:2-4). So when Gentiles agreed to become circumcised, they were becoming Jews and were agreeing to live according to all of the oral laws, traditions, rulings, and fences of the scribes and the Pharisees who sat in Moses' seat, and doing that all for the purpose of becoming saved. Much of the confusion that many Christians have about the discussion of laws in the NT is that they don't distinguish which law is being talked about, and just assume that it is always talking about the Mosaic law. For example:
Matthew 15:1-3 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” 3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?
In these verses, we have a pretty clear distinction between man-made oral laws or traditions of the elders and the commandment of God, so they are not talking about the same body of laws. Jesus accused them of breaking the command of God (Deuteronomy 4:2) by adding to what God had commanded, he quoted Isaiah to say that they worshipped God in vain by teaching as doctrines the commands of men (Matthew 15:7-9), and he criticised them for setting aside the commands of God to establish their own traditions (Mark 7:6-9). In Acts 10:28, we have another reference to a law that is not found anywhere in the Mosaic law, which is actually contrary to the Mosaic law (Leviticus 19:34), so we need to account for the fact that much of what was said in the NT about laws is in regard to the role of this large body of oral laws. In Matthew 23:2-4, Jesus was not criticising the Pharisees for teaching the people to obey what God had commanded them, but rather he was comparing all of their many oral laws to a heavy burden that they were placing on the people, which they wouldn't move a finger to help. So in Acts 15:10, they were simply expressing the same opinion of rabbinic oral laws that Jesus had expressed. In Deuteronomy 30:11-14 and Romans 10:5-10, God said that what He commanded was not too difficult for them, so if they had been referring to the Mosaic law in Acts 15:10 as being a burden that neither their fathers or they could bear, then they would be directly contradicting God. In 1 John 5:3, it confirms that the commands of God are not burdensome.
Furthermore, God has never given anyone the authority to countermand Him and we must obey God rather than man, so even if you remain unpersuaded by me and persist in thinking that the Jerusalem Council was speaking against Gentiles obeying God's commands, you should nevertheless think that Gentiles should get the privilege continuing to obey God's law and reject the Jerusalem Council. I mean when it comes down to it, are Gentiles followers of God or of the Jerusalem Council? I don't think it needs to come down to that because I don't think that is what the Jerusalem Council was saying, but it is problematic for those who think the they were speaking against Gentiles obeying any of God's commands. If they had done that, then the Jerusalem Council would have been sinning in violation of Deuteronomy 4:2 and Deuteronomy 12:32, they would have been ignoring Messiah's warning in Matthew 5:19, and they would have needed to repent.
In Romans 3:31, Paul said that our faith does not abolish the law, but rather our faith holds the law, however, you just used these verses to argue the exact opposite. The issue is that Christians often make the mistake of thinking that Paul speaking against obeying the law for the purpose of becoming justified implies that the law had this purpose at some point in time, when the reality is that the law was never given for that purpose, and in fact trying to obey the law for that purpose is a legalistic perversion of it. As you pointed out, Romans 4:1-8 states that Abraham was justified by faith, so God did not need to provide an alternative and unobtainable method of becoming justified when a perfectly good method of becoming justified by faith was already in place. It does not follow that because we shouldn't obey the law for a purpose for which it was never intended that therefore we shouldn't obey it for the purposes for which it was intended.
In John 14:15, Jesus said that if we love him, then we will obey his commands, so obedience to God's law has always been a way for us to demonstrate our love for Him. In Deuteronomy 6:24 and Deuteronomy 10:13, God said that we He commanded was for our own good, so the people who believed that what God said was true demonstrated their faith in Him about how they should live by living in obedience to His commands, for the righteous shall live by faith. In Hebrews 11, it is full of examples of people who lived by faith by obeying God's commands, so obedience to God's law has always been about demonstrating our love and our faith in God and thereby growing in a relationship with Him. That is how the Israelites who followed God lived by faith and how our faith is to uphold to the law. We have never been justified by our obedience to God's law, but rather the one and only way to become justified has only ever been by faith apart from the law, and it is by that same faith that we are to live in obedience to the law.
The problem is that the moment I speak about obeying God's law, most people make the error of thinking that I am talking about trying to become justified in spite of the fact Paul spent a lot of time hammering home the point that obeying the law was not about trying to become justified and that we are justified by faith apart from the law. Obeying the Mosaic law is among other purposes about demonstrating our love for God and our neighbor (Matthew 22:36-40), about demonstrating our faith in God in regard to how we should live (Deuteronomy 6:20-24), growing in a relationship with Messiah for righteousness for everyone who believes (Romans 10:4), about following Messiah's commands and his example of obedience (1 John 2:3-6), about being his disciple (Matthew 28:16-20), about being trained by grace to be like Christ is doing what God has revealed to be holy, righteous, and good, about repenting from doing what God has revealed to be sin (Titus 2:11-14), about being a light to the world (Isaiah 2:2-3), about reflecting God's holiness, righteousness, and goodness (Romans 7:12), about refraining from following Israel's example of disobedience (1 Corinthians 10:1-3), about working out our salvation (Philippians 2:12), about being sanctified (Romans 6:16-19), about freedom (Psalms 119:45, James 1:25), about delighting in God (Romans 7:22), about being blessed (Deuteronomy 30:15-20), about entering into life that is life (Matthew 19:17), about following the way where we will find rest for our souls (Jeremiah 6:16-19, Matthew 11:28-30), about becoming an obedient servant of God (1 Corinthians 7:22), about being redeemed from lawlessness (Titus 2:14), about teaching us about God (Exodus 34:6-7), and about what we are to do because we have been justified (Ephesians 2:10), but it has never been about what we need to do in order to become justified through our own effort or about what we need to do to inherit the promise.
It will take sometime for me to examine this post in detail, I'll get back to you, a thumbs up for the trouble you've been to.
Thank you. Robert
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