The LAW Paul vs. Jesus

[miknik5]

what does it mean to be just when HE judges and the justifier of all whose faith is in HIS SON?
Does it mean that any man can come before GOD and profess "another way" and will be justified?

Paul said:
You were washed....you were justified

Can one be justified and NOT washed?

Not according to GOD's WORD as per Haggai 2
And not according to JESUS' WORD as per John 13

 

[miknik5]

what are we witnesses of?

 

[miknik5]

I don't believe that anyone said the old covenant was revoked

But can anyone deny that GOD said HE would make a NEW COVENANT?

And this said to those who had THE WORD, THE PROMISE and THE LAW from GOD

 

[com7fy8]

We were talking about how to harmonize Paul and Jesus and we got to talking about obeying the ot law.
Our group was split with some saying that Jesus intended his injunction to follow all the ot laws for Jews only and others saying it should be read to apply to all believers (although not as a salvation issue)

some saying that Jesus intended his injunction to follow all the ot laws for Jews only

Well, if a Jew becomes a child of God, by trusting in Jesus > in Jesus, "There is neither Jew nor Greek" > Galatians 3:28.

others saying it should be read to apply to all believers (although not as a salvation issue)

Paul says the Law is for exposing sin > Romans 7:7.

 

[Athée]

Hi Athee. Nice topic, and also I've enjoyed reading your posts. In my response I'll first address what I think the transition from Old to New means in practical terms, and then I'll address the issue of Paul vs Jesus.

The OT law was just a shadow of something better to come. A lot of the law focused heavily on, "I am the boss; obey me". It's a simple lesson, but an important one because we'll never be able to appreciate the higher revelations of God (like Jesus) until we can accept that God is the boss.

Because Jesus is a higher revelation of God, he will necessarily make some of the older parts obsolete. An eye for an eye is a good example of this. There is a semblance of justice in that teaching, but it's only a shadow of something better. Rather than just punishing people as an end in itself, what about reaching them deep down inside and encouraging genuine change?

Another example is the sabbath day. The OT requires only 1 day per week to keep Holy. It was a start, but Jesus fulfilled that part from 1 day to 7. He said, "come to me all you who labor and are tired, and I will give you sabbath, because me burden is light". We don't come to Jesus one day per week, and so the requirement of "how much time do we give to God" has also changed.

Probably the biggest change was from using a specific list of rules to guide morality over to using the Spirit to guide morality. A list of rules is reassuring because we can see the list, hold it in our hands, and put all the responsibility for good morality onto the list. But the list is hard and inflexible. It can do for some simple, basic situations, but because we humans are so incredibly complex, we often need more than what the list can offer.

That's where the spirit comes in, but with more flexibility comes more responsibility. One day the spirit may guide us to be hard on someone, and the next day guide us to be soft on that same person over the same issue. This is why Jesus said, "to whom much is given, much shall be required".

Paul mentioned this kind of thing, too, when he compared the law written on stone tablets vs the spirit written on the fleshy tables of the heart. He had problems with Jews trying to enforce circumcision on the Christians. He had problems with people promoting special holy days, celestial events, feasts, and material gain as signs of rightness with God.

Actually, I'd suggest that Peter had a harder time changing over than Paul did. Peter rebuked God about eating unclean food and, when Peter's high-profile Jewish friends came to visit him, he stopped fellowshipping with his gentile brothers because he thought his Jewish friends would disapprove.

I guess, in conclusion, I'd say that Paul and Jesus are already harmonized on the need for change from the shadow to the fulfillment.

I think my question for you is about how you view the law. Others here have pointed out that the law was perfect (humans were not) and that the new covenant is having the laws written on the heart. Not only will the specific instances of law be written on hearts but so too will the deeper principles at play, such that by perfectly obeying all the deeper principles it would be impossible to disobey any of the specific instances described in God's perfect law.
Your position, however, seems to be that it is the deep principles that we must obey and that in some instances these principles will overturn the pronouncement of God's law on the subject.
Is that what you meant? How do you justify, biblically, this idea that God's initial law was not perfectly moral and good?

 

[John Hyperspace]

Fair enough I suppose, how do you make sense of Hebrews 8 then? What law is God talking about there, has the state of affairs described there already happened?

Hebrews 8 is about the two covenants which I mentioned in the first post. They are the law and the promise. Those under law have not received the promise.

You also said no one can be thought obligated to follow the law, but Jesus talked in Matthew about the law being something to follow, even to the least of its commands, until heaven and earth pass away.
Thoughts?

Jesus was teaching under the old covenant, He was the very personification of fulfillment of the old covenant. The new covenant didn't come into effect until after the crucifixion. By keeping the law perfectly (as is commanded in the law) Jesus received the promise of the law; having received that promise, He is then able to make a new covenant with us, one of grace. By keeping His Father's commandments, He was then able to establish a new covenant based on His commandment: John 15:10. The new covenant has a single commandment: John 13:34-35, John 15:12, John 15:17: and by the new commandment one passes from condemnation, corruption and death under the law, into, justification, liberty and life under the Spirit: John 5:24, 1 John 3:14

 

[miknik5]

A time is coming when they will worship neither on the mountain or in Jerusalem

This HE said to a woman who knew that the Jew had the promises of GOD but who, herself, was kept outside of THE PROMISE

And what was GOD's first command to those who came out of the first Passover?

They were not to treat an alien as an alien

But they did and because of it, GOD's NAME was "misrepresented"

 

[Athée]

Wow... Maybe next time

The Mosaic Law was given to reveal what sin is and without it we wouldn't even know what sin is (Romans 7:7), sin is defined as Lawlessness (1 John 3:4), and being under grace does not permit us to do what God has revealed to be sin (Romans 6:15), so we are not permitted to transgress the Mosaic Law. Rather, Jesus kept a perfect example of how to walk in obedience to God's Law, and we are told to follow his example (1 Peter 2:21-22) and to walk in the same way that he walked (1 John 2:3-6). Our sanctification is about being made to be more like Christ is doing what is holy, righteous, and good like he did in obedience to God's Law. Jesus came with the message to repent from our sins for the Kingdom of God is at hand, so repenting from our disobedience to the Mosaic Law is a central part of the Gospel message.

There is a theme in the Bible that we must obey God rather than man, and God has given no one the authority to countermand Him, so if God commanded us to do something and Paul or the Jerusalem Council said that we don't have to do what God commanded, then we must obey God instead. However, I think that when we correctly determine which law is being talked about, then we will see that none of the NT authors ever spoke against anyone obeying any of God's commands. The primary source of confusion is that most people do not account for the fact that much of the discussion about laws in the NT is in regard to the role of a large body of Jewish oral laws, traditions, rulings, and fences.

According to Isaiah 45:25, all Israel will be saved, so many Jews thought that Gentiles had to become part of Israel in order to become saved, which to them meant becoming a Jewish proselyte, which involved circumcision, which involved joining a group of people 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)

So by becoming circumcised, Gentiles were becoming Jews and agreeing to follow all of the oral laws and traditions of the rabbis, all for the purpose of becoming saved. By the time of Messiah's day, those who had this authority to make rulings passed down to them were referred to as sitting in Moses' seat (Matthew 23:2-4). In Matthew 15:2, Jesus was asked why his disciples broke the tradition of the elders and he responded in verse 3 by asking why they broke the commandment of God for the sake of their tradition. The commandment he was referring to was Deuteronomy 4:2 and Deuteronomy 12:32, which prohibited adding or subtracting from what God had commanded. Furthermore, Jesus said that for the sake of their tradition they have made void the Word of God (Matthew 15:6), he quoted Isaiah to say that they were worshiping God in vain for they were teaching as doctrines the commandments of men (Matthew 15:8-9), and he called them hypocrites for setting aside the command of God for the sake of their tradition (Mark 7:6-9), so there was a major source of conflict between Jesus and Pharisees over their oral laws and traditions. In Matthew 23:2-4, he was not criticizing the Pharisees for teaching the people to do what God had commanded them, but rather he was comparing their mountains of traditions to a heavy burden that they were placing on the people, which they wouldn't move a finger to help.

If you think that Jesus was sinless, that he practiced what he preached, and that he preached what he practiced, then you should think that he taught obedience to the Mosaic Law both in word by example. A "yoke" is a rabbinic term for the way that a rabbi taught how to obey the Mosaic Law and a disciple would come under a rabbi's yoke in order to learn from them how to obey it. So in Matthew 11:28-30, when he was inviting people to follow him and become his disciples, he was inviting them to learn from him how to follow the Mosaic Law. By saying that his yoke was light and his burden was easy, he was contrasting the way that he taught to obey the Law with the heavy burden of the way that the Pharisees taught to obey it. By saying that they will find rest for their souls, he was referencing Jeremiah 6:16-19, where the Law is equated with the good way where we will find rest for our souls.

So in Acts 15:10, Peter was stating the same opinion of Jewish oral laws and traditions of the elders that Jesus had expressed. In Acts 15:1, the Jews were wanting to require Gentiles to become circumcised and come under all these oral laws or customs of Moses in order to become saved. We can know that they were not speaking about the Mosaic Law because God's Law never required all Gentiles to become circumcised and did not even require Jews to become circumcised for the purpose of becoming saved, though it did require them to become circumcised as a sign of the covenant. Furthermore, in Deuteronomy 30:11-14, God said that what He commanded was not too difficult, and 1 John 5:3 confirms that the commands of God are not burdensome, so if Acts 15:10 had been referring to God's commands as burden that no one could bear, then they would be directly contradicting God. In Acts 10:28, we have another example of a reference to an oral law that is not found anywhere in God's Law, and is in fact contrary to it (Leviticus 19:34).

There are many instance in the Psalms, especially Psalms 119, where David said he delighted in God's Law, he loved it, and he meditated on it day and night, so this is closer to how the average observant Jew viewed it. God did not free the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt to put them back under bondage to His Law, but rather it is for freedom that God sets us free (Galatians 5:1) and God's Law is a Law of liberty (Psalms 119:45, James 1:25), while it is sin in transgression of God's Law that puts us in bondage. Paul also delighted in God's Law (Romans 7:22), so he was on the same page with David. In Deuteronomy 6:24 and Deuteronomy 10:13, God said that we He commanded was for our own good. In Titus 2:14, it does not say that Jesus gave himself to redeem us from the Law, but to redeem us from all Lawlessness. He gave himself to set us free from sinning in transgression of the Mosaic Law so that we could be free to get the divine privilege and the delight of doing what God has revealed to be holy, righteous, and good in obedience to our God's commands. Jews would never have considered obedience to their God to be a burden no one could bear.

In regard to justification, it is that it is important to understand that the Mosaic Law was never instructed for the purpose of becoming justified. In Romans 4:1-8, it says that Abraham and David were justified by faith, so God never needed to provide an alternate and unobtainable method of justification when a perfectly good method was already in place. Paul spent a lot of time hammering home the point that obeying the Law was not about becoming justified and that we are justified by faith apart from the Law, yet today many people are still making the same error of thinking that obeying the Law was about trying to become justified, only they have compounded their error by concluding therefore that the Law has been done away with, whereas Paul concluded that our faith does not abolish the Law, but rather our faith upholds the Law (Romans 3:27-31). The people who believe God when He said that His commands are for our own good and demonstrate their trust in God about how to live are living by faith, and in this way our faith upholds the Law, for the righteous shall live by faith (Habakkuk 2:4). In Hebrews 11, it is full of examples of people who lived by faith through living in obedience to God's commands, so living by faith has always been about trusting God enough to live in obedience to His commands, and has never referred to some other manner of living that is not in obedience to His commands. As Jesus stated in Matthew 23:23, faith is one of the weightier aspects of the Law. So we are justified by faith and it is by the same faith that we are to live in obedience to the Mosaic Law and in accordance with Messiah's example.

Wow, maybe next time you can put in some real effort and give us a lengthy post instead of this obviously short and lazy one....
Seriously, thanks for taking the time to put this together, really well done and appreciated.
One question I has was if you see a difference between God's law and the mosaic law? I see you make the distinction between the true law and the Jewish tradition surrounding it but I wasn't sure if the former two were synonymous in your view.
Thanks again

 

[miknik5]

But didn't Jesus say in Matthew 10 that he had come only for the lost sheep of Israel and when he sent out the 12 at that time he told them not to go with the message to the gentiles?

HE also said I have other sheep and HE wasn't creating two sheepfolds because there's only ONE GATE by which the sheep must enter

 

[Athée]

I don't believe that anyone said the old covenant was revoked

But can anyone deny that GOD said HE would make a NEW COVENANT?

And this said to those who had THE WORD, THE PROMISE and THE LAW from GOD

Sure and one of the features of the new covenant is that God's perfect law will be written on the hearts of believers...

 

[Athée]

Only the commands Jesus gave in the Gospel.

If we follow all the Jewish laws in OT, we won't be Christians anymore but Judaists.

Judaists descended from Pharisee which means as Judaists we must stop believing in Jesus as well.

As for me, I hold the teachings of Christ of greater authority than Paul's.

OK but in Matthew Jesus taught that the audience was to obey all of the commands of theaw and to teach others to do likewise.

 

[Athée]

The law will not pas until all has been accomplished


All has not yet been accomplished and the Law remains because not all know how to handle the law properly given not all have received the NEW COVENANT

So you are saying, yes Christians are required to obey the laws, not for salvation but for righteous living.
Correct?

 

[miknik5]

Sure and one of the features of the new covenant is that God's perfect law will be written on the hearts of believers...

Because HE will give us a NEW HEART and a NEW SPIRIT

 

[miknik5]

Who made the hearts of the people fat?

And to who was this declared?

Those who had the WORD and PROPHECIES of GOD?

Or those who didn't?

 

[miknik5]

So you are saying, yes Christians are required to obey the laws, not for salvation but for righteous living.
Correct?

For obedience to CHRIST
they were purchased at a costly price and they no longer live to themselves but to the ONE who purchased them by HIS BLOOD

 

[miknik5]

So you are saying, yes Christians are required to obey the laws, not for salvation but for righteous living.
Correct?

There are some laws that those not born of HIS SPIRIT will follow that are not righteous that those born of HIS SPIRIT if they followed will actually misrepresent THE SPIRIT they claim to be of

 

[miknik5]

OK but in Matthew Jesus taught that the audience was to obey all of the commands of theaw and to teach others to do likewise.

HE said obey ALL

OK but in Matthew Jesus taught that the audience was to obey all of the commands of theaw and to teach others to do likewise.

plesse quote the scriptures on Matthew that you are referring to

Is it Matthew 28 when the RISEN LORD commands HIS DISCIPLES to "go"?

 

[miknik5]

Wow... Maybe next time


Wow, maybe next time you can put in some real effort and give us a lengthy post instead of this obviously short and lazy one....
Seriously, thanks for taking the time to put this together, really well done and appreciated.
One question I has was if you see a difference between God's law and the mosaic law? I see you make the distinction between the true law and the Jewish tradition surrounding it but I wasn't sure if the former two were synonymous in your view.
Thanks again

Yeah we do

The one who ministered the law and commands of GOD

One was a temporal minister

The other one wasn't

 

[miknik5]

Matthew 28

JESUS ' directive to HIS DISCIPLES was

Teaching them all things that (((((I)))))) command you

Does HE have a right to say this?

 

[Athée]

For one thing Christ and the Apostles were all on the same page. Jesus declared all foods clean:

For it doesn't go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body." In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean. (Mark 7:19)
​

Which apparently had implications for the inclusion of the Gentiles:

And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean. And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. (Acts 10:13-15)
​

Apparently James, not an Apostle, at the Council of Jerusalem decided a letter should be written to the Gentiles in Galatia, thus the letter to the Galatians. He wanted to include a restriction against eating things with blood in them or things strangled, it never made it in the letter. What is really most important about the New Testament teaching about the Mosaic Law is that it's an inside out way of keeping it.

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. (Matt. 5:28,29)
​

Compare that to Romans 7 sometime, it's going to come down to things you set your heart on, set eyes on, that determine what you put your hands on. Covetousness was the last commandment in the Old Testament but in the New Testament is the first when you think about it. Paul and Jesus were definitely on the same page, I don't see any differences there. I remember someone brought up James and Paul once talking about justification and works, it was only a problem till you started looking at the context and compared apple to apples.

I'm sure I don't follow, but Jesus and Paul both kept the Mosaic Law. Paul drew the line at compelling Gentiles to submit to the Law, but he always did keep it, because he was a Jew. I've always wondered if he ever indulged himself in an occasional pork chop but I seriously doubt it.

I saw a billboard I thought was funny, it read, 'What part of thou shalt not did you not understand?'. The purpose of the law was not to produce righteousness by obeying the Law, the Law was intended to bring sin out.

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. (Rom. 7:7,8)
​

The Law is kind of upside down, It starts off with love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. It's generally understood that love your neighbor as yourself is also a key foundation. Then it has two laws prohibiting idolatry and ends with thou shalt not covet. The New Testament starts with you being a sinner, then you hear the gospel, believe and receive the new nature. Fulfilling the Law actually starts with a change of heart and then ultimately the fulfillment of New Testament promise is the fruit of the Spirit:

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. (Eph. 3:17-19)
​

Paul's letters invariably start with doctrine then practical application. Ephesians is divided exactly in the middle and the doctrinal portion is the first three chapters. The love of God is in the closing lines, that's perfectly consistent with the Apostolic and New Testament witness. The fruit of the Spirit is the end product, not the foundation. The Mosaic Law was the opposite, the love of God was the foundation of the covenant, often compared to a marriage covenant. The content is the same, the approach of the New Testament is upside down compared to the Law of Moses.

Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. (Col. 3:5)​

Ok, I'm to mortify desires here, deeds like worshiping idols comes later. See how that works? Jesus said wash the inside of the cup first and his worst condemnation was calling hypocrites white washed tombs. It's from the insider out, all the clean linen and kosher food in the world won't change a covetous, lust filled heart. Only God can do that.

Grace and peace,
Mark

Great post!
I see this as a cable for many of the positions taken on this thread so far. Specifically the exam of unclean food.
In the law there are certainly unclean foods and as you point out Jesus clearly says this is not so. The obvious way to reconcile this is to say that God changed the goods from unclean to clean (what God has cleansed - making clean from dirty). The tension I see is that I don't see what has changed about the foods. What was it about them that made them unclean in the first place, has this changed somehow? Or were they never unclean but God just said they were?i guess to some extent it calls into question the idea that the law was perfect. How do you see it?
You also seem to be taking the position that the law was only for the Jews. Is that correct?