Saturday or Sunday Church?

[Leaf473]

Then do think that Jesus establish the New Covenant for purpose of undermining anything that he spent his ministry teaching? Or that anything in the New Covenant is not is contrary or not in accordance with the Mosaic Covenant?



In Exodus 20:6, God wanted His people to love Him and obey His commandments, so obedience to everything in the Law is Moses is because he first loved us.



Jesus was born under the law (Galatians 4:4), so that included Deuteronomy 4:2. Furthermore, in Deuteronomy 13:4-5, the way that God instructed His people to determine that someone was a false prophet was if they taught against obeying the Torah, so if Jesus had done that, then according to God, we should regard him as a sinner and false prophet rather than our Savior.



There are a number of instances where Paul makes it clear that he is giving his own opinion rather than a command from God.



Having consensual sex with a woman generally involves holding onto them. Forcing someone to marry their rapist would not be just.



Paul distinguished between eating meat from the altar, which we are not permitted to do, and eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols that was later sold on the market, which we are permitted to do.



Imagine what it would have been like for a Gentile who was a new believer who was unfamiliar with Christianity. They would want to be learning about what is expected of them in this new religion and about how to follow Christ, but there are a ton rules that are overwhelming and they don't know for sure whether things they previously didn't see anything wrong with doing is now forbidden. Depending on who they sit next to they might hear different things about what they should be doing or they might be told that they need to follow certain traditions like fasting twice a week, or they might be getting criticized for doing something that they didn't think was wrong. It might be very overwhelming for them and they might leave before understanding what Christianity is all about, and Jews might be getting swamped with questions from all these new believers, so in order to avoid that, they wanted a set of rules that all new believers should be told to follow so that they were all on the same page with the understanding that they would continue to learn about how to obey Moses over time by hearing him taught every Sabbath in the synagogues. This is not saying that they should ignore some of the instructions in the Torah, but that they should be given some slack as they are starting to learn how to obey the Torah and not need to worry about knowing everything that they will ever need to know on day one.

About the four rules being just the beginning,

People can only handle four laws at a time? Even the stiff necked Israelites could handle 10.

In Acts 21, James says to Paul:
...you live in observance of the law.

Then he says:
But as for the Gentiles who have believed...

So he contrasts Paul's lifestyle with what was said to the gentiles. By this point in time, I would expect that some of the gentiles would have moved beyond the beginning, if that's what the four rules were.

 

[Soyeong]

About the four rules being just the beginning,

People can only handle four laws at a time? Even the stiff necked Israelites could handle 10.

In Acts 21, James says to Paul:
...you live in observance of the law.

Then he says:
But as for the Gentiles who have believed...

So he contrasts Paul's lifestyle with what was said to the gentiles. By this point in time, I would expect that some of the gentiles would have moved beyond the beginning, if that's what the four rules were.

The four things mentioned are four categories of law. But what does that say about Gentiles if you think that they thought that mature Gentile believers couldn't even mange 5 laws? It is not correct to interpret verse 25 as making a contrast. Again, Acts 15:19 is speaking in regard to new believers coming to faith, and so is Acts 21:25. In 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul instructed them to be imitators of him as he is an imitator of Christ and by he and Christ lived in obedience to the Torah.

 

[Leaf473]

Then do think that Jesus establish the New Covenant for purpose of undermining anything that he spent his ministry teaching? Or that anything in the New Covenant is not is contrary or not in accordance with the Mosaic Covenant?



In Exodus 20:6, God wanted His people to love Him and obey His commandments, so obedience to everything in the Law is Moses is because he first loved us.



Jesus was born under the law (Galatians 4:4), so that included Deuteronomy 4:2. Furthermore, in Deuteronomy 13:4-5, the way that God instructed His people to determine that someone was a false prophet was if they taught against obeying the Torah, so if Jesus had done that, then according to God, we should regard him as a sinner and false prophet rather than our Savior.



There are a number of instances where Paul makes it clear that he is giving his own opinion rather than a command from God.



Having consensual sex with a woman generally involves holding onto them. Forcing someone to marry their rapist would not be just.



Paul distinguished between eating meat from the altar, which we are not permitted to do, and eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols that was later sold on the market, which we are permitted to do.



Imagine what it would have been like for a Gentile who was a new believer who was unfamiliar with Christianity. They would want to be learning about what is expected of them in this new religion and about how to follow Christ, but there are a ton rules that are overwhelming and they don't know for sure whether things they previously didn't see anything wrong with doing is now forbidden. Depending on who they sit next to they might hear different things about what they should be doing or they might be told that they need to follow certain traditions like fasting twice a week, or they might be getting criticized for doing something that they didn't think was wrong. It might be very overwhelming for them and they might leave before understanding what Christianity is all about, and Jews might be getting swamped with questions from all these new believers, so in order to avoid that, they wanted a set of rules that all new believers should be told to follow so that they were all on the same page with the understanding that they would continue to learn about how to obey Moses over time by hearing him taught every Sabbath in the synagogues. This is not saying that they should ignore some of the instructions in the Torah, but that they should be given some slack as they are starting to learn how to obey the Torah and not need to worry about knowing everything that they will ever need to know on day one.

About the four rules being just the beginning (continued),

Do you believe that devout Christians in churches like Corinth, Ephesus, and Galatia were making sacrifices at the temple out of respect for God and Torah?

If so, and as I'm sure you know, there are sacrifices required for unscheduled vaginal discharges, nocturnal emissions, childbirth, cleared up skin conditions, etc.

I would expect to see evidence of a steady stream of people from those churches heading to Jerusalem. Why would the elders at Ephesus be sad that they weren't going to see Paul anymore? Why wouldn't they just say, Hang on a sec, let me just grab my suitcase, and I'll come with.

And all those people coming into Jerusalem from the outlying areas... it seems like it would be hard for a rumor to get started about Paul teaching Jews not to observe Torah.

 

[BobRyan]

The four things mentioned are four categories of law. But what does that say about Gentiles if you think that they thought that mature Gentile believers couldn't even mange 5 laws? .

Eph 6:2 as written to a gentile church reminds them that "honor your father and mother" is the first commandment with a promise -- in the still-valid unit of TEN.

James - writing to the church - includes a number of commandments from the TEN that are not in Acts 15.

Paul in Romans 7 includes a number of commandments from the TEN not in Acts 15.

Paul in Rom 13 includes a number of commandments from the TEN not in Acts 15.

Paul never makes any statement of the form "gentiles should ignore scripture - then whatever commandments of God they are able to imagine to themselves - well that is all that is applicable to gentiles".

And the result? -- can be seen in this post below

I am glad these Sunday sources all affirm all TEN of the Ten Commandments for Christians and do so in a way that is consistent with the interpretation of the Sabbath in Eden that you see in most of the Sabbath keeping groups - having the start of the Sabbath for all mankind in Eden.

The Baptist Confession of Faith,
the Westminster Confession of Faith ,
D.L. Moody,
R.C Sproul,
Matthew Henry,
Thomas Watson
Eastern Orthodox Catechism
The Catholic Catechism

Example of Bible Details leading these scholars to agree on the TEN as being included in the moral law of God written on the heart under the NEW Covenant - to this very day.

 

[Soyeong]

About the four rules being just the beginning (continued),

Do you believe that devout Christians in churches like Corinth, Ephesus, and Galatia were making sacrifices at the temple out of respect for God and Torah?

If so, and as I'm sure you know, there are sacrifices required for unscheduled vaginal discharges, nocturnal emissions, childbirth, cleared up skin conditions, etc.

I would expect to see evidence of a steady stream of people from those churches heading to Jerusalem. Why would the elders at Ephesus be sad that they weren't going to see Paul anymore? Why wouldn't they just say, Hang on a sec, let me just grab my suitcase, and I'll come with.

And all those people coming into Jerusalem from the outlying areas... it seems like it would be hard for a rumor to get started about Paul teaching Jews not to observe Torah.

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Don’t you know that unrighteous people will have no share in the Kingdom of God? Don’t delude yourselves — people who engage in sex before marriage, who worship idols, who engage in sex after marriage with someone other than their spouse, who engage in active or passive homosexuality, 10 who steal, who are greedy, who get drunk, who assail people with contemptuous language, who rob — none of them will share in the Kingdom of God. 11 Some of you used to do these things. But you have cleansed yourselves, you have been set apart for God, you have come to be counted righteous through the power of the Lord Yeshua the Messiah and the Spirit of our God.

The above verses list more than four things. According to these verses, do you think that Paul thought that Gentiles should obey more than four commands?

In 2 Peter 3:15-17 it says that Paul is difficult to understand and that those who are ignorant and unstable twist his words to their own destructions and to be careful not to be carried away by the error of lawless men, so we can be confident that when Paul is correctly understood that he did not teach against obeying the Torah, though even in his day there were people who misunderstood him as speaking against it.

There is a lot of unknowns about the foot traffic between cities, but the pilgrim festivals are directed at those who live in the land.

 

[Soyeong]

(a long post, I plan to answer it in several posts.)

I think Jesus established the New Covenant so that we would keep the spirit of Torah, but not the letter. If that is undermining his ministry, then the answer to your question is Yes. I don't think it undermines anything.

In Ezekiel 36:26-27, the Spirit has the role of leading us to obey the Torah, so the problem is when people erroneously think that following the spirit of the Torah is referring to doing something other than what it instructs, which would be undermining it, rather than referring correctly obeying what it instructs as it is intended in a way that expresses aspects of God's nature that are fruits of the Spirit. For example, in Matthew 23:23, Jesus said that tithing was something that they ought to be doing while not neglecting weightier matters of the law of justice, mercy, and faithfulness, so those are aspects of God's nature that the law was intended to teach us how to express that are fruits of the Spirit that the Spirit has the role of leading us to express, but expressing those aspects of God's nature is not doing something other than obeying what the law instructs. For example:

Leviticus 19:12 You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.

Someone who was focused on following the spirit of this law would understand that it intends for us to not swear falsely, whereas someone who was focused on following the letter of this law would understand that we are free to swear falsely just as long as we swear by something other than God's name, which is incidentally what Jesus was criticizing the Pharisees for doing in Matthew 5:33-37. So following the letter of the law undermines both the intent of what God has commanded and why He commanded it, which therefore leads to death just as assuredly as refusing to obey it.

Something we are told after the cross that, imo, is not in accordance with the letter of Torah is that each man is to have his own wife. But according to Torah, a man is to marry his dead brother's widow. That would mean he may end up with two wives... or more.

1 Corinthians 7:2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.

Paul was a servant of God, so he should not be interpreted as being in disagreement with what God has commanded, but the bottom line is that we must obey God rather than man, if you think that Paul spoke against obeying what God commanded and you have a choice between either following him or God, then you should follow God. In regard to 1 Corinthians 7:2, Paul making a ruling for a specific community because they were having sex out of wedlock, not speaking against obeying what God commanded in Deuteronomy 25:5-10.

 

[Ceallaigh]

Please explain how those things make sense for you.

I thought I already had. A person picks up on what they perceive to be a flaw. Or they're introduced to what's perceived as a flaw. So they start following some new or different doctrine, or abandon Christianity altogether. It makes sense to me as in I understand the process.

When the Israelites were still wandering the wilderness for 40 years, they were given a number of laws that had the condition "when you enter the land...", so there can be legitimate reasons for not following certain laws, though there can also be illegitimate ones, but we should have an attitude of them longing for a time when we can have the delight of getting express our love for those aspects of God's nature by following those laws rather than an attitude of being glad that we don't have to obey them. David said repeatedly throughout the Psalms that he loved God's law and delighted in obeying it, so if we consider the Psalms to be Scripture and to therefore express attitude towards God's law, then we will share it, as Paul did (Romans 7:12). For example, in Psalms 1:1-2, blessed are those who delight in the law of the Lord and who meditate on it day and night, so we can't uphold the truth of these words as Scripture while not allowing them to shape our view of it.

Even when the law was first given to Moses, there wasn't a single person who was required to keep all 613 of them, and not even Jesus kept the laws in regard to having a period or to giving birth. Some laws were only given to the King, the High Priest, priests, judgement, men, women, children, widows, those who are married, those who have servants, those who have animals, those who have crops, those who are living in the land, those who are strangers living among them, and those who have tzaraat, while others were given to everyone. The only way that we should no longer follow a law is if what it teaches us about God's eternal nature is no longer true, so there is a difference between someone saying for example that some laws don't apply to them because they aren't growing any crops and saying that those laws should no longer be followed. Around 1/3 of the laws are in regard to temple practice and governing the conduct of the Levitical priesthood, so there is nothing wrong with not following these laws when there is not a temple in which to practice them. When the Israelites were in exile in Babylon, the condition for their return was to first return to obedience to the Torah, which required them to have access to the temple that had just been destroyed.

I am by no means and expert of the law and it is something that I am still learning how to obey. By reading the books of Moses, we can have a general idea of what is instructed by it without having those books memorized, and the availability of reference books and commentaries that we can look up if we have a question on a particular issue takes pressure off needing to memorize everything, though it would still be good to memorize it. In the same way, there are 1,050 commands in the NT, the people who have those memorized are few and far in between, and who knows how many can recite 50 of them, but as we continue to study the NT, we can nevertheless gain a good understanding of what those commands are, and we can look up something if we have a question.

In 1 Corinthians 5:6-8, Paul spoke in regard to how Passover foreshadowed Christ by drawing the connection of him being our Passover Lamb, however, instead of concluding that Passover is a shadow law that we no longer need to keep, he concluded that we should therefore continue to keep it, which is also Paul distinctly teaching them to practice Judaism. In Colossians 2:16-17, Paul emphasized the importance of continuing to keep God's holy days by saying that they are foreshadows of what is to come, so we should continue to live in a way that testifies about what is to come by continuing to keep them rather than a way that denies what is to come, which is also Paul teaching them to practice Judaism. Jesus was a Jew who set a perfect example of how to practice Judaism by living in sinless obedience to the Torah, so it is not clear to me why you have a problem with saying that his followers should follow the same religion that he followed in accordance with his example.

What kind of church did you go to that taught you didn't have to obey God? Because that's not what orthodox Christianity teaches.

As for keeping the law, as you've probably already been told;

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. James 2:10

The "whole" olon = all, the whole, entire, complete. Not part of, not just the ten commandments, and not even 99% of it, but the whole complete law in its entirety. Every single jot and tittle.

 

[Leaf473]

Hi Leaf. The following verse states that a new covenant is about to be given

Deut 29:1 These are the words of the covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which He made with them in Horeb.

Then in Deut 30:10-14 He gives it. He says we are to hearken unto the voice of the Lord to keep His commandment and statutes written in the Book of the Law.

Deut 30:10 If thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law, and if thou turn unto the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul.
Deut 30:11 For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off.
Deut 30:12 It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it?
Deut 30:13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it?
Deut 30:14 But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.

The fact that these verses in Deut are paraphrased in Romans 10 tells us that need to be under consideration.
Rom 10:6 But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above: )
Rom 10:7 Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead. )
Rom 10:8 But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;

Sounds like, then, the answer is Yes. In your view, the laws that God writes on our hearts in the New Covenant are the statutes and commandments. But not the judgments and ordinances.

I haven't yet seen anyone say what the difference is between statutes and commandments on one hand and judgments and ordinances on the other. Nor am I aware of any scripture passage on the subject. If there is one, please post it.

Is it similar to what @Soyeong was saying, that one kind of law has an obvious reason behind it, the other kind does not?
(Please correct that if I misrepresented you, Soyeong.)

 

[Leaf473]

At the very least, keeping the Sabbath holy Exodus 20:8-11 is directly connected to what it means to love God in Exodus 20:6. The Bible often uses to same words to describe the nature of God as it does to describe the nature of God's law, such as with it being holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12), and it could not accurately be described as such if it were not God's instructions for how to express those aspects of His nature. So when we express aspects of God's nature through our obedience to His commands, we are expressing our love for those aspects of God's of God's nature, which is why there are many other verses in both the OT and the NT that connect our love for God with our obedience to His commandments. In John 14:23-24, Jesus said that if we love him, then we will obey his teachings, if we don't love him, then we will not obey his teachings, and that his teachings are not his own, but that of the father, so he is not saying that we need to prove our love for the Father by doing whatever He wants so much as he is saying that all of the commands that the Father has chosen to teach us was specifically commanded for the purpose of teaching us how to love or not love aspects of who he is. In other words, Jesus is the exact expression of God's nature (Hebrews 1:3), so if we love aspects of his nature like love holiness, righteousness, goodness, justice, mercy, and faithfulness, etc., then we will live in a way that expresses those traits in obedience with God's instructions for how to do that in accordance with the example that he set for us to follow.

For example, in 1 Peter 1:16, we are told to have a holy conduct for God is holy, which is a quote from Leviticus where God gave instructions for how to do that, such as keeping His Sabbaths holy (Leviticus 19:2-3) and refraining from eating unclean animals (Leviticus 11:44-45), so when we follow God's instructions for how to have a holy conduct as He is holy, we are expressing our love for God's holiness, while someone who refuses to follow those instructions is expressing that holiness is not an aspect of God's nature that they love, and if God were not holy, then it wouldn't make a different to them. Naturally, there are some aspects of God's holiness that we can't express our love for because of the destruction of the temple, but we can have the attitude of desiring to learn about those aspects of His nature and longing for a time for when we can get to express our love for God by doing them rather than an attitude of being glad that the temple was destroyed so we no longer have to do those things.

In the end, though, it boils down to If you love me keep my commandments.

Myself, I wouldn't want to be eating only plants just because that's what God said to do in the first creation account in Genesis.

 

[Leaf473]

...commentaries that we can look up if we have a question on a particular issue takes pressure off needing to memorize everything, though it would still be good to memorize it

I don't mean this to sound snarky in any way. It's intended as an honest question:

If the law is written on our hearts, why would we need to memorize it?

 

[Leaf473]

Judaism has strict guidelines for how to slaughter meat in a kosher way, and even today practicing Jews will only purchase meat from a kosher deli or eat at a kosher restaurant, which would also exclude the possibility of eating meat that had been previously offered to idols. Even if they ordered a clear animal, if it was prepared on the same grill that had been previously used for pork, then that would be a problem. So the problem comes with a sudden influx of Gentiles who are unaware of these rules, where if a Jew was eating at a community meal and didn't know how the meat had been slaughtered, then they might be of the opinion that only vegetables should be eaten rather than risk eating something that had previously been sacrificed to idols, and they might pass judgement on those who chose to eat everything at the meal and in turn be resented (Romans 14:1-3).

So Paul needed to make a ruling about about what exactly qualifies as idolatry when it comes to eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols and he drew the line at participating in the altar. If anything this would be supporting the local meat vendors rather than the local pagan temple, but again Paul said nothing about financial support, but about whether it was permissible to eat meat that had been sold on the market.

Yes, there are laws that apply to those who are living in the land.

So... in your view, it was okay for the early church folks to eat unclean foods, but not participate in idolatry?

Did people not living in the land not have to attend Jerusalem three times a year?

 

[Leaf473]

Deuteronomy 17:8-13 “If any case arises requiring decision between one kind of homicide and another, one kind of legal right and another, or one kind of assault and another, any case within your towns that is too difficult for you, then you shall arise and go up to the place that the Lord your God will choose. 9 And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in office in those days, and you shall consult them, and they shall declare to you the decision. 10 Then you shall do according to what they declare to you from that place that the Lord will choose. And you shall be careful to do according to all that they direct you. 11 According to the instructions that they give you, and according to the decision which they pronounce to you, you shall do. You shall not turn aside from the verdict that they declare to you, either to the right hand or to the left. 12 The man who acts presumptuously by not obeying the priest who stands to minister there before the Lord your God, or the judge, that man shall die. So you shall purge the evil from Israel. 13 And all the people shall hear and fear and not act presumptuously again.

Yes, that's one role of the Levites.

More broadly in Deuteronomy 33,
They shall teach Jacob your ordinances,
and Israel your law.

 

[Leaf473]

What was taught after his ascension should not be interpreted as being contrary to or not being in accordance with what was taught before his ascension, otherwise that would undermine the point of his ministry.



It is good to keep in mind that Paul's letters were not written to us, but were written to specific congregations in order to answer their questions or to address issues that they were facing, so not everything that Paul said was intended to be taken as general advice for everyone in every situation. By the standard of the Torah, which Paul repeated in 2 Corinthians 13:1, everything should be established by two or three witnesses, and the Bible tends to be fairy repetitive, so a good rule of thumb of whether something was intended to be taken as general advice is if we find it repeated elsewhere in the Bible by a different author.

For example, in the 1st century, it was a common practice for men and women to worship separately, and this is something that is still practiced today in more traditional churches. So if a woman were wanting to ask a question to her husband, then she would not have been speaking quietly to the person standing next to her, but rather she would have been projecting her voice across the room, which would have been very disruptive, so he encouraged women to wait until they got home to ask. Likewise, in the 1st century, it was much more common for men to be taught to study the Torah while women were taught how to do domestic duties, so Paul can look at who is in the community and make a ruling for that community that women there were not qualified to teach men, but if we remove these things from their context and try to apply them in a modern context, then we can end up misunderstanding what Paul was saying.

I believe the point of Jesus's ministry was to fulfill the law and the prophets. Do we have to continue keeping a law that has been fulfilled? It depends how you understand Fulfilled imo.

Paul simply says, As the law says. The law doesn't say that, at least it isn't stated. I agree with your general reasoning, and it points to a loose understanding of Torah, again imo.

Great discussion, btw!

 

[Leaf473]

The four things mentioned are four categories of law. But what does that say about Gentiles if you think that they thought that mature Gentile believers couldn't even mange 5 laws? It is not correct to interpret verse 25 as making a contrast. Again, Acts 15:19 is speaking in regard to new believers coming to faith, and so is Acts 21:25. In 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul instructed them to be imitators of him as he is an imitator of Christ and by he and Christ lived in obedience to the Torah.

Wait... The four rules in Acts 15 are four categories of law? So the gentiles were expected to keep four categories of law?

I don't think they were saying that mature gentile believers couldn't handle more than four laws. That would be, if I'm following what you're saying, taking part of what you said and trying to match it up with part of what I said.

I think Acts 21:25 very much makes a contrast.

"However, in regard to the Goyim who have come to trust in Yeshua,"
CJB

However... indicating a different track of thought.

περὶ δὲ τῶν πεπιστευκότων ἐθνῶν

Based on my basic understanding of greek, the δὲ there indicates, again, something different from what was said before.

 

[Leaf473]

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Don’t you know that unrighteous people will have no share in the Kingdom of God? Don’t delude yourselves — people who engage in sex before marriage, who worship idols, who engage in sex after marriage with someone other than their spouse, who engage in active or passive homosexuality, 10 who steal, who are greedy, who get drunk, who assail people with contemptuous language, who rob — none of them will share in the Kingdom of God. 11 Some of you used to do these things. But you have cleansed yourselves, you have been set apart for God, you have come to be counted righteous through the power of the Lord Yeshua the Messiah and the Spirit of our God.

The above verses list more than four things. According to these verses, do you think that Paul thought that Gentiles should obey more than four commands?

In 2 Peter 3:15-17 it says that Paul is difficult to understand and that those who are ignorant and unstable twist his words to their own destructions and to be careful not to be carried away by the error of lawless men, so we can be confident that when Paul is correctly understood that he did not teach against obeying the Torah, though even in his day there were people who misunderstood him as speaking against it.

There is a lot of unknowns about the foot traffic between cities, but the pilgrim festivals are directed at those who live in the land.

Yes, Paul gives way more than four instructions. However, and imo, he also presents Christianity in Galatians as not a rule-based lifestyle.

So when Paul tells the Corinthians things to avoid, he's giving them standard ideas about what fits with a lifestyle of loving as Jesus loved.

In the particular post you're replying to, I talk about sacrifices. Do you honestly believe people from those far-flung churches were making regular trips to Jerusalem?

 

[Leaf473]

In Ezekiel 36:26-27, the Spirit has the role of leading us to obey the Torah, so the problem is when people erroneously think that following the spirit of the Torah is referring to doing something other than what it instructs, which would be undermining it, rather than referring correctly obeying what it instructs as it is intended in a way that expresses aspects of God's nature that are fruits of the Spirit. For example, in Matthew 23:23, Jesus said that tithing was something that they ought to be doing while not neglecting weightier matters of the law of justice, mercy, and faithfulness, so those are aspects of God's nature that the law was intended to teach us how to express that are fruits of the Spirit that the Spirit has the role of leading us to express, but expressing those aspects of God's nature is not doing something other than obeying what the law instructs. For example:

Leviticus 19:12 You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.

Someone who was focused on following the spirit of this law would understand that it intends for us to not swear falsely, whereas someone who was focused on following the letter of this law would understand that we are free to swear falsely just as long as we swear by something other than God's name, which is incidentally what Jesus was criticizing the Pharisees for doing in Matthew 5:33-37. So following the letter of the law undermines both the intent of what God has commanded and why He commanded it, which therefore leads to death just as assuredly as refusing to obey it.



1 Corinthians 7:2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.

Paul was a servant of God, so he should not be interpreted as being in disagreement with what God has commanded, but the bottom line is that we must obey God rather than man, if you think that Paul spoke against obeying what God commanded and you have a choice between either following him or God, then you should follow God. In regard to 1 Corinthians 7:2, Paul making a ruling for a specific community because they were having sex out of wedlock, not speaking against obeying what God commanded in Deuteronomy 25:5-10.

Right, we follow the spirit of the law, not the letter. We agree, if I'm understanding you right.

I agree that Paul wrote to a specific community. Yet what he wrote is also the word of God, just as Torah is.

Do you believe that you have the ability to look at something that Paul wrote and say it was oriented for a particular time and place? Cool! So do I. I do that with Torah, as well.

 

[Leaf473]

-- duplicate post

 

[HIM]

Sounds like, then, the answer is Yes. In your view, the laws that God writes on our hearts in the New Covenant are the statutes and commandments. But not the judgments and ordinances.

I haven't yet seen anyone say what the difference is between statutes and commandments on one hand and judgments and ordinances on the other. Nor am I aware of any scripture passage on the subject. If there is one, please post it.

Is it similar to what @Soyeong was saying, that one kind of law has an obvious reason behind it, the other kind does not?
(Please correct that if I misrepresented you, Soyeong.)

Yes, but you can start by looking the words up in the Strong’s concordance to see how they are used in the KJV.
Talk to ya later

 

[Carl Emerson]

Hate to awake the beast again but these verses seem to sum up the issue pretty clearly.

Romans 14
14 Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not to have quarrels over opinions. 2 One person has faith that he may eat all things, but the one who is weak eats only vegetables. 3 The one who eats is not to regard with contempt the one who does not eat, and the one who does not eat is not to judge the one who eats, for God has accepted him. 4 Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

5 One person values one day over another, another values every day the same. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 The one who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, and the one who eats, does so with regard to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and the one who does not eat, it is for the Lord that he does not eat, and he gives thanks to God. 7 For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; 8 for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

10 But as for you, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or you as well, why do you regard your brother or sister with contempt? For we will all appear before the judgment seat of God.

Both sides of the argument are valid - it is a matter of individual faith.

Romans 13
8 Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for the one who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the Law. 9 For this, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law.

 

[Leaf473]

Yes, but you can start by looking the words up in the Strong’s concordance to see how they are used in the KJV.
Talk to ya later

Well, I see right off that the word translated as Commandments in Deuteronomy 30:10 is Strong's 4687, mitsvah.
Strong's Hebrew: 4687. מִצְוָה (mitsvah) -- commandment

I remembered that Leviticus ends this way:
These are the commandments, which the LORD commanded Moses for the children of Israel in mount Sinai.

So therefore, the entire book of Leviticus is commandments. I'm not sure if that was what you were expecting me to find or not. The book of Leviticus has a lot of animal sacrifice laws in it, and usually people who say that some part of the law has stopped say that the animal sacrifice laws have stopped.

You're welcome to clarify, if you wish. Of course, I can study this on my own. But since this is a discussion forum, it seems like that would be something interesting to discuss.