Soyeong
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- Mar 10, 2015
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I can understand how you misunderstood my statement since I had quoted the whole verse. I was not equating the Mosaic law as being the same as the law of sin and death. The law of sin and death are the forces affection creation because of Adam's fall. But the law of love is higher than the Mosaic law (although it is an umbrella that law that the Mosaic law is under) because the Mosaic law could not cover all possibilities and that the Lord knew that it was impossible to fulfill the Mosaic law while we are sinners, so it was meant to magnify sin. Only a sinless man, Jesus, could fulfill the Mosaic law, and he did.
I apologize for my misunderstanding.
In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus summarized the Mosaic Law as being about how to love God and how to love our neighbor, so it is the law of love. While I agree that there are more ways to do what is loving, righteous, and good, or to avoid sin than what the Law specifically prescribes or prohibits, the Law is spiritual (Romans 7:14), so it has always been intended to teach us how to live by deeper spiritual principles of which the listed laws as just examples, and those principles are the eternal attributes of God: holiness, righteousness, goodness (Romans 7:12), justice, mercy, faithfulness (Matthew 23:23), love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control (Exodus 34:6-7, Galatians 5:22-23). It is the law of sin that magnifies sin and causes us not to do the good that we want to do, not the Mosaic Law, which instructs us how to do what is good and to refrain from sin.
To fulfill the Law means to cause God's will as made known in the Law to be obeyed as it should be. After Jesus said in Matthew 5:17 that he came to fulfill the Law, he then proceeded to fulfill it six times throughout the rest of the chapter by teaching how to correctly and understand and obey it. According to Galatians 5:14, loving your neighbor fulfills the entire Law, so everyone who has ever done that has fulfilled the entire law, which means that it does not refer to something unique that Jesus did. Furthermore, but Bible does not say anywhere that it is impossible to fulfill the Law, but just the opposite. In Deuteronomy 30:11-14, it says that what God commanded was not too difficult for us, but that His Word is near us, in our hearts and in our mouths so that we can do it, and Romans 10:5-10 quotes this passage in regard to what our faith says.
If I take your meaning the way I think you mean, yes, not lusting in your heart would be fulfilling the Mosaic commandments. However, it is not possible to not lust in your heart while unregenerate, and it is still difficult when born again.
You were making the point that Jesus was teaching a higher law and I was making the point that he was simply teaching how the Law has always been meant to be understood and obeyed.
You are now addressing something that I made no comment on. However, I am in agreement that grace has always been given to repent, not as license to sin. But your statement regarding Gentiles is misleading. We were never under the Mosaic law but have always been under the law of righteousness. This is the argument that Paul gives in chapter 2 of Romans. To be under the Mosaic law means to be a participant of that covenant. Only Gentiles who converted to Judaism (OT meaning, not Talmudic meaning) joined the Mosaic covenant.
The Mosaic covenant with its laws do not cover every law of creation. It is not possible to list every law, so God distilled it down to a manageable size, whatever that number is since the 613 laws I have been told includes laws penned by rabbis.
The Mosaic Law instructs us how to act in accordance with God's righteousness, so it is the law of righteousness. God's righteousness is eternal and unchanging (Psalms 119:142), so God's instructions for how to reflect His righteousness are likewise eternal and unchanging (Psalms 119:160). This means that the way do what is righteous existed before God made any covenants with man and is therefore dependant on God righteousness rather than on any particular covenant, so there is a distinction between a set of instructions for how to act in accordance with God's righteousness and a covenant agreement to live by those instructions. A covenant can come and go, but the way to do what is righteous is eternal, so anyone regardless of what covenant they are under who wants to look up how to practice righteous can do so by reading the Mosaic Law. While we are not under the Mosaic Covenant, as part of the New Covenant we are nevertheless still told to practice righteousness (1 John 3:10). We are also told that all OT Scriptures are God-breathed and profitable for training in righteousness and equipping us to do every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17). In Romans 2:13, it says that it is not hearers of the Law who will be justified, but the doers, and in Romans 2:26, the way to recognize that a Gentile has a circumcised heart is by observing their obedience to the Law, which is the same way that it is for a Jew (Deuteronomy 30:6).
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