hello all. so i just got back from talking to a preacher up the street from me. i have been questioning salvation, and i have to say that this preacher really confused me. so i asked him a few questions, like are backsliders christian? and is addiction a sin? he said yes to both. but the one thing that bothered me is he brought up being under the law. his belief was that christians are not under the law, or ten commandments, and that the only commandments to follow are 1. love the Lord thy God with all your heart, mind, and soul. and 2. love they neighbor as thy self. he said that if you followed those 2 commandments, all the other laws would be followed as a result of love.
am i wrong to think this didnt sound right?????
Hello,
The Bible does not state that addiction in general is sin, though addition to certain things can be sinful.
In Romans 6:14, Paul described the law that we aren't under as being a law where sin had dominion over us, which does not describe God's law, which is a law where holiness, righteousness, and goodness have dominion over us (Romans 7:12), but rather it is the law of sin where sin had dominion over us. In Romans 6:15, being under grace does not mean that we are permitted to sin, and sin is the transgression of God's law (1 John 3:4), so we are still under God's law.
God's law includes the greatest two commandments, so it is contradictory to think that we are nor under God's law while under the greatest two commandments, especially because the greatest two are inclusive of all of the other laws. In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus was not asked about which were the only laws that we should follow, but about what the greatest commandment is, and the existence of the greatest two commandments implies that there are still other commandments that are not the greatest. All of the other laws examples of what it means to love God and our neighbor, which is why Jesus said in Matthew 22:36-40, that those are the greatest two commandments and that all of the other laws hang on them, so they are all connected. The moment you try to take just the greatest two commandments, all of the other commandments come with. For example, obedience to the command to help the poor is part of what it means to obey the command to love our neighbor. A sum is the total of all of its parts, so if someone's obedience to the greatest two commandments is not inclusive of obedience to God's other commandments, then they are not treating them as being the sum of the other commandments. In Matthew 24:12-14, it says that because of lawlessness the love of many will grow cold, so that completely undermines that idea that we just need to love and don't need to obey God's law.