The law, the commandments, and Christians.

fhansen said:

They have the same answer from God than anyone else has. Sometimes those answers are ineffably profound experiences, more often than not it's a matter of walking by faith, without bells and whistles.

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I disagree with you.

I think the catholic belief system is designed around works in pursuit of faith. I won't get into a great argument about it.

ARBITER01 said:

I disagree with you.

I think the catholic belief system is designed around works in pursuit of faith. I won't get into a great argument about it.

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There's no need to argue about it, or to guess either; the teachings are easy to find. In Catholicism there are three "theological virtues": faith, hope, and love. "Theological", in reference to these virtues, means that they are supernatural gifts, of grace.

Faith is the doorway to union with God the Vine, through whom will flow any righteousness that produces good fruit such as serving others, spreading the gospel, overcoming sin, etc. Nothing good comes unless by and through God the Holy Spirit working in us.

fhansen said:

There's no need to argue about it, or to guess either; the teachings are easy to find. In Catholicism there are three "theological virtues": faith, hope, and love. "Theological", in reference to these virtues, means that they are supernatural gifts, of grace.

Faith is the doorway to union with God the Vine, through whom will flow any righteousness that produces good fruit such as serving others, spreading the gospel, overcoming sin, etc. Nothing good comes unless by and through God the Holy Spirit working in us.

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Again, I disagree with you. Catholicism is a works based system towards earning grace. Communion in Catholicism is a representing of The Lord Jesus's body and blood for salvation.

I think we will agree to disagree.

ARBITER01 said:

Again, I disagree with you. Catholicism is a works based system towards earning grace. Communion in Catholicism is a representing of The Lord Jesus's body and blood for salvation.

I think we will agree to disagree.

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Well, you obviously don't know Catholocism at all, so there's nothing to agree or disagree with in any case here. Study, for yourself, so that then you may know. That's really the only way it works.

ARBITER01 said:

Communion in Catholicism is a representing of The Lord Jesus's body and blood for salvation.

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Sorry, no idea what you're meaning to say there.

ARBITER01 said:

You're not obeying Jesus if you're obeying moses. In fact, a person obeying moses does not know Jesus, and He does not know them.

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And yet Jesus instructed the young man in Matt 19 to obey the ten commandments in order to enter life. When you can reconcile such verses as Matt 19:17, Rom 2:7, and Rom 2:13 with verses such as Gal 2:16

"...know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ."

Or Eph 2:8-10
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

then you'll even better understand the gospel.

fhansen said:

And yet Jesus instructed the young man in Matt 19 to obey the ten commandments in order to enter life.

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Sorry, obeying moses will not help you attain eternal life. The new covenant from Jesus has been in effect for some time now and paradise was already depopulated when Jesus rose from the grave.

Obeying moses is not obeying Jesus.

fhansen said:

And yet Jesus instructed the young man in Matt 19 to obey the ten commandments in order to enter life.

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You are correct there.

During the first coming of Jesus to Israel (Matthew 15:24), Israel was still under the Law.

It will help to understand why Moses is the lawgiver, why the entire Law is summed up as the "Law of Moses", even though the Law was given by God.

Moses authority has been challenged before by the Jews, who wanted to hear directly from God instead. In the famous story recounted in Numbers 12

And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.

2 And they said, Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us? And the Lord heard it.

3 (Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.)

8 With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?

9 And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them; and he departed.

Thus Jesus himself referred to the Law as "The Law of Moses".

As he was living under the law, he was also subjected to Moses. (John 5:46, Matthew 19:8, Matthew 23:1-2, Mark 7:9-10).

So yes, obeying Moses, the Law, was required for Israel to enter the kingdom.

The real question you should be asking today is, are we Israel? Is Moses still our spokesperson, or is it someone else (Romans 11:13)?

Guojing said:

During the first coming of Jesus to Israel (Matthew 15:24), Israel was still under the Law.

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Sure, Jesus teaching two gospels now. You’ve bought into some contrived nonsense here, made up to support a novel, faulty gospel.

ARBITER01 said:

Sorry, obeying moses will not help you attain eternal life. The new covenant from Jesus has been in effect for some time now and paradise was already depopulated when Jesus rose from the grave.

Obeying moses is not obeying Jesus.

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Moses didn’t write the Ten Commandments; God did. And Paul affirms that the problem with obeying them does not lie in a problem with them, since they are right, and holy, spiritual, and good as he tells us in Rom 7, but the problem is with man. Man must be united with God, obeying by the power of the now indwelling Holy Spirit, with a righteousness that comes from Him on the basis of faith and not on the basis of the law (Phil 3:9), in order to have the obedience that he was created to have. As Augustine put it, “God wrote on tablets of stone that which man failed to read in his heart.”

But revealing that law, as we know, actually had one main, particular purpose: to convict us of sin, to teach us of our inability to be righteous and holy…apart from God. Because “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). But with Him we can produce much good fruit. Merely obeying by the letter, as the Pharisees did and as Paul excelled at as a Pharisee, himself, even if it was somehow done perfectly, is meaningless. It makes no one holy; it cannot and does not justify anyone because that would only be a pretense of holiness to begin with. The real thing comes as we become grafted into the Vine, now reconciled with and in union with God as man was meant to be from the beginning. We become ‘His people’, and then He ‘puts His law in our minds and writes it on our hearts’ (Jer 31:33). And we become His people, entering into that vital, life-giving and just union with Him, by faith. And Jesus came to reveal and reconcile us with that God, a God truly worth knowing and believing in.

The law He writes on our hearts is love, which opposes sin and does God’s will, fulfilling the law (Rom 13:10), by its nature. Without that, we aren’t even His (1 John 3, etc).