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act from love, not fear
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That is not correct. The definition of sin is simple: to do what God tells us not to do or to not do what God says to do. This is evident from the Garden of Eden in Genesis 1-3. Adam and Eve ate the apple God told them not to eat and thus were banished from the Garden. None of the Scriptures cited above disprove what I just said.
The purpose of the Law - Decalogue and all the rest of it - was to show that we, as fallen human beings, cannot follow God’s commands no matter what commands are given. God is Holy, and we are not, so any instructions He gives we will fall short of.
Romans 3:20 said:
Romans 8:6-8 said:
Believe it or not, people longed for relationship to God, to know and be known by Him. If you doubt me on this, take a good read of the Psalms. (People longed for what we have today, and what we have is so much better than they could ever imagine: God as our Father, Christ as Our Bride, and the Holy Spirit inside of us FOREVER.) So, out of love, God gave us a set of commands and he said “Follow this.” The idea was simple: through the Law, we became aware of our sin problem. God was saying “This is your relationship to me. You are not following my commands. You are no better than your father Adam.” The Law was meant to show us that.
It is. There is nothing to preclude God from updating His commands to us at any time in response to our success or failure in dealing with Him. All of His commands are perfect and holy, but not all are sufficient to deal with our fallen condition.
Sin is not defined by the Law. It is defined by God as whatever displeases Him that He wants to write a command against. The Law was given to a specific people (the nation of Israel) during a specific period of time. Our Lord Jesus updated those commands in His Sermon on the Mount. He’s allowed to do that because He is God. God is inherently allowed to give humans commands. That authority is established in Genesis and runs all the way to Revelation. (He’s allowed to make us as miserable as he wants, seeing as misery is defined by our fallen body systems that oppose Him.)
When our Lord returns for us, I imagine that a new set of commands will be given for us to follow.
1 Timothy 2:3-4 said:
Missing the relationship component behind the Scriptures is to come away with an impoverished theology. I remember when I first read the Bible straight through from Genesis to Revelation in college. I had read select books and memorized verses, but reading it as a whole left me with a picture of relationship that was a real gut punch. I realized depths of love that I was missing out on, and my traumatized brain couldn’t handle it and collapsed
. But it’s still real.What is the point of of keeping the Sabbath anyway, if not a deeper relationship with God?
If you think there’s a conspiracy, I’m not a part of it. I think there is some utility to keeping the Sabbath in this present age.
The danger of following the theology of the post quoted above is that it can lead one to idolize one’s Sabbath over one’s God, and I will have no part of that. Our relationship to God is more important than any Sabbath or lack of Sabbath worship/rest.
The common verse cited is this one:
Romans 10:14-17 said:
The point of the theological training schools is to proclaim the Gospel in accordance with the Great Commission. The schools train and send missionaries and pastors to churches, both unique jobs with unique challenges. For example, missionaries to Papa New Guinea have to acquire the ability to make an oral language into a written one, educate the tribal people in literacy, and translate the Bible into it, among other things. Pastors need to be trained in exegesis, Hebrew and Greek, and public speaking, admin, etc. It’s a matter of practicality rather than competition.
Because in Bible Church land, nobody (really) cares. You’re a Jew and you chose to accept the Gospel because you agree with the Sons of Zadok? That’s better than ending up in Gehenna, props. We don’t care if you leave us to join the SDAs. What bothers us is if one chooses to reject the Gospel, that’s a problem. Hiding the Gospel and Scripture in cloaks of tradition and ritual is what gets us ready to engage in Scripture-slinging spiritual warfare, but other than that we’re pretty chill. Occasionally we might have to disown somebody like John MacArthur who spends time attacking people for no reason and makes egregious theological errors though. Starting fights with other churches makes us look bad.
So as far as I know, we don’t use our schools to fight with other schools and we certainly are not interested in being like the Pharisees in our teaching styles. Well, except for the Master’s college, but that school is run by John MacArthur’s ego, so let’s just throw them out as irrelevant. I most certainly disown their elitism.
What I was referring to was the Dallas Theological Seminary, which is very inclusive in their doctrinal statement. I think a Christian of almost any Protestant stripe could attend there unbothered, including the SDAs and Messianics. In fact, I have reason to suspect that some actually have.
But when you build a school, there are those who teach at the school, and of the teachers, there will be researchers and scholars who decide what is to be taught. That’s just how schools work. There are people whose job is to know the worldwide mission field like a 3-D chess game and to train people for new mission opportunities, whether pastor or missionary.
And then, inevitably, these scholars will reach necessary consensus on certain issues, which are then taught to the pastors who teach it to their congregations. That is a way of keeping order and making sure that the pastors and missionaries are following the Scriptures. Most of these consensuses are practical, like refusing same-sex marriages to be conducted on church property or saying we don’t allow abuse as a valid reason for a biblical divorce, etc.
In this case, imagine yourself as a union less factory worker in 1863 when the SDA church was founded up in Michigan. Having a day of rest to the Lord would have been a relief to them from the constant toil and long hours in the workplace. That’s part of why that church has held on against the mainline work ‘em til they die American culture, by venerating the 4th commandment as a pushback. It provides relief. Likewise, the Zadok consensus appeals to the Messianic Jews and their theological needs. It’s a practical consensus for them to keep the Law to honor their heritage and keep the peace with their fellow law keeping Jews. The bottom line is:
Romans 12:18 said:
Likewise, the mainline consensus is practical for people in occupations that don’t allow them to consistently rest on Saturday, like emergency service workers or postal carriers. You’re not apostate for delivering the mail on Saturday, says that consensus: your Sabbath rest is in Christ. Not only that, but our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and He is working on Saturday too. No priest was breaking the Sabbath by working in the temple, and the temple was not breaking the Sabbath by being used, and neither are we.
It’s a strange reality to think about the fact that a temple can deliver your mail or heal your wound or tend a garden or do all the other things that humans do, but it is true. We aren’t God, but we are serving Him now with everything we do, and that should take some pressure off.
Romans 14:5 said:
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