1 John 3:4-9

Soyeong said:

Hello, I discussed how to interpret those verses in post #14, so I again invite you to read it. It was in reply to your previous screen name, so you might not have been alerted to it:

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1 John 3:4-9

The short of it is that Romans 6:14 specifies that the law we are not under is one where sin had dominion over us, and God's Law does not at all fit that description, but rather that perfectly fits Paul's description of the law of sin. In Romans 7:23, Paul described the law of sin as a law that held him captive and Romans 7:6 specifies that we have been delivered from a law that held us captive, so it again fits the law of sin. We have been set free from the law of sin so that we can be free to serve God. Christ did not redeem us from all Lawlessness to order to free us to be Lawless. Likewise, in Galatians 2:17-19 it talks about promoting sin, and it is the law of sin that promotes sin that we've died to.

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Romans 7:4 is actually referring the the law of her husband that prohibited a woman from returning to her first husband after she had been with another man (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). God had divorced Israel, so she could not return without committing adultery, yet God continued to call for her return (Jeremiah 3). This created a dilemma because the only way for the wife to be free from her adultery would be if her first husband died, which means that God would have to die. Enter Jesus, who died so that Israel could be free from the law of her husband that she might be free to belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead that we might bear fruit for God (Romans 7:4). God's Law is His instructions for how to bear fruit for Him, so it wouldn't make any sense to free us from that.

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In Galatians 3:10-12, it is referring to man-made works of law, which are not of faith. In Matthew 23:23, Jesus said that faith was one of the weightier matters of God's Law, so God's Law is of faith, and straightforwardly it is about having faith in God to guide us in how to rightly live.

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The Spirit has the role of leading us in obedience to the Law (Ezekiel 36:26-27) and all the fruits of the Spirit are in accordance with what the Law instructs (Exodus 34:6-7), which should make sense because the Law was given by God and the Spirit is God, so if we are walking according to the Spirit, then we are walking in accordance with God's Law. Christ died to set us free from sin, which is the transgression of the law (1 John 3:4), so that we might be free to obey it and thereby meet its righteous requirement (Romans 8:3-4).

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That doesn't detract from what I said because the law to Christ is in a parallel statement with not being without the law to God, which are both the Mosaic Law.

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justbyfaith said:

Even the law of God has a principle attached to it that I call the "Wet Paiint Principle". You are told not to do something, your tendency is to do that thing. If a Wet Paint sign is placed over a green bench you will find that a bunch of people wil touch that bench to see if the paint is stil wet. People want to test the boundaries to see if anything bad will happen to them if they violate a law of the Lord.

Also, the scripture says that the law is not of faith; so I will take its word over yours on that issue. Galatians 3:12 says it, I believe it, that settles it. Bringing in a different scripture that to you says the opposite is not going to change the fact that the scripture says pretty plainly that the law is not of faith; unless you can somehow reconcile the two scriptures to each other so that they fit together nicely. What I am saying is that you need to show how Galatians 3:12 does not say that the law is not of faith and in what sense it does not say it according to context.

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