How are you defining "God's law"?
The instructions in Leviticus to stone to death anyone who does not keep the Sabbath, to refrain from touching women at certain times of the month, to avoid certain food and wear clothing of only one material, do not testify to God.
If you insist that these are God's laws, then they ALL are - even the bit about not trimming your beard and rising to your feet when older people come into the room, or are present, Leviticus 19:32. If the law has to be kept, ALL has to be kept; you can't pick and choose.
God's law straightforwardly refers to the laws that God has given. In Deuteronomy 5:31-33, Moses wrote down everything that God commanded without departing from it. Israel was given laws in regard to how they should live in the land before they had entered it and not even Jesus followed laws in regard to giving birth or to having a period, so there are legitimate and illegitimate reasons for not following a particular law, and picking and choosing based on what someone wants to follow is an illegitimate reason.
All of God's laws teach us about who God is and that is why God commanded the laws that he did instead of other laws that He could have commanded. The Bible often uses the same terms to describe the nature of God as it does to describe the nature of God's law, which is because it is God's instructions for what it looks like to express His nature, such as with it being holy, righteous, and good (Roman 7:12) or with justice, mercy, and faithfulness being weightier matters of the law. God's ways reveal His nature, and there are many verses that describe the Mosaic Law as being instructions for how to walk in God's ways, such as Deuteronomy 10:12-13, Isaiah 2:2-3, Joshua 22:5, Psalms 103:7, and many others. For example, God's righteous laws testify about His righteousness and when express God's righteousness through our actions in obedience to His law, we are testifying about God. Keeping the Sabbath holy testifies about God's holiness and that there is a Creator who acts on behalf of His people, while breaking the Sabbath bears false witness against there being a Creator who acts on behalf of His people. Likewise, following God's instructions for how to live as a holy nation testifies about God's holiness. Jesus is the exact expression of God's nature (Hebrews 1:3), so his actions testified about the nature of God and what that looked like was a life lived in sinless obedience to the Mosaic Law.
No, he said that the Scriptures testify about him because they foretold his birth, his ministry, his betrayal, his death and resurrection. Matthew quotes many Scriptures which pointed to Jesus and showed how Jesus was fulfilling them. No one ever said "the Scriptures testify to Jesus because Leviticus said that a man must not trim his beard, and Jesus has a long beard, so therefore that Scripture must have been about him.
Jesus touched people with skin conditions and a woman who was bleeding, which Scripture said not to do; Jesus healed on the Sabbath - that's why the Pharisees and lawyers didn't accept him.
Yes, the Scriptures prophesied about Jesus, but the laws themselves also testify about him. For example, it is not in Christ's nature to commit adultery, theft, theft, murder, or to mar the corners of his beard, so all of these laws are pointing to or communicating information about the nature of who Jesus is and he is the living embodiment of those laws, the personification of God's nature, and the word of God made flesh. It has always been lawful to heal on the Sabbath, so the Pharisees who thought that he was breaking the Sabbath by healing on it were incorrect.
No, Passover was to remind the Israelites that on the night before they were rescued from Egypt they escaped God's final plague - the angel of death Passed Over them because of their obedience in putting lamb's blood on the door of their houses. It was an annual reminder of what God had done for THEM so that they could be set free from slavery and go to the Promised Land.
WE have also been set free from slavery - slavery to sin. We have avoided death also due to the blood of a lamb - the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, John 1:29.
The death of Jesus on the cross is the new Exodus, and the Last Supper is the new Passover and is what our communion services are based on - "do this in memory of me".[/quote]
If we serve the same God of Israel who frees His people out of slavery, then we should live in a way that testifies about that fact rather than a way that bears false witness against what He has done. The Last Supper is not a new Passover, but rather it was part of Passover.
Jesus' death on the cross is about who he is.
I'm not in Israel; God is the God and Father or our Lord Jesus Christ.
If you believe that Jesus gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people of his own possession who are zealous for doing good works, then you will express that belief through becoming zealous for doing good works in obedience to God's law (Acts 21:20), while returning to the lawlessness that he gave himself to redeem us from would be denying who he is.
I try to.
Jesus said that we are HIS witnesses, Acts of the apostle 1:8, that we should go and teach everything HE taught us, Matthew 28:19, that we should be salt and light in the community/world. He taught that we are to live, and remain, in him, John 15:4-5. His Spirit can, and will, live in us to transform us into his image, 2 Corinthians 3:18. We are to live for him and not be transformed by the world, Romans 12:1-2.
Jesus set a sinless example of how to walk in obedience to the Mosaic Law, so what he taught by example is certainly included as part of everything that he taught us. There is no point in thinking that we should be salt and light while wanting nothing to do with following God's instructions for how to salt and light. In 1 John 2:6, those who abide in Christ are obligated to walk in the same way he walked. The way to be transformed into Christ's image is not by refusing to follow his example.
So food and clothing laws have never been able to make anyone holy? Interesting.
No. Holiness is an character trait that is expressed by doing what is holy and God's laws are His instructions for how to express holiness, not for how to become holy. When we have character trait, then we will express it through our actions, so when God makes us Holy, He is also making us into someone who express His holiness through our actions in obedience to His instructions for how to do that found in His law, such as by obeying His food and clothing laws.
Those things don't bear false witness against his holiness - he never taught them.
How does wearing a jumper which is 70% acrylic and 10% polyester tell the world that Jesus is not holy and I am bearing false witness to him?
If I am waking down the street wearing a coat of wool and acrylic and I stab someone in the leg; which action is more likely to tell people that I am wicked/evil/breaking the law? How many people ever say "I'm not accepting Christ as my Saviour - he's eating a bacon sandwich and is a terrible witness"?[/quote]
When God commanded to have a holy conduct for He is holy, I do not see how you can think that having a holy conduct is completely unrelated to God being holy. The purpose of God giving His law was to teach us how to walk in His ways, not in the ways of someone else. Jesus is our Savior from our sins and our sins are our transgressions of God's law, which includes refraining from eating unclean animals, so being saved from doing that is part of what the salvation that Jesus brings looks like. It is contradictory for someone to think that they need to accept Jesus as their Savior from living in transgression of God's law while refuse to accept that they need to repent and live in obedience to it through faith.
And you're assuming by that that he also obeyed all the individual commands listed in Leviticus?
Again, he touched people with skin conditions and dead people. There was a woman who was about to be stoned for committing adultery - as the law commanded. Jesus prevented the stoning, refused to condemn her and let her go.
Sin is the transgression of God's law, so to say that Jesus is sinless is to say that he never broke any of them, and to say that broke any of the laws in Leviticus is to say that he sinned and therefore disqualified himself from being our Savior, however, Jesus never did that.
John 8:1-12 is an example of Jesus acting in accordance with the Mosaic Law requires. There was no judge to pronounce a sentence (
Deuteronomy 19:17-21), there was no man accused (
Leviticus 20:10), he didn't have any witnesses to examine (
Numbers 35:30,
Deuteronomy 19:15), and he did not have a confession, so if he had condemned her, then he would have acted in violation of the Mosaic Law. Just a few verses later Jesus said that he judged no one (
John 8:15) and he also said that he came not to judge (
John 12:47), so he did not exercise authority as a magistrate and did not condemn her, but he did recognize her action as sin, and told her to go and sin no more.
No, they weren't.
Yet they are recorded in Leviticus as God's law. And you say, over and over again, that sin is breaking the law. If you are claiming that everyone who does not keep the law perfectly sins; by that definition, Jesus sinned.
Jesus kept the law perfectly, so he never sinned.
Please show me where Jesus taught, by word and example, that people cannot wear clothes of more than one fabric, that men must never trim their beards, that eating pork and shellfish are not allowed.
As he never taught these things, it is completely possible to follow him yet not do them.
Jesus began his ministry with the Gospel message to repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand (Matthew 4:17-23) and the Mosaic Law was how his audience knew what sin is, so repenting from our disobedience to it is an integral part of the Gospel. Furthermore, Jesus was sinless, so he set a perfect example of how to walk in obedience to the Mosaic Law, so he taught obedience to it both by word and by example, which includes not mixing wool and linen, not marring the corner of our bears, and not eating unclean animals. Someone who refuses to do those things is refusing to repent from their sins and refusing to follow what he taught by word and by example.
It was the Pharisees, and religious leaders, who were persecuting him, Acts of the Apostles 17:5, Acts of the Apostles 17:13, Galatians 5:11.
Not all Pharisees persecuted Jesus and not all of them were hypocrites.
Well as I can't be circumcised, that doesn't apply to me.
Presumably as Gentile men aren't under the law, they don't need to be circumcised?
In Romans 2:26, the way to recognize that a Gentile has a circumcised heart is by observing their obedience to God's law.
You need to define what you mean by "the law".
You've already stated that touching people with a skin condition and who were bleeding or dead was never sinful. Yet Leviticus states otherwise and says that people who did that were unclean and needed to perform certain actions to be cleansed.
If you are saying that some things, spoken by God and recorded in Exodus and Leviticus, are not sinful, then you need to explain which they are - and also why some of God's words have to be kept while others can, apparently, be disregarded.
And you say "do you think God cannot trust US"? Those words were not given to US.
All sin makes someone unclean, but not everything that makes someone unclean is a sin, such as with the law in regard to temple purity. For example, a woman becomes unclean when she gives birth, but that does not make her guilty of sin, otherwise we would need to avoid having children, but rather it means that she needs to cleanse herself before she can enter the temple.
Jesus didn't say anything at all about keeping the laws written in Leviticus.
He said that if people believe in him they would have eternal life. He said that he could give them test, peace, joy and his life-giving Spirit. Jesus gives us all those things - not the law.
Jesus cleanses us- not the hygiene laws in the OT.
Jesus was not in disagreement with the Father, so he didn't need to repeat anything in order for us to know that we should still obey the Father. In John 14:24, he said that his teachings were not his own, but that of the Father, so he did not depart from what the Father has taught. He followed the Mosaic Law and in Matthew 11:28-30, he was inviting people to come to him for rest and to learn from him, not inviting them to reject what he followed. By saying that we would find rest for our souls, he was referencing Jeremiah 6:16-19, where the Mosaic Law is described as the good way where we will find rest for our souls. This rest for our souls comes from having faith in God to guide us in how to rightly live through obeying His law.
Likewise, the Spirit has the role of leading us to obey God's law (Ezekiel 36:26-27). While ritual purity laws are hygienic, they are testifying about holiness, not about hygiene. In Galatians 5:19-22, all of the works of the flesh that are against the Spirit are also against the Mosaic Law, while all of the fruits of the Spirit are in accordance with it. After all, the Mosaic Law was given by God and the Spirit is God, so it is the Law of the Spirit.