Do I have to celebrate Roshashona and Yum Kipur (might've spelled that wrong lol)

Parogar

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I've only VERY recently accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And, to be honest, I really don't want to celebrate these holidays, but I don't actually even know if I have to or not

I kinda just want to follow the same standards that any Christian would. Does being born Jewish mean that I have to obey a different set of rules? Because I really, really don't want to observe these holidays.
 
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believeume

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I've only VERY recently accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And, to be honest, I really don't want to celebrate these holidays, but I don't actually even know if I have to or not

I kinda just want to follow the same standards that any Christian would. Does being born Jewish mean that I have to obey a different set of rules? Because I really, really don't want to observe these holidays.
Who's forcing you to?
 
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I've only VERY recently accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And, to be honest, I really don't want to celebrate these holidays, but I don't actually even know if I have to or not

I kinda just want to follow the same standards that any Christian would. Does being born Jewish mean that I have to obey a different set of rules? Because I really, really don't want to observe these holidays.
Hi there Parogar! This is fabulous news to hear (I have known of you on this website for many years).

What I might suggest, is that you should examine every idea you get, so that you will not allow guilt by man-made rules, to interfere with the new relationship with God that you have.

In Romans 3:19-27, St. Paul describes how observance of law and grace are at odds in salvation. I have paraphrased that passage to make it fit into a pocket-size gospel tract booklet that I am constructing:

The law is to silence every mouth and make the
world accountable to God for punishment.
Therefore no one will be declared righteous
before God by works of law, for by law comes
awareness of sin. God Himself gives
righteousness to those who live by faith, who
always put their trust in Jesus Christ.
There is no sense of achievement for the
righteousness we receive, as every one has
sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It
is God's gift through the redemption in Christ
Jesus, so we may boast only of His goodness,
not our own.
- St. Paul, Romans 3:19-27

Hebrews 10:38-39 states:
“My righteous one shall live by faith, and if
he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in
him”. We are not of those who shrink back to
destruction, but of faith to the preservation
of the soul.

Between these two verses, we see that God does have expectations of us, in order for us to remain in salvation, but that this is not according to a prescribed checklist sort of law.

What this means in practical terms, is that you are free from condemnation according to your conscience.

Compare Salvation By Grace to man-made religious constructs (which Christianity has become too, to a great number of people). The man-made construct sets before us a list of rules of conduct, that we must adhere to, whereas Salvation By Grace states that God is pleased with us on the moment we first repent. As we go day-by-day, we have a relationship with Him and He teaches us more of His expectations of us, so that we may develop more into the character of Christ.

If ever we disappoint Him in this sense, it grieves His spirit, and we too experience that grief, often also some loss of the confidence of salvation. At that point, there is two different responses we can choose: either we will notice that we have sinned, admit to Him that we are convicted of the error, and because we choose to repent, He will forgive us and help us to grow stronger (1 John 1:9). On the other hand, some people are not able to repent of their error when this happens, and they begin walking in the darkness (1 John 1:6). Their salvation is then in a very dangerous situation - they are outright living contrary to what God expects of them, and refusing to accept that He requires their repentance. Instead they choose to deceive themselves, in order to believe they are saved even while they are opposing Him! (Matthew 6:22-23).

I expect that when you came to accept Jesus as your Lord and saviour, you will have known of some change to your lifestyle that was required, and you chose to do that (otherwise you wouldn't have been accepted).

My advice to you, is be confident and assured of your salvation on the basis of that degree of repentance. Going forward, maintain a close relationship with God, and pay attention to the state of your spiritual health. My personal experience is, that when I act in a way contrary to His expectation of me, then I am convicted by my guilt. Then when I confess to Him that indeed I was wrong, I beg His forgiveness, choosing to implement repentance (and recompense if necessary), according to His personal instruction, then He gives me relief of the guilt.

So, I recommend for you to pray about it and ask God whether He expects you to observe these celebrations or not. If you are not getting a clear indication for or against, then just relax and be yourself!

If God wants you to change, you should have no doubt that He will let you know, and if He doesn't let you know, then you should feel comfortable in the knowledge that He loves you and accepts you as you are :) - But certainly, do stand firm in your confidence of salvation despite anyone that will accuse you of not matching their standards. Your assurance of salvation can only come from God. Salvation can never be issued by our fellow man's judgment, because it is not his to give! (Hebrews 7:23-25).
 
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ViaCrucis

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I've only VERY recently accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And, to be honest, I really don't want to celebrate these holidays, but I don't actually even know if I have to or not

I kinda just want to follow the same standards that any Christian would. Does being born Jewish mean that I have to obey a different set of rules? Because I really, really don't want to observe these holidays.

Christians are not under any compulsion to observe the commandments, rules, and regulations of the Torah--concerning food, drink, holy days, etc. Because Christianity isn't Judaism.

A very tiny number of Christians do, by their own choice, well that's their own choice.
Some will say Christians have to. Those people are wrong.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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Greg J.

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Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! (bold mine, Galatians 4:8-10, 1984 NIV)

You don't have to do anything. What that sentence means can be interpreted different ways. Everyone has different ideas about the word have or should in this context.

Usually when someone asks, "do I have to ...," they are signaling an understanding of salvation that needs some work. The context in which it makes more sense is when one wants to do something to please God, not because it is required, but because it is an optional offering that a person thinks would be a nice offering that would please God. But it is your heart that is doing the pleasing, not whatever action take. (i.e., God doesn't need you to keep a holiday).

My skimpy understanding of Rosh Hashanah is that it is a day of rest, and Yom Kippur is a day of repentance and forgiveness by God. It appears that you could treat Rosh Hashanah like you would treat a Sabbath day (which, in Christ, does not mean you can't work). It appears that celebrating Yom Kippur as a day to seek God's forgiveness could be OK or could be very bad. It should not be a day where someone seeks overall forgivenness from sin. In Christ, that sin is already paid for. However it could be OK for it to be a day to remember, perhaps self-examine, and be thankful that while we have a sinful nature in this life, our sins are forgiven through Jesus' death. But that's not a Judaism/Yom Kippur thing, that's the sacrament of communion for Christians.
 
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crossnote

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We have a new Priesthood, a new Covenant, the shadows of the old covenant under the Levitical Priesthood have fulfilled their function, the Substance is here in Christ. You are free to do those things or refrain, don't let anyone say you 'must do them' or 'you can't do them'.
 
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Soyeong

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I've only VERY recently accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And, to be honest, I really don't want to celebrate these holidays, but I don't actually even know if I have to or not

I kinda just want to follow the same standards that any Christian would. Does being born Jewish mean that I have to obey a different set of rules? Because I really, really don't want to observe these holidays.

Hello,

I was a Baptist for 30 years and during that time I held the mainstream view that we are not required to keep God's holidays, but over the past 3 or 4 years, I have become convinced otherwise. Part of what convinced me that I was wrong was the realization that most Christians do not share the view of God's law that is expressed in the Psalms:

Psalms 1:1-2 Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, 2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.

Psalms 119:47 for I find my delight in your commandments, which I love.

David did not view obeying God's commands as something that he had to do in spite of not wanting to, but rather doing what is holy, righteous, and good in obedience to God's instructions is a delight that we get the divine privilege of doing. Furthermore, I think Paul was in full agreement with the Psalms:

Romans 7:22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,

In addition, 1 Peter 1:14-16 instructs us to have a holy conduct because God is holy, which is a reference to Leviticus where God was giving instructions for how to have a holy conduct, such as Leviticus 19:2-3. It should be pretty straightforward that keeping God's holy days is part of what it means to have a holy conduct.

Another thing that convinced me that I was wrong was observing the theme that we must obey God rather than man and being careful not to mistake something that was against obeying man's law as being against obeying God's law. For example, @Greg J. brought up Galatians 4:8-10, which is a passage that I used to use to support my position against obeying God's holy days, but upon closer consideration Paul addressed that passage to those who formerly did not know God, so he was speaking to former pagans who were not formerly observing God's holy days, so they could not turning back to observing them in the first place and could not be enslaved by them all over again. Furthermore, Paul would never have referred to the holy, righteous, and good commands of God as weak and miserable principles of the world, so the special days that Paul was speaking against in Galatians 4:10 were in regard to pagan practices, not in regard to God's commands. Once my eyes were opened to this systematic bias against God's law in how we are taught to interpret the Bible, I started seeing examples of it all over.

A third things that convinced me that I was wrong was the realization that God's commands were never about what we have to do in order to become justified, but rather they were instructions for what to do by faith because we have been justified. According to Ephesians 2:8-10, we are saved by grace through faith, not by doing good works, but for the purpose of doing good works. There is a world of difference between saying that we don't need to obey God's law in order to become justified and saying that we don't have to obey God's law. It does not follow that because we shouldn't obey God's law for a purpose for which it was never given that therefore we shouldn't obey it for the purposes for which it was given.
 
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Greg J.

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@Soyeong and I have explored our different perspectives elsewhere, so I'll try not to be repetitive. :)

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. (Hosea 6:6, 1984 NIV)

God desires our hearts not our actions. A perspective I heard about was from a Rabbi (Judaism) is that by fulfilling the Law, those under the New Covenant can no longer take actions for justification, but must be obedient from our hearts, something that we cannot choose to do, hence (from the Jewish perspective) we can do nothing to be saved. However, from a Christian perspective the same words have a different meaning: that is exactly the point of Jesus' death and the New Covenant. We CAN'T do anything to be justified before God. Fortunately, Jesus Christ became our justification for us.

One of the effects of sanctification is that the person wants to live pleasingly to God. However, if one starts seeing the Law as what we need to do to be pleasing to God, then we are trying to become slaves again, not to keeping the Law to be justified, but to the Law to be pleasing to God. In actual fact, the life that is pleasing to God is difficult to explain theologically, but not that hard to understand. What does it mean to you to love God and other people with your whole heart? That's a reasonable way of explaining what God wants you to do.

For many people, that has nothing to do with obeying the Law, but rather seeking Jesus for what he wants you to do now, today, and what to plan for the future. God doesn't want you to sacrifice a sheep any more to please him (an action) and neither does he want you to keep any rule (an action) or enact any idea to please him. In Christ he is already pleased with us—an enormous amount. Rather he works in our hearts to want to live pleasingly to him, because that is what is best for us. But our obedience is then from the heart, which is a fancy way of saying we look forward to doing what God wants and it brings us joy. It may be that we need to do things we don't want to for our own good (pray, Bible study, go to church, ...), but that is not God's goal for us. His goal for us is Christ in us.

Keeping the Law or any particular rule no longer pleases God—it never did. It is acting out of a heart of love, thanksgiving, and humility that pleases and honors him and his sacrifice. Treating your actions as what you can do for a good relationship with Jesus is the best way to boil down all the theology and make it practical. If you could choose to do anything as long as it seemed to you that it would please Jesus, then do that. It is what will please Jesus, because it is from your heart (as long as it is within the boundaries of what is right and good). It's like giving a gift to a relative that loves you. That you cared enough to carefully choose a gift matters more than what the gift itself actually is.

Another concrete example is the Psalmist who wrote Psalm 119. If you read it with sterility you will see how wonderful God's Law is. But you're missing the whole point if you are not viewing the Law with the same joy as the Psalmist.
 
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Because Christianity isn't Judaism.
OP, I wish to offer clarification of terms, so that you may not unintentionally get the wrong idea from this statement.

If the world had have been ideal enough 2,000 years ago, then the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus' time would not have resisted Him, but they would have received Him with joy (just as you and I do today!). Then Judaism would have still been Judaism, having Jesus as it's Messiah, and the fulfillment of Messianic prophecies would not have been delayed all this time. However, the reality that has unfolded, is that Judaism has taken it's identity in a direction that opposes Jesus, and some polarity has thus established between what is called Judaism and what is called Christianity.

In truth however, the faith of the religions really should not be at odds. Rather, if both Jews and Christians would eliminate their selfish interests, then they would naturally come to agree on what the truth is, for HaShem's sake - that Jesus is His anointed Messiah, and that the efforts to fortify Judaism after the Babylonian Captivity had created such a rigid, successful religion, that the Jewish religious leaders of the time simply came to love and trust their ways more than they did Jesus'.

Even as St. Paul describes in Romans 11, especially verses 23 and 24, that Christianity is actually more natural to Jews than it is to Gentiles. While the Jews had entered a period of extreme obstinance against God's voice by steadfastly rejecting His Anointed, the Gentiles who did accept Jesus, were comparatively more submissive to God than they were!

One of the comments that Jesus said to His disciples, is "unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter heaven". Essentially, what this reveals, is that the power of the Kingdom of God, is from faith having it's root in righteousness. If then, the righteousness of the Jews has descended below that of the Gentiles, the Gentiles now have more power in God's name than they do!

Of course God will never send away someone seeking Him, whether descendant of Isaac or not. Jesus demonstrates this too, even though His earthly mission was primarily concerned with the redemption and restoration of a Holy Judaism (eg, Matthew 15:24, Matthew 8:10).

When I prayed whether to respond to you, the verse He gave was Romans 9:7. This passage is where St. Paul is explaining the definition of God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 17, in which the definition of his "offspring" is not simply to mean "every descendant". See how in Romans 9:8, St. Paul states that it is not a physical descendant, but those to whom the promise applies. This gets really interesting:

Judaism believes the promise applies to the Jews because they are physical descendants of Isaac (Genesis 21:12). This belief is what produces the faith that a Jew has. This belief is based upon what is written in Holy Scripture and what they know to be true about themselves. But get this: because the Jews, by rejecting God's Anointed, fell in righteousness far below the Gentiles who received Jesus, The Holy Scriptures then came to include those Gentiles in the promise! (John 4:23, John 1:11-12). The New Testament promise does not nullify The Old Testament Promise, but broadens it's definition, so that Gentiles have by way of Holy Scripture, a qualification for faith based upon the belief they have.

What this produces when manifested by non-spiritual believers (Galatians 5:19-21), is a polarity whereby the basis of the Jew's belief is in the original promise, whereas the basis of a Gentile's belief is owing to the fact that the fallen Jews have disqualified themselves from the promise. This naturally produces enmity between Jews and Gentiles - Gentiles believe they are superior to Jews because they recognise Jesus as God's Anointed, whereas Jews believe they are superior to Gentiles because the promise originally belongs to them (Romans 9:3).

There is only one God, the same God to Moses and Jesus. Just as St. Paul is describing in Romans 11:18 and Romans 11:11, the faith that has the power of The Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 4:20) is common to both Jews and Gentiles - that is, a valid claim to authority in God's name, qualified by a truthful belief (Acts 19:13-14).

.. So, Christianity (if exercised in truth and spirit), is the proper exercise of Judaism that non-Christian Judaism has departed from. Yet, for people such as yourself who have qualification owing to both valid beliefs - having descended from Isaac and having received Jesus - then your faith has more qualification (to you), than if you were to practice your faith on the basis of only one claim.

Be careful about this though, that it doesn't make you haughty and therefore less holy! You do not necessarily result in being any more loved by God or any more powerful in The Kingdom, than a Gentile Christian or a non-Christian Jew. Rather what it means is that for your personal faith, you have two reasons to believe in your calling, instead of only one, and neither of those reasons is potentially opposing your faith (as it sometimes might do for a Gentile Christian or a non-Christian Jew). 1 John 4:4 applies to you just as it does to any Jew or Gentile who takes Jesus as Messiah, and Galatians 3:28 applies too.

.. So, the scriptures certainly do show that Christianity really is meant to be Judaism, but it's just that Christianity just doesn't appear to be very Jewish these days. Seeing that the Kingdom of God in Christianity is presently occupied in majority by Gentiles rather than Jews, the resultant character of Christianity is naturally much less Jewish than it perhaps could be!
 
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Greg J.

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Oh, I should have mentioned another potentially helpful fact. In Christ I have already successfully done everything in the Law, whether it was to be saved or to be pleasing to the Lord. Whatever was important to God about me keeping Yom Kippur, I already finished it for my past, present, and future.
 
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2PhiloVoid

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I've only VERY recently accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And, to be honest, I really don't want to celebrate these holidays, but I don't actually even know if I have to or not

I kinda just want to follow the same standards that any Christian would. Does being born Jewish mean that I have to obey a different set of rules? Because I really, really don't want to observe these holidays.

No, you don't have to any longer if you've moved into the New Covenant under Jesus. At the same time, neither do you have to let go of everything that accompanies your Jewish ethnicity.

2PhiloVoid
 
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Soyeong

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Oh, I should have mentioned another potentially helpful fact. In Christ I have already successfully done everything in the Law, whether it was to be saved or to be pleasing to the Lord. Whatever was important to God about me keeping Yom Kippur, I already finished it for my past, present, and future.

In Christ you have received his righteousness so that you can do everything in the law. Yom Kippur refers to the second coming of Jesus, so it has not been fulfilled yet.
 
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Greg J.

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In Christ you have received his righteousness so that you can do everything in the law. ...
It is no offense to God if I were to manage to ignore the Law but somehow keep the law of love. We have finished keeping all of the Law; it is no longer a yardstick. It is a way to know God's nature. It can be used as a template to do things pleasing to God, but it is no benefit to us to obey any of the Law unless it is from the heart, and it is the heart that pleases God, not what we do out of the Law.

Because this grace is so difficult for so many people (often raised with rigid rules) to digest, it is sometimes a good idea to avoid keeping the law (so that their struggle will be against the right thing and God can transform them), except where it is and expression of love to God, or a matter of conscience. But the expression can be anything, not just out of the Law. An expression of love not related to the Law far surpasses any act of keeping the Law, however, if you are trying to keep the Law as a way to say "I love you" to the Lord, that's good. But other things are just as good.
 
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Soyeong

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It is no offense to God if I were to manage to ignore the Law but somehow keep the law of love. We have finished keeping all of the Law; it is no longer a yardstick. It is a way to know God's nature. It can be used as a template to do things pleasing to God, but it is no benefit to us to obey any of the Law unless it is from the heart, and it is the heart that pleases God, not what we do out of the Law.

Jesus summarized the Mosaic law as being about how to love God and how to love your neighbor (Matthew 22:36-40) and love fulfills the entire law (Galatians 5:14), so it is the law of love. The law is a revelation of God's holy, righteous, and good standard (Romans 7:12), so unless God's holiness, righteousness, and goodness have change or been done away with, then it remains the yardstick. You even granted that the law a way to know God's nature, so why would you say that God's nature is no longer the yardstick? If not God's nature, then what else would be the yardstick? Obedience to God's commands has always been about demonstrating our love for Him and if it doesn't come from the heart, then it is a perversion of God's law, and God has always disdained in when His people honored Him with their lips while their hearts were far from Him (Isaiah 29:13, Mark 7:6-8).

Because this grace is so difficult for so many people (often raised with rigid rules) to digest, it is sometimes a good idea to avoid keeping the law (so that their struggle will be against the right thing and God can transform them), except where it is and expression of love to God, or a matter of conscience. But the expression can be anything, not just out of the Law. An expression of love not related to the Law far surpasses any act of keeping the Law, however, if you are trying to keep the Law as a way to say "I love you" to the Lord, that's good. But other things are just as good.

The law was given because of sin to reveal what sin is and without it we wouldn't even know what sin was (Roman 7:7), and it is never a good it to do what God has revealed to be sin and to avoid doing what God has revealed to be holy, righteous and good. It does not make any sense to me why you would think that disobeying God or acting against His revealed nature could ever be a good idea. Paul directly said that we should not sin that grace may abound (Romans 6:1). Jesus said that if we love him, then we will keep his commands (John 14:15), so there are no commands of God that are not a way to express our love, and there is no possible way to love God or our neighbor without acting in accordance with His law.
 
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Greg J.

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Jesus summarized the Mosaic law as being about how to love God and how to love your neighbor (Matthew 22:36-40) and love fulfills the entire law (Galatians 5:14), so it is the law of love. The law is a revelation of God's holy, righteous, and good standard (Romans 7:12), so unless God's holiness, righteousness, and goodness have change or been done away with, then it remains the yardstick. You even granted that the law a way to know God's nature, so why would you say that God's nature is no longer the yardstick? If not God's nature, then what else would be the yardstick? Obedience to God's commands has always been about demonstrating our love for Him and if it doesn't come from the heart, then it is a perversion of God's law, and God has always disdained in when His people honored Him with their lips while their hearts were far from Him (Isaiah 29:13, Mark 7:6-8).
It's no longer a yardstick because a yardstick is no longer needed. Jesus satisfied whatever the measurement might be applied to.
The law was given because of sin to reveal what sin is and without it we wouldn't even know what sin was (Roman 7:7), and it is never a good it to do what God has revealed to be sin and to avoid doing what God has revealed to be holy, righteous and good. It does not make any sense to me why you would think that disobeying God could ever be a good idea. Paul directly said that we should not sin that grace may abound (Romans 6:1). Jesus said that if we love him, then we will keep his commands (John 14:15), so there are no commands of God that are not a way to express our love, and there is no possible way to love God or our neighbor without acting in accordance with His law.
I never said disobeying God was OK. It's never OK. I agree with the rest of this paragraph.

Reconcile these verses:

“If you love me, you will obey what I command. (John 14:15, 1984 NIV)

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. (Isaiah 64:6, 1984 NIV)

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; (Romans 3:10, 1984 NIV)
 
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Soyeong

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It's no longer a yardstick because a yardstick is no longer needed. Jesus satisfied whatever the measurement might be applied to.

God sent his Son so that we would be free to obey the law that we might me its righteous requirement (Romans 8:3-4). As part of the New Covenant, we are still told to do what is holy, righteous, and good (1 Peter 1:14-16, 1 John 3:10, Ephesians 2:10), so we still need to know and abide by God's revealed standard for how to have such a conduct. Jesus fulfilled the law in the same sense that Romans 15:18-19 says that Paul fulfilled the gospel, namely that he taught full obedience to it, not that he did away with it. Someone saying that Jesus kept the law so that we don't have to would be like saying that Jesus loved God and others so that we don't have to. Rather, the Bible tells us to follow his example and to walk in the same way that he walked.

I never said disobeying God was OK. It's never OK. I agree with the rest of this paragraph.

If you say that it is sometimes good to avoid keeping God's law, then it is pretty straightforward that you are saying that it is sometimes good to disobey God.

Reconcile these verses:

“If you love me, you will obey what I command. (John 14:15, 1984 NIV)

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. (Isaiah 64:6, 1984 NIV)

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; (Romans 3:10, 1984 NIV)

In regard to Isaiah 64, it is a complaint about the hiddenness of God and people want Him to rend the heavens and come down to make His presence known (64:1-2). God did awesome public miracles in the past, but now there have been no miracles, and the people await the miracle of the restoration of Jerusalem to glory (64:3-5). Verse 6 is not a divine dismissal of our good deeds, but rather it is a complaint by the people that they feel their good deeds have been overlooked. They feel unclean and rejected by God and even though they have done good deeds, they have not seen the miracle of restoration that was promised earlier in Isaiah. Earlier parts of Isaiah encourage them to cease doing evil and to do good deeds, that they will be blessed by God, that their prayers are powerful and will be answered before they speak them, so Isaiah 64:6 is not saying all those things are worthless in God's eyes. God does not despise the good deeds of His people, but rather He teaches us to do them. The reality is that the righteous deeds of the saints are like fine white linen (Revelation 19:8).

In Romans 3:10, Paul was quoting from Psalms that were talking about those who say that there is no God. If you do a word search in you Bible for "the righteous" or "righteous man" you will see that there are many times where the Bible talks about that category as though there are people who belong to it. I mean what sense does it make for verses like Habakkuk 2:4 to say "for the righteous shall live by faith" if there is no one who belongs to that category? Furthermore, there are a number of instances in the Bible where where people are described as being righteous (Genesis 6:9, Luke 1:6).
 
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ViaCrucis

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OP, I wish to offer clarification of terms, so that you may not unintentionally get the wrong idea from this statement.

If the world had have been ideal enough 2,000 years ago, then the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus' time would not have resisted Him, but they would have received Him with joy (just as you and I do today!). Then Judaism would have still been Judaism, having Jesus as it's Messiah, and the fulfillment of Messianic prophecies would not have been delayed all this time. However, the reality that has unfolded, is that Judaism has taken it's identity in a direction that opposes Jesus, and some polarity has thus established between what is called Judaism and what is called Christianity.

To the OP, the above represents a particular view known as Dispensationalism, and it isn't what most Christians accept or believe. The majority of Christians understand that Christ's death and resurrection were always the reason why the Lord came, and that nothing was delayed, but all things happened according to God's perfect timing. We confess that the Messiah was to be crucified, and on the third day rose from the dead, and having now ascended into heaven He sits at the right hand of the Father as the King of kings and Lord of lords having received all power, dominion, and authority until His return, in glory, to judge the living and the dead.

Dispensationalism is a particular way of reading the Bible that began in the early 19th century, and so it isn't what Christians have believed historically, or what is believed still around the world in churches from many traditions and denominations--whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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Greg J.

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If you say that it is sometimes good to avoid keeping God's law, then it is pretty straightforward that you are saying that it is sometimes good to disobey God.
I'm saying what Paul already said in Galatians 5:1-2 (the text of which I quoted below).
so Isaiah 64:6 is not saying all those things are worthless in God's eyes.
It is a cry out from the Jews, however, God's response to it follows in Isaiah 65:1-7, 11-15 and can be interpreted as God explaining that those "good deeds" referred to in chapter 64 were indeed worthless. Paul echos this in Romans 10:20-21.

Does it please God if we keep the Sabbath? On which day of the week? What justification is there for doing it any other way than what God commanded in the Law?

God gave us Galatians 2-5, Romans 8, and others to counter the human tendency to want to DO things pleasing to God. (This is not the same as saying we don't have to obey God's commands.)

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. (Galatians 5:1-2, 1984 NIV)

“See, he is puffed up; his desires are not upright—but the righteous will live by his faith (bold mine, Habakkuk 2:4, 1984 NIV; also found in Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38).

For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (bold mine, Galatians 2:19-20, 1984 NIV)

What kind of living does live by his faith refer to? It certainly doesn't mean keeping the Law, since that is the very phrase used to counter keeping the Law (for justification). One cannot then excise the idea of keeping the Law for justification and plug back in the promotion of keeping the Law to be pleasing to God. Both are slavery.

We are declared righteous only because of Jesus. We can only live righteously by the Holy Spirit.

Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. (Galatians 5:25, 1984 NIV)

One cannot look at the fact that one is Christian with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and say, I must be "living by the Spirit" and my "good deeds" must please God because I have the Spirit within me (one example of why in Matthew 7:21-23). God looks at our hearts, not our deeds. And we cannot do anything to get the heart to do good deeds; it is only a gift from God (but we can ask for it).

The idea that we should obey God's commands is a matter strictly of the heart, not what actions we carry out (such as what is in the Law). Fortunately, those with a heart from God do not commit murder.

We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him. (bold mine, 1 John 5:18, 1984 NIV) ("does not" as opposed to "can not")
 
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