Hi everyone. So, I’m having some really hard times trying to figure out the Gospel. Now, In the Bible it says that we are Justifien by faith apart from works of the law. Then it says that the love of the Torah will grow cold. Then it saus in revelations that people who eat pigs flesh will be destroyed. But then it says that if we could become righteous by the law, then Christ died for nothing.
Hello,
God's Law straightforwardly does what it was given to do and does not do what is was not given to do, so we are not justified or made righteous by obeying it primarily because it was never given for that purpose in the first place. So when we agree with that we are justified by faith apart from the Law, the issue become what then is the correct purpose of obeying Law? In order to avoid the conclusion that we therefore don't need to obey the Law, Paul said in Romans 3:31 that our faith does not abolish the Law, but rather our faith upholds it.
The Law was given as instructions for how to do what is righteous, not as instructions for how to become righteous. For example, the Law reveals that it is in accordance with God's righteousness to help the poor, but no amount of helping the poor will ever cause someone who is not righteous to become righteous because the one and only way that there has ever been to become righteous is by grace through faith. In Romans 3:21-22, the Law and the Prophets testify that the righteousness of God comes through faith in Christ for all who believe, so this has always been the case. In Romans 1:5, we have received grace in order to bring about the obedience that faith requires, so we are not saved by our obedience, but rather the same grace and faith by which we are saved expresses itself as obedience.
When we have a character trait, then we will express it through our actions, so when God imputes His righteousness to us and declares us to be righteous, He is also declaring us to be someone who expresses His righteousness through our actions in obedience to His instructions for how to do that found in His Law. In other words, the reason that we have received the righteousness of God is not in order to hide it under a bushel, but in order to let it shine through our obedience. So the reason why we should do what is righteous is not in order to become righteous, because we have been declared righteous
Then it says that Christ fulfilled the law and did not abolish it. Then it says that if we teach even one thing that is contrary to the law, we will be called least in the kingdom of Heaven.
"To fulfill the Law" means "to cause God's will (as made known in the Law) to be obeyed as it should be" (NAS Greek Lexicon pleroo 2c3). After Jesus said he came to fulfill the Law in Matthew 5, this is precisely what he then proceeded to do six times throughout the rest of the chapter by teaching how to correctly understand and obey it. In Galatians 5:14, loving your neighbor fulfills the entire law, so it refers to obeying the Law as it should be obeyed, and refers to something countless people have done, not to something unique to Christ. Likewise, Galatians 6:2 says that bearing one another's burdens fulfills the Law of Christ, so you should interpret it in the same way as fulfilling the Law and the Prophets, namely obeying it as it should be, not as doing away with it. In Romans 15:18-19, it says that Paul fulfilled the Gospel, which again referred to causing Gentiles to become fully obedient to it in word and in deed, not to doing away with it.
Then, However, Paul writes this:
5 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.
2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love
7 You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? 8 That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9 “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” 10 I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion, whoever that may be, will have to pay the penalty. 11 Brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. 12 As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!
God did not bring the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt in order to put them under slavery to His Law, but rather it is for freedom that God sets us free (Galatians 5:1) and God's Law is a law of freedom (Psalm 119:45), while it is sin in transgression of God's Law that puts us in bondage (John 8:34).
All throughout the Bible, God wanted His people to repent from their sins and turn back to obedience to His Law, and even Jesus began his ministry with that message, so it wouldn't make any sense to interpret Galatians 5:4 as Paul warning us against doing that and saying that we will be cut off from Christ if we follow him. Furthermore, in Psalm 119:29, did David want God to be gracious to him by teaching him how to fall from grace? In Romans 1:5, have we received grace in order to bring about our fall from grace? In Titus 2:11-14, does our salvation involve being trained by grace to fall from grace? No, what Paul was speaking against in Galatians were man-made works of the law, not against God's Law. Paul was a servant of God, not His enemy, so he should not be interpreted as speaking against obeying what He has commanded.
Now, I don’t know about you but it’s pretty clear here that Paul is talking about not being under some kind of law any more. He mentions Circumcision. He mentions all the feast days and things like that. And he clearly says that it’s “the book of the Law”. Which I believe is the Torah. I don’t understand. It’s all one big contradiction.
In Matthew 23:23, Jesus said faith is one of the weightier matters of God's Law and obedience to God's instructions is straightforwardly about trusting Him to guide us in how to rightly live, so God's Law is of faith. In Leviticus 18:5, Deuteronomy 30:15-16, Galatians 3:12, Romans 10:5, and Matthew 19:17, the one who obeys God's Law will obtain life by it, which would not be the case if God's Law was not of faith. In Romans 3:27, Paul contrasted a law that was of works with a law that was of faith, so works of the law are of works, while he said in Romans 3:31 that our faith upholds God's Law, so again it is of faith. So in Galatians 3:10-12, Paul was speaking about works of the law, which are not of faith, and was contrasting them with the Book of the Law, which is of faith.
In Acts 15:1, they were wanting to require all Gentiles to become circumcised in order to become saved. However, God's Law does not require all Gentiles to become circumsized and the purpose that it requires all Jews to become circumcised was not in order to become saved, so circumcision was being used for a man-made purpose that went above and beyond the purpose that God commanded it, which was in fact contrary to His purposes. So the Jerusalem Council upheld God's Law by correctly ruling that it does not contain that requirement, and a ruling against requiring Gentiles to do something that God never commanded should not be understood as a ruling against requiring Gentiles to obey what God has commanded.
Was he talking about the mosaic law and that the moral law is in full affect?
The category of moral laws implies that all other laws are in a category of law that are moral to disobey, but there are no examples of it being moral to disobey God in the Bible. Rather, it is always immoral and sinful to disobey any of God's laws.
If not, Answer me this: If we are no longer required to observe the feast days, become circumcised, or kill animals for animal sacrifices, then what about everything else. He also says not to let anyone judge them on what they eat or drink or on the keeping of a sabbath day.
In Colossian 2:16-23, they were keeping God's holy days in obedience to His commands in accordance with the example that Christ set for us to follow, they were being judged by those teaching human precepts and traditions, self-made religion, asceticism, and severity to the body, and Paul was writing to encourage them not to let any man judge them and keep them from obeying God.
That seems pretty straight forward. At least to me. Otherwise, no one will get to Heaven. The mosaic law has 613 laws in it that you would have to obey Perfectly. That is impossible. Especially now. I’m a working class kid and we barely have any income. I can’t exactly break down and burn my stove and all the silverwear because they have pork on them. Or tell my mom to go outside in the middle of winter when it’s her time of the month.
The Mosaic Law came with instructions for what to do when the people sinned, so perfect obedience was never the requirement. If we needed perfect obedience, then there would be no point in repentance because it would already be too late, so the fact that repentance has value means that obedience that is less than perfect has value. The consistent message of the prophets up to and including Jesus was to repent from our sins, so repentance has always been key. In Deuteronomy 30:11-20, God said that His Law was not too difficult for us to obey and that obedience brings life and a blessing, while disobedience brings death and a curse, so choose life! So it is presented as a choice and as a possibility, not as impossible standard of perfection.
But besides that, here’s the thing, it was even said the law was a shadow of things to come.
The OT is full of important foreshadows that teaching us about God and His plan of redemption. The light of Christ brings full substance to the foreshadows so that we can fully see what God was teaching us through them, which make them all the more important to continue to do in remembrance of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 5:6-8, Paul spoke in regard to how Passover foreshadowed Christ by drawing the connection of Him being our Passover Lamb, but instead of concluding that we no longer need to bother keeping Passover, he concluded that we should therefore continue to keep the Feast.
And that we are no longer a tutor.
Having no more need for a tutor is not at all the same as having no more need to live by what they taught you. Someone who disregarded everything their tutor taught them after they left would be completely missing the whole point of a tutor. Now that Christ has come, we have a superior teacher, but the subject matter is still how to walk in God's ways in obedience to His Law in accordance with what he taught by word and by example.
But the really important thing is, Paul said that these people were trying to add the Torah to their false Gospel and that they would be cursed by God for it! Look, I’m not saying that we no longer are expected to obey the moral laws, all of which Jesus taught. I just want to know what to do. Thank you, God bless you!
Christ began his ministry with the Gospel message to repent from our sins for the Kingdom of God is at hand (Matthew 4:17, 23) and the Mosaic Law was how his audience knew what sin was, so repenting from our disobedience to it is an integral part of the Gospel of Christ. In Romans 15:4, Paul referred to OT Scripture as being written for our instruction and in Romans 15:18-19, Paul's Gospel message involved bringing the Gentiles to full obedience in word and in deed, so he was on the same page as Jesus in teaching repentance from our sins.
