Old Testament Diet - Was God being a Bully?

[Strong in Him]

And the pig, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you. You shall not eat any of their flesh, and you shall not touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you.

That doesn't say that Jesus commands Gentiles who believe in him - as the instigator of the New Covenant - are forbidden from eating pork.

 

[Strong in Him]

If you want to serve God and be used by God then you need to follow the Law given to Moses for the Priesthood.

So Noah, Abraham, Melchizedek, Isaac, Jacob and the 12 heads of the tribes of Israel weren't used by God - since they lived before the law was given?
It's a good job no one told God he couldn't use them.

All Christians are called by God, commanded to make disciples and tell others about Jesus and are given gifts by the Holy Spirit so that we can do that, and so that the church can be built up.
We are all priests in God's kingdom; we are told to confess our sins to one another, forgive one another and pray for one another. We are told to bear each other's burdens, to encourage one another and to love as Jesus loves us. We are told to preach the word, to always be ready to answer for the hope that is in us and to talk to one another with Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.

Nowhere does Jesus say, "come to me, receive eternal life and be born again, but if you want to serve me and be any use to me, you have to obey the Jewish law."
That's not Scriptural at all.

 

[Xalith]

Of course there is no temple. So there are no animal sacrifices. I am talking about the commandments that Moses gave for the priesthood. How to live holy and sanctified before God. It is up to each individual IF they want to be used by God. If they do not want to serve God and be used by God then they do not have to live Holy before God.

Could you point out some New Testament Scripture that says that every believer ought to live as though they are Jewish Levites, otherwise "God can't use you?"

That's not what I get when I read the New Testament. What I get when I read the New Testament, especially part of what Paul said, is that God has a purpose for everybody according to the skills and talents He gave to each and every person. I didn't see anything in there about a requirement to follow Mosaic Law to be "useful" to God, or to be able to "serve" God.

That's kinda funny, because I always thought to serve God, we were to do Jesus's commandments, which involves loving people, being charitable, helping those in need, and praying for people. You mean I haven't been serving God because I ate Pork last week? All of my prayers, that $100 bill I tucked into a co-worker's apron pocket without her knowing it because she is barely living between paychecks, etc are all 'useless', because I ate a Bacon Cheeseburger several days ago?

I pretty much cook all my own food. If for not other reason then that I follow a low salt diet and it is pretty much impossible to eat processed foods on a low salt diet. It is not appealing to me to eat food is being manufactured on a assembly line conveyor belt. I pay extra at times to get food that is more organic. I ate cheap frozen dinners at one time but it was difficult to keep from gaining weight on that food. They put hormones in the animals to get them to gain weight so they can make more money.

God blessed you with the skills and the knowledge to cook, and the money to afford good wholesome ingredients to cook with, as well as the time to cook this food. I wish He had blessed me in similar ways, but unfortunately... I was not raised in a family where I learned how to cook good wholesome dishes, nor do we really have the money or the means to buy organic wholesome ingredients. We kinda have to make-do with what we can get, you know?

I'm just glad that I have enough to eat, even if it isn't the most healthy thing around. It's better than starving, right?

 

[Hank77]

Plus no big Macs!

Not mixing meat and dairy is not in Moses' Law. That is purely a rabbical/manmade law.

As you quoted from Jeremiah, the New Covenant involves God writing His law on our hearts, so there is not a change between covenants in the basic law structure.

The NT clearly tells us what those moral principles are. There is nothing immoral about eating certain foods or wearing clothes that mix wool (animal) and linen (plant).

For at least the first seven years after the Messiah's ascension up until Peter's vision in Acts 10, all Christians were Torah observant Jews,

Not saying you are wrong, just wondering where you got the 7 yrs. from?

More accurately, Gentiles don't have a commandment not to keep them. It should be relatively straightforward that if you join a religion, then you follow its laws. It should be relatively straightforward that if you're told not to sin and the Bible says eating unclean animals is a sin, then you are not to eat unclean animals. It should be relatively straightforward that if we are followers of Christ, then we should follow his example of obedience. WWJD? He'd obey God's Torah and make disciples to teach them to do the same.

It would depend what the agreements were/are in the covenant/contract one is under.

The answer is that the Pharisees had man-made ritual purity laws that said that something that was clean that came into contact with something that was unclean would become defiled or common (See Mark 7:3-4).

Moses' Law says many of the same things, the Pharisees just added more laws than were already on the books.

God's command for Noah to bring clean and unclean animals onto the Ark assumes prior knowledge that Noah had already been given instructions about clean and unclean animals. Unclean animals were not considered to be food and would have been an obvious exception,

Before the flood no man, including Noah ate meat of any kind. Therefore, Noah knew about unclean/clean for some other reason. We can know it was because of sacrifices which Abel, Job, and Noah made.

Something cant be unclean for 4000 yrs and the next day when Jesus dies on the cross, it is all of a sudden clean.

After the flood man ate meat for the first time without any restrictions put on it. And so it was until Moses' Law. Moses' Law was only for about 1500 yrs. out of that 4,000.

God has commanded that it is a sin to eat unclean animals and neither Jews nor Gentiles have a licence to sin.

Only when that covenant was in effect, not before or after it.

Pigs are pretty dirty animals- they roll around in their feces

Pigs by nature are one of the cleanest animals of all domesticated animals. Cows and sheep do their business where ever they happen to be standing and will lay right down in it. A pig will go to a corner and use the same place over and over again. And they don't lay down it in. It's very easy to house break a pig, a cow it's not going to happen.
How do I know, I've been a farmer and have raised both. I live around farmers, my family are farmers.

So Noah, Abraham, Melchizedek, Isaac, Jacob and the 12 heads of the tribes of Israel weren't used by God - since they lived before the law was given?
It's a good job no one told God he couldn't use them.

 

[joshua 1 9]

Could you point out some New Testament Scripture that says that every believer ought to live as though they are Jewish Levites, otherwise "God can't use you?"

That's not what I get when I read the New Testament. What I get when I read the New Testament, especially part of what Paul said, is that God has a purpose for everybody according to the skills and talents He gave to each and every person. I didn't see anything in there about a requirement to follow Mosaic Law to be "useful" to God, or to be able to "serve" God.

That's kinda funny, because I always thought to serve God, we were to do Jesus's commandments, which involves loving people, being charitable, helping those in need, and praying for people. You mean I haven't been serving God because I ate Pork last week? All of my prayers, that $100 bill I tucked into a co-worker's apron pocket without her knowing it because she is barely living between paychecks, etc are all 'useless', because I ate a Bacon Cheeseburger several days ago?



God blessed you with the skills and the knowledge to cook, and the money to afford good wholesome ingredients to cook with, as well as the time to cook this food. I wish He had blessed me in similar ways, but unfortunately... I was not raised in a family where I learned how to cook good wholesome dishes, nor do we really have the money or the means to buy organic wholesome ingredients. We kinda have to make-do with what we can get, you know?

I'm just glad that I have enough to eat, even if it isn't the most healthy thing around. It's better than starving, right?

Peter talks about our priesthood. If you understand that little about it then you have to far to go for me to explain it to you.

 

[Strong in Him]

Peter talks about our priesthood. If you understand that little about it then you have to far to go for me to explain it to you.

Yes he does; he says, "as you come to him, the living Stone - rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him - you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 2:4-5).

We become living stones as we come to Jesus, the living stone. We are built into a spiritual house and holy priesthood through Christ.
He doesn't say "Jesus has saved you, called you and made you priests; now go back to the OT and live by the pattern of that priesthood."

All is through Christ, not by the law.

 

[joshua 1 9]

All is through Christ, not by the law.

Start with the 119 psalm. David is the one that taught me about the law of God. He loved the law of God because it was designed to keep him safe and secure. Anyways learning holiness is hours and hours of teaching. I can not do all of this here in this media.

 

[Xalith]

Start with the 119 psalm. David is the one that taught me about the law of God. He loved the law of God because it was designed to keep him safe and secure. Anyways learning holiness is hours and hours of teaching. I can not do all of this here in this media.

Psalm 119 was written before Christ came to the world, though.

Now, obviously, a lot of those laws are good to read up on, and good to keep them in your heart, and are a good guideline as to what God wants of you. Nobody is saying the law is bad, but yet there's a time and a season for everything. Back at Mt. Sinai, the Law was necessary at the time.

Then, later on, Christ came and fulfilled the law for us, so that if we honor Him (by doing the things He told us to do), we also honor the law He fulfilled.

Now obviously some of that Law is impossible to fulfill today (the sacrifices), and again... you can't cherry pick points of the Law and expect to uphold it all, and it is very clear and obvious that we are not justified nor saved by the Law, but rather by His Grace and Mercy, and our Faith and Repentance.

Therefore, what's left, is a personal decision by the believer what he or should do, or not do (of course, avoiding the "big" sins as Jesus commanded us to, things like stealing, murder, fornication, etc).

I've already established earlier in the thread, that Pork is not as bad as you let on, provided you eat it in moderation, and in fact, there are plenty of processed foods that I'm pretty sure are even worse than home-made Pork that's done well and had the fat trimmed off. And as someone mentioned earlier... are we less holy for wearing mixed-cloth clothing? Does God suddenly see us as filthy heathens because we're wearing a wool+linen shirt?

Nobody is holy by their own works, Law or no Law. God sent His Holy Spirit to us to justify us, and then to sanctify us over time. That's what the Bible teaches me when I read it. What do you think He meant by "I will write my law upon their hearts"? To me, the work of the Holy Spirit over time is Him writing His laws (love, charity, forbearance, mercy, longsuffering, meekness, etc) on our hearts.

Instead of worrying about eating pork and/or judging others that do, and/or telling them that they are violating God's laws... personally, I'd be more worried about whether or not I was doing the other things that He has stated very clearly He wants us doing... loving our neighbors, shining His light everywhere we go, staying out of the World and its sins, keeping ourselves humble and avoiding Pride, and teaching others to do likewise.

Anyways, I feel that we've digressed, the original post was about whether or not God was being a bully when he instituted Mosaic Law... and in an answer: No.

God does not bully people. God enacted such laws that today might seem harsh, but back then... you need to remember that the Israelites couldn't even last 40 days without turning to idolatry after witnessing no less than ten major miracles straight from God. They got to that mountain, Moses went up to receive the law... and Moses didn't even get back down that mountain before a large portion of Israel was dancing around a golden calf (that Aaron himself crafted) doing unspeakable things. They hadn't even been out of Egypt for three months before they had turned to idolatry.

So, yes, God gave them very strict laws, because they were quite the stiffnecked people as God Himself said in the Bible numerous times. They tested Him, they tempted Him, and they were disobedient multiple times. Even Moses himself got himself in trouble with God and was not allowed to see the Promised Land.

But the lesson in all of this, is God's infinite love, mercy, grace and longsuffering that He would deal with this kind of disobedience. Without these things, God would have destroyed Israel a long time ago, surely. But He waited, and He waited, and He waited... and finally, He sent His only Son to die on the cross to save everybody who would believe and repent, not just Israel.

So instead of bickering over pork, perhaps we should instead be more concerned about spreading His love, mercy, and grace wherever we go? If more Christians did that more often, then the world wouldn't be as rotten as it is today....

 

[Strong in Him]

Start with the 119 psalm. David is the one that taught me about the law of God. He loved the law of God because it was designed to keep him safe and secure.

David lived in OT times, under the Old Covenant. So this covenant, with all its food and hygiene regulations, was all he had.

We live in NT times; Jesus has fulfilled the law - made it complete.
The law said that the Israelites had to offer a perfect animal for their sins. Jesus is the spotless Lamb of God (1 Peter 1:19) who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
The law said that if people sinned against one another, they had to offer a sacrifice or make restitution. Jesus taught us to forgive anyone who has wronged us, because God forgives us in the same way, and to treat others as we would wish to be treated.
The law said that the Israelites had to abstain from certain food, not wear certain fabrics and not eat/touch blood or dead bodies, in order to show that they were holy - or different, set apart. Jesus said that anyone who belonged to him would be hated by the world because they belonged to him, he said that we must put God first, seek God's kingdom first and could not have two masters. If we belong to Jesus and have his Holy Spirit, we are holy.
The law said that certain foods made people unclean if they were eaten. Jesus said that it is what comes out of someone's mouth that makes them unclean - bad language, blasphemy and so on.
The law included the 10 commandments. Jesus endorsed these commandments, and in fact summarised them into two - love God and love your neighbour. He also gave us a NEW commandment, to love as - i.e in the same way, with the same love as - he loved us.

Jesus is the Word of God - God's final word on salvation, righteousness etc. We are made righteous and holy in Christ Jesus.

David may have loved God's law, but he could not keep it and in fact broke it fairly spectacularly. We can't keep God's law and commands either, but Jesus took our sin and failure to keep the law, and died - he was MADE sin so that we could be the righteousness of God, (2 Corinthians 5:21)

 

[joshua 1 9]

We can't keep God's law and commands either, but Jesus took our sin and failure to keep the law, and died - he was MADE sin so that we could be the righteousness of God, (2 Corinthians 5:21)

"Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless,"

Jesus sacrificed Himself not only so we could be forgive also so we could be delivered and set free from sin. We do not have to live in bondage to sin. "
"If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."

 

[joshua 1 9]

Christ came and fulfilled the law for us,

He forfills the law in us and though us. He came to live His life as an example for us to follow.

 

[BobRyan]

The food laws were given to the Israelites as part of the old, Mosaic covenant. When the people showed that they were unable to keep this, God spoke through Jeremiah and said that he would make a new covenant, (Jeremiah 31:31-34). This covenant was sealed by the Lord Jesus, with his blood, (Matthew 26:28.)
Hebrews says that where there is a new covenant, the old one is obsolete.

Jesus said that it's not the food that goes into our mouths that makes us unclean, but what comes out of it. The early church didn't teach the food laws to Gentiles.

The Jews were the light to the nations; we are light to the world, and can have Jesus - the true light - actually living in us. Jesus is our righteousness and makes us Holy.

If you obey one law you have to obey all of them - not wearing mixed fabrics, circumcision, women unclean at certain times, etc, etc.
We are not under law now, we are in Christ Jesus.

Paul contrasts the ceremonial law with the moral law of God in 1Cor 7:19 concluding with "what matters is Keeping the Commandments of God"

Christ's statement that you reference in Mark 7 - is compared to Peter's response years later in Acts 10 where he responds to God's thrice repeated command to arise and kill and eat a rat sandwich - Peter says "14 But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.” Acts 10:14. So then from Mark 7 -- to Acts 10 ... no rat sandwiches for Peter. And this is likely the case for all the other disciples in Mark 7 - since the Mark 7 discussion is about wheat eaten with impure fingers.

What is interesting is that even after the thrice repeated statement Peter is completely confused as to what the vision is all about - until 3 gentiles show up asking for a Bible study. Then Peter repeats - three times - that the lesson of the vision is not "eat more rat sandwiches" but rather "call no MAN unclean" in doing evangelism.

 

[BobRyan]

For New Covenant Christians we have the covenant made with "the house of Judah and Israel" - the "new Covenant" which writes "My Laws on their mind and on their heart" Heb 8:6-10 speaking of the LAW of God known to Jeremiah and his readers in Jer 31:31-33.

 

[Soyeong]

God said "be holy because I am holy" - that still applies, God is still, and will always be, holy.
But that doesn't mean that we are expected to think, "that verse comes from a book which talks about OT food laws, therefore Peter must be saying that holiness means keeping those laws and we can't be holy otherwise." If that's what Peter meant, he would have said so. He, and other NT writers, would have made absolutely sure that Gentiles knew that in order to be considered holy by God, they had to keep food laws which had been given to their ancestors thousands of years before. That's not what happened though. Nowhere in the NT do the writers say, "come to Jesus for salvation and new life and then go and read Leviticus and make sure you keep it."

Leviticus 11:44-45 For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. 45 For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.”

It was a common practice for Jewish boys to memorize the Torah by the age of 12 and then to memorize more of the OT if they were to become a disciple of a rabbi. Paul would have been required to have memorized the entire OT in order to become a disciple of Gamaliel. So it was a high context society where someone could quote a verse to bring to mind an entire passage, such as when Jesus quoted the first line of Psalms 22 while on the cross to bring to everyone's mind the entire Psalm. The NT authors quoted or alluded to the OT thousands of times and often times looking at the surrounding context of what they are quoting from helps to give a better understanding of what they are saying. So 1 Peter 1:16 would have brought to mind Leviticus 11:44-45, which talks specifically about dietary laws and telling us to have a holy conduct meant following God's instructions for how to have a holy conduct, so that was Peter making sure that they understood that they were to follow those laws.

We don't become righteous and holy, by having a righteous and holy conduct, but rather those who are declared righteous and holy by faith are called to have a righteous and holy conduct. In the same way that someone who is declared to be a Firefighter in now to go out and fight fires, being declared righteous and holy means we are now to go do what is righteous and holy. Here is another passage that makes it explicit:

1 John 3:4-10 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

God's law gives us knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20) and without the law we wouldn't even know what sin (Romans 7:7), so the law defines what sinfulness and righteousness are and they understood sin to be practicing lawlessness and that the opposite to be practicing righteousness in accordance with God's law. Whenever the Bible talks about righteousness, it's talking about living in obedience to God's commands by faith (Habakkuk 2:4).

Even the Jews don't obey all the laws they were given at Sinai - as far as I'm aware they don't sacrifice animals these days and they have no temple to keep all the festivals. If these were their laws and they don't keep them, why are some people trying to put Christians in bondage to them?

God did not give the law to Moses and the Israelites to be a heavy legalistic burden or to put them in bondage, but rather it was meant to be received by faith as a divine privilege and a delight, as the Psalmists understood (Psalms 1:2, Psalms 119), and as Paul understood (Romans 7:22). It is sin in violation of God's law that puts us in bondage and it is sin that Jesus died to set us free from so that we could be free to obey God's law.

The laws in regard to how to do Temple worship only apply when there is a Temple to worship in, but we should continue to do what we can in regard to God's instructions for how to keep the His Feasts, just as the Jews in the Diaspora continued to keep the them. God said that His Feasts were ordinances lasting forever, Paul continued to keep them throughout Acts, and we will be keeping them during the Millennium. They are shadows of the Messiah that teach us important things about him and about God's plans.

Jesus is, and was, God. He came to die so that we could be reconciled to God in a way that the Israelites never could be by animal sacrifices. He sealed, with his blood, the New Covenant that was made. Everything has changed because God came to earth himself and laid down his life for us. Jesus told us that it is not food that makes a person unclean; not what goes into the mouth but what comes out of it. Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended to the Father so that he could send his Holy Spirit to live in us. The Spirit is transforming us into Jesus' image and likeness. The Holy Spirit in us helps us to live holy lives; set apart from the world, belonging to, committed to and following Jesus, changing our actions, words, thinking and mind-set so that we become like him.

Ezekiel 36:27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

The role of the Spirit is to cause us to obey God's laws, so the Spirit helps us to have holy lives by helping us to obey God's instructions for that. The context of Mark 7 is about a man-made ritual law where bread that is eaten with unwashed hands becomes common or defiled and thereby makes the person who ate it common or defiled. Jesus used a figurative parable to point out that kosher food eaten in this way passes through the digestive track and ends up in the sewer without entering the heart, so the Pharisees concern for this ritual purity law was out of balance with their concern for moral purity. At the end of the parallel account in Matthew 15:20, it confirms that Jesus was still talking about nullifying a man-made ritual purity law and the topic never switched to being about God's dietary laws. Consistently throughout the Bible man-made laws are nullified while God's laws are upheld.

We call God 'Father' because Jesus told us that he is Father and we are his children. We are his children if we have received his Holy Spirit, who confirms this (Romans 8:9,16).
Jesus is my Lord and Saviour, God is my Father and I am his child and an heir, together with Christ. Jesus has not taught me that I am not his child if I eat pork.

The opposite is true, according to 1 John 3:10 distinguishes who are children of God and who are children of the devil by who practices righteousness in accordance with the law. It is those who have a carnal mind that do not submit to God's law (Romans 8:7).

We don't have a commandment TO keep them; that's the point.

Honestly, you shouldn't have to tell someone who is a servant of God that they should obey God and you shouldn't have to tell someone who a disciple of Jesus that they should imitate his sinless example of obedience. What would be nonsensical would be to join a new religion while being unconcerned with following their code of conduct. God is righteous and holy and does not have to different standards of righteousness and holiness, and it is just as important for Gentiles to have a righteous and holy conduct as it is for Jews.

I haven't joined the Jewish religion and have no Jewish ancestors or relatives.
The Christian faith has its roots in Judaism; Jesus came as a Jew, the disciples were Jewish and we read the OT. But Christianity split from Judaism, became a sect and people like Paul persecuted the church. Why? Because they said that the Messiah had come - in Jesus.
The identity of Jesus is THE difference between Christians and Jews - and all other faiths in fact. WE say that he is the Messiah, our Lord and Saviour, the Son of God, actually God himself.
I was not brought up to obey Jewish food laws, I went to church and Sunday school where I learned about Jesus.

Jesus didn't come to start a new religion, but rather he was born a Jew, became a Jewish rabbi, had Jewish disciples, a is the Jewish Messiah in fulfillment of Jewish Prophecy. Muslims who are waiting for the Mahdi to come have no expectations that if he came he would start a new religion, but rather he would bring about the fullness of Islam, and in the same way Jesus brought about the fullness of Judaism. So Christianity is a Jewish religion and it is the fullness of Judaism, which Gentiles have been grafted into. As I pointed out before, for at least the first 7-17 years after Christ's ascension every Christian was a Torah observant Jew. Gentiles splitting of from Judaism was never intended and is where they errored in their understanding of the role of the law and the Jews, in losing the correct cultural context in which to interpret the Bible, and in alienating Jews from their Messiah. Christians teaching that Jesus did away with the law is sadly one of the biggest reasons by non-believing Jews reject Jesus because that would disqualify him as the Messiah in violation of Deuteronomy 13. We were both not brought up to obey God's food laws, but that is sadly because we both inherited our theology from centuries of leaders who said shockingly anti-Semitic things and who did not understand the role of the law.

[/quote]It says it was a sin for the Israelites to eat unclean animals.[/quote]

According to Ephesians 2:12, Gentiles were once separated from Christ, alienated from Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, and had no hope and without God in the world, but according to Ephesians 2:19 all of that is no longer true, Gentiles are no longer strangers and aliens, but are now fellow citizens of Israel. Also according to 1 Peter 2:9-10 Gentiles are now included among God's people, so Gentiles should follow the laws that God has given to His people. God's instructions for what is a righteous or sinful conduct did not change between covenants because God is righteous and God did not change.

You may have been brought up on the OT, or started to read the Bible from the beginning, been told, that you have to obey the Jewish food laws and that anything else in sin; I wasn't. I went to Sunday school from an early age and learnt about Jesus - who he was, what he taught, how he died for me and what it means to come to him and be forgiven, made clean and adopted as a child of God. THEN I started to read the OT, about God's promises to Abraham about how the nation of Israel was formed and the exodus from Egypt, about how God called this nation to be his holy people, how he gave the covenant, which they continually broke so that eventually he said he was going to make a new one with them. Should I then say, "oh, the Lord Jesus sealed that covenant with his blood, but the only way I can belong to God is to go back to the OT covenant and start obeying that?"

I grew up attending a Baptist church for 30 years, so I grew being taught in a similar way as you. It's only in the last few years that I've been studying the Jewish cultural context of the Bible that I was compelled to change my views about God's law and I've found that it makes much more sense of the Bible. Paul said that our faith upholds the law (Romans 3:31), that the law is holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12), that the law is spiritual (Romans 7:14), and he delights in the law in his inner being (Romans 7:22), but other places he said that we died to the law (Romans 7:6), but that we still aren't permitted to sin (Romans 6:15), yet it's the law that instructs us about what sin is (Romans 7:7), so Paul's opinion of the law becomes jumbled unless you understand the Jewish cultural context. Even if you don't agree with my conclusion, I think I've learned much more in-depth about the Bible in the last few years than in the previous 30, so I'd highly recommend studying that.

In any case, learning about the NT first and then interpreting the OT from that perspective is precisely backwards. The early Christians only had the OT because the NT wasn't written and compiled until later. The NT authors quoted or alluded to the OT thousands of times to establish their authority and that what they said was consistent with it. The Bereans in Acts 17:11 checked everything that Paul said against OT Scriptures to see if it was true, so if you interpret Paul as being against keeping God's laws, the you understand him differently than the people who walked and talked with him. In 2 Peter 3:14-17, it is essentially saying that Paul is difficult to understand, but Paul's writings plus being ignorant and unstable leads to the error of lawlessness. Sadly, many Christians have fallen into this error by rejecting God's law, but I am seeing many who are waking up to this fact.

I have never suggested that we go back to following the Old Covenant. What I am saying is that God is holy, righteous and good, which means that He does what is holy, righteous, and good, and God has give us instructions for how to likewise do what is holy, righteous, and good conduct, which is based on His character. This is independent of any particular covenant and we should have such a conduct even if God had made no covenants with us.

He obeyed the Jewish law, yes; he was a Jew.
He did not tell his disciples they would be saved by keeping the law, that they would sin if they did not obey the law and they had to teach all Gentiles to believe in him and THEN obey the law.

Paul says that if we keep one part of the law we have to keep all of it - that includes circumcision, not wearing mixed fabrics and all the hygiene laws, as well as sacrificing animals for the forgiveness of sins, not just not eating certain types of food.

I have never suggested that we need to keep the law in order to be saved. That was never the purpose of the law, and trying to become justified by obeying it through our own efforts is in fact a perversion of it. The law was always meant to be obeyed by faith in a way that built a relationship between God and his people (Habakkuk 2:4). God always disdained when his people obeyed the law while their hearts were far from him (Isaiah 1:13-16, Isaiah 29:13, Mark 7:6-13). Our obedience to God should always be rooted in faith and love. In order to become justified through keeping the law, someone would need to keep all of it perfectly and then their justification would be owed them by God through a cold legal transaction, which was not the way it was intended. So there is a world of difference between saying that we don't need to keep the law in order to become justified and saying that we don't need to keep the law. The law is not about how we become justified, but about how God wants us to live out lives by faith as we grow in our relationship with Him and are made to be more like Christ in his character and obedience to God.

 

[Soyeong]

Just the opposite, Science is a lot more strict then the Bible.

What does the fact that Science is more strict than the Bible have to do with the fact that God never repealed His dietary laws?

 

[Soyeong]

And what did He Himself tell us to do again?

1). Love God more than anything/anybody.
2). Love everybody else as we love ourselves.
3). Repent.
4). Believe in Him.
5). Stay away from sin. (He even specifically listed specific sins)
6). Be always ready for His coming.

What didn't he say to do?

1). He said nothing about dietary law.
2). He said nothing about clothing law.

The Bible says that it is a sin to violate dietary and clothing laws, so that falls under 5.).

He said "If you love the Father, you will love Me, for He sent Me." (pp) and He also said, "If you love Me, you will do the things I command you to do."

So... it's pretty simple, you look through the Gospel and see what He said to do (I already outlined this above).

He also said:

John 7:16 So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.

Jesus was not in disagreement with the Father about which laws to keep and did not teach anything that was not in accordance with the law.

Also, Romans 8:2 says that we are freed from the Law of Sin and Death, because we have a new Law (the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ).

It doesn't make sense that He'd have us go back to the old law which failed (Romans 8:3) because we are weak in the flesh (God knew the law would fail when He gave it at Mt. Sinai. How many times, again, did they break His covenant?).

A few verses earlier in Romans 7:21-23 Paul contrasted God's law with the law of sin, so they are not referring to the same thing. The instructions of the law are holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12), but the problem is that the law also condemns us to death for breaking it, so it is the condemnation that Paul talks about in Romans 8:1 that we have been set free of, not its instructions. The reason why instructions for how to have a holy, righteous, and good conduct could not cause us to become holy, righteous, and good was because our slavery to sin prevented us from obeying them. Instead of God lowering His holy, righteous, and good standard, God sent his Son to pay the penalty of our sins and to set us free from sin, and send His Spirit to guide is in obedience to the law all so that we might fulfill the righteous requirement of the law through obedience to it (Romans 8:3-4). It is those who have a carnal might who do not submit to God's law (Romans 8:7)

Also, Acts 13:39 tells us that the Law of Moses does not justify us, but rather believing in the Gospel (which is the forgiveness of all sins).

The purpose of the law was never to justify us in the first place and Moses could not have excused his disobedience to God by saying that any more than we can.

And finally.....

James 2:10.

If you transgress on one point of the law, you are guilty of the entire law. This is why we need a saviour. So, let me ask you...

When's the last time you've sacrificed a ram without blemish of the first year? Have you ever worn clothing of diverse cloths? Do you uphold all of the feast days, and eat unleavened bread?

No?

Then you've already transgressed the law -- all of it.

The consequence of transgressing all of it is that we are in need of forgiveness and won't become justified by keeping it, but as I said, that was never its purpose.

But yet... we're still saved. Why? Because God sent Christ with a new covenant, new laws (as I outlined at the start of this post).

If you do the things Christ has told us to do, He will handle the rest. We are all doomed to fall short no matter what we do.

Paul pointed out in Romans 4:1-8 that Abraham and David were justified by faith and because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, every person who has ever been saved has been justified by faith, including Moses before the law was given to him. Justification was not why the law was given, but rather it was instructions for how God wanted those he had declared righteous to behave by faith.

 

[joshua 1 9]

What does the fact that Science is more strict than the Bible have to do with the fact that God never repealed His dietary laws?

Science shows us that the law of Moses is still very much in effect today. If we want to live a long life we need to eat right. "You shall walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess." If we live by the commandments of God then we can live a long life. We are told: Prov9: "For through wisdom your days will be many, and years will be added to your life." This means we can add years and live longer then 80 years.

psalm 90:10 As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to strength, eighty years, Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away.

 

[Soyeong]

Except that following the Law is impossible.

God would disagree:

Deuteronomy 30:11 “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.

Matthew 11:29-30 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

James 2:10 says that we either follow all of the law, or none of it, and since there are no known Levites around, and there's no tabernacle with a Holy of Holies (and the fact that Jesus ripped the veil in the Temple when He died on the Cross should say something about the Law), this means that the law is defunct -- we can't possibly follow the Law given to Moses.

We can follow some of it, but again, James 2:10 says that you either follow all of the law, or be guilty of breaking the entire law. You can't cherry-pick Points A, C, and D and just go "oh, we can't do B, so it's ok". That's not how the Law works.

Laws in regard to how do Temple worship only apply when there is a Temple to worship in.

Jesus gave us new commandments during His ministry, which I outlined in a post above (which was not replied to). None of them mention clothing or dietary law, nor animal sacrifices. He said that if we love the Father, we love Jesus. If we love Jesus, then we will do the things Jesus said to do (because He's our new mediator between man and God, instead of a chosen Levite/Son of Aaron).

Jesus commanded no laws that hadn't already been established. The command to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength is a lot easier said than done. Jesus said that the rest of the commands hang on the greatest two, or in other words they are examples that paint a picture of what it looks like to follow those two. You can't say we don't need to follow the law, we just need to love because obeying the law is how we are supposed to love God and our neighbor.

The destruction of the Temple in AD70 makes the law impossible to fulfill nowadays, which is probably why Christ Himself said that HE fulfilled the law for us.

To fulfill the law was a rabbinic term that meat to interpret it in a way that filled it up with meaning, added meaning to it, brought full understanding to it, or to demonstrate how the law should correctly be obeyed. Every Sabbath a rabbi would take a Torah scroll to Moses' seat and fulfill the law by interpreting and explaining how it should be understood. Jesus fulfilled the law 6 times in Matthew 5 by teaching how to understand it and by demonstrating a perfectly sinless example of how the law should be obeyed. Everyone since the time of Moses who has loved their neighbor as themselves has fulfilled the law, so it was not a once and for all thing that Jesus did for us so that we don't have to. On the contrary Jesus said that not the least bit would disappear from the law until heaven and earth passed away and all is accomplished (Matthew 5:17-19)

 

[Soyeong]

Also, an inspiration came to me this morning in the shower (lol, literally in the shower), that He instituted the Law for these purposes:

1). To set His people apart from all other people.
2). To give them a moral code so that they would stop doing the things He hates.
3). To remind them of who He is, and why they should worship Him and do His commandments.

#1 was done by the various laws about Clothing, beard trimming, no tattoos, etc. When most people in the world threw on whatever clothes they wanted, women were scantily dressed, people had tattoos all over them, etc, you would know a Jew when you looked at one, instantly because of what they wore and how they kept themselves. However, in Today's world, we have something new that sets us apart -- the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Rather than appearance, in a loveless world where there's so much hate and anger... you will know a Christian by his/her fruits; he or she will spread love instead of hate and strife. As far as clothing goes, I think the only part of this that stands today, is "Don't put a stumbling-block infront of anybody else" (IE: Women shouldn't wear clothing that causes men to sin).

1 Peter 2:9-10 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Gentiles are now part of God's people and are a holy nation and told to have a holy conduct (1 Peter 1:14-16), so Gentiles should act accordingly. The Spirit is not in disagreement with Jesus or the Father about what it means to have a holy conduct and does not lead us to do anything other than what God's law instructs.

#2 was accomplished by the Ten Commandments (with the exception of the Sabbath law), and other similar laws having to do with what was sin, and what wasn't. Christ re-affirmed these in His ministry and they are again re-affirmed in the other books of the New Testament, and gave us two commandments that encompassed the part of the law He wanted us to continue doing: the two commandments about Love covers most of the Moral Code (and He had to clarify that Divorce was never intended).

I see no good reason to limit God's laws to just 10 of them or to make and exception for the Sabbath. I see nothing that indicates Jesus though that some laws were bad or that he was editing down the law to just the ones he mentioned, but rather he said the exact opposite in Matthew 5:17-19 that not the least law would disappear.

#3 was accomplished by all of the feastdays and similar customs He commanded them to do. They are not needed today, because every Christian who is saved has an indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and one who has an indwelling of the Holy Spirit is not likely going to forget God, or his Lord and Saviour.

Jesus is our Passover lamb, so he brought full meaning to Passover, which made it all the more important to keep. God's Feasts are full of rich teachings about the Messiah and the Fall Feasts haven't even been fulfilled yet because they are in regard to his second coming. Furthermore, they are rehearsals of what we will be doing in the age to come and the Bible says that they are ordinances lasting forever.

 

[Strong in Him]

"Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless,"

Jesus sacrificed Himself not only so we could be forgive also so we could be delivered and set free from sin. We do not have to live in bondage to sin. "
"If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."

I'm not in bondage to sin. I'm also not in bondage to a law which was not given to me in the first place.