All About GOD - Growing Relationships with Jesus and Others
OLD TESTAMENT LAWS
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Yesterday I was going through my Bible and marking the Words of God so that I could study them. As I was doing so, I thought of how much of the law we should be concerned with. I have heard some pastors say that because of Christ's death and resurrection, that we not be concerned about the law. However, in my mind, one can't disregard the law as God spoke it to the Israelites because I can't believe that God would give one law to the Jew and another to the gentile.
I know that we today practice church as being Sunday...not Saturday, or the first day of the week...not the last. And then tithing seems to be up in the air as well.
And then there is capital punishment taken off the table for murderers.
All in all, there are many of God's laws given to the Jews that aren't practiced today. Where should a Christian stand on this?
I know that the law of God is written on our hearts, but I think that we are breaking many of them because of our own will.
I thought of abortion being likened to a gift to Molech.
Just curious about what others think about the law with regard to Christ's sacrifice.
What do you think?
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Michael Vernon McEntire on
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Yes, Rita, both Christians and unbelievers break God's Laws. That's the main theme of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Essentially, nothing has changed since then. Thank God, there is grace and forgiveness for believers, but for unbelievers there is only a fearful looking forward to a day of judgement. God, in mercy, may postpone judgement for a country or a group of people, but judgement will inevitably come if they do not repent.
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Permalink Reply by Sam on
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Rita,
I don't have much to add beyond what has been said already, but consider again what Jesus said, 'I came to fulfill the law'.
The Law of Moses was fulfilled with the sacrificial death of our Lord. Therefore, we are not under the Law. Neither are the Jews, but that is an entirely different post.
So what does that mean?
We can eat foods previously unclean. We do not need to go to Jerusalem annually to offer sacrifices. We do not need to tithe, we do not need to circumcise our children, or do most of the other things that fall under the 600 or so laws of the Mosaic Covenant.
What does it not mean?
It doesn't mean that the so-called 'Old Testament' is without value. When Paul wrote, "All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial..." at 2 Timothy 3:16,17, he was specifically referring to what we call the Old Testament. When Jesus said 'It is written', he too was referring to the portion of the Bible between Genesis and Malachi. Without the Old Testament, it is impossible to understand correctly the New.
Without the Law, we have no context in which to appreciate the sacrifice Jesus made, nor can we fully understand the reason why God required such a sacrifice from his beloved Son. The Law makes us painfully aware of the extent of sin in our lives, and how utterly impossible it is for a sinful person to keep a perfect law.
On that note, we say and believe that Jesus died without committing a sin. But how do we prove it? How did Jesus prove it? The answer lies in the scripture you quoted at the beginning of your post. Jesus fulfilled a perfect law. Therefore Jesus was a perfect man.
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Permalink Reply by Rita Cullimore on
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I think that what I am trying to bring out is that the law was established by God and therefore to be obeyed. Regardless of what religion we follow.
Tithing-because it was addressed...Does the Bible say that we should no longer tithe?
Does the Bible say we should have our day of rest on a particular day?
I would think that we should keep the passover because Christ is the Lamb, and we all have forgiveness of sin, for those who believe on His Name, for the price he paid for us.
Also, if we were to follow God's instructions to the letter, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in now. Crime wouldn't be as rampant as it is. We wouldn't have the "religion issue". We wouldn't have sanction of our voices speaking about God or praying in Jesus's Name. We wouldn't have the issue of foreign religions of "foreign gods" threatening our country.
I think on the issue of foreigners and what they might bring to us, when we go out to into the world to preach, we are to carry the gospel to them, but not accept their information or news about their "gods".
Jesus said to "love our enemies" He didn't say to accept everything they tell us. He told us to teach them, and love them. He didn't say to embrace their beliefs.
We study the New Testament, and the teachings of Jesus the Christ but we often forget what was said by God in the Old Testament.
We ignore the Old while embracing the new. I am of the opinion, that when we study the New Testament and its directives, we need to consider what God said in the Old Testament, keeping our understanding clear. Jesus said that He came to fulfill the law. I don't think that is speaking only of Him dying for us. I think we are to consider what God said in the Old Testament and to round it out with what Christ preaches in the New Testament.
I wish I could explain more clearly to you about this but I don't have the words right now.
There was a topic about the differences in churches and I think, because we don't hold what God said in the Old Testament, it has caused us to have misunderstandings about the meanings in the New Testament, therefore causing misunderstandings between the various denominations. Or causing the denominations.
Does what I say make sense to you?
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Rita,
What you say does make sense, and I agree.
In fact, I would go a step further and say that more than rounding out what we are taught in the New Testament, it is impossible to fully understand the New without considering the Old. I would go further still and say that the designations 'Old' and 'New' Testament are in fact misleading to some.
Consider this. We all know and accept that Christ Jesus died for our sins. But why? Why was such a sacrifice necessary in the first place? Isn't God all-powerful? Couldn't he simply forgive us of our sins and be done with it?
To answer your question about tithing, the keeping of the Sabbath, and other specifics of the Law of Moses, you need look no further than the 15th chapter of Acts. At that time, certain Jewish Christians were asserting that some aspects of the Law of Moses needed to be heeded, specifically by gentile Christians. So the apostles and other older men in Jerusalem got together, made it a matter of earnest prayer, and came to a unanimous decision as to what tenants of the Law still applied to Christians.
You can read their decision at Acts 15:28,29.
As a side note, that chapter proves that the entire Christian Congregation was one body at that time.
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I'm not sure but I think in Acts that the apostles were trying to get the people started and the two things mentions are the most important. My opinion only.
I think that as we grow in knowledge of God we should strive for the deeper understanding of Him.
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Permalink Reply by Imperator on
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My dear sister Rita,
Yes, Jesus came to fulfil the Law, however, it doesn't mean that we forget the Law. For example, when it says that thou shall not kill... we do not go out and murder someone. Therefore, I'd like to think that the Law and Grace go hand in hand and work in harmony. The mosaic Law was given to the Jewish people as they were the chosen people of God at the time. Then Jesus came to invite the whole of humanity into His family, and gentiles were accepted into the Abrahamiac covenent. We christians accept Jesus as the Messiah where as the Jews are still waiting for the Messaih.
Some people argue that the Law is defunct as Jesus fulfilled it completely by offering Himself as the perfect sacrifice. We are to remember the Law as a reminder of the times past particularly the Old Testament, which is as important as the New Testament. A clever person termed this as 'the New testament is the Old Testament revealed'.
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Imperator,
Precisely my point. Pastors mostly teach the new Testament without emphasizing the need for studying the Old Testament which actually is part of the New Testament when one conciders how much is quoted from the Old to the New.
Perhaps that is where we as Christians are getting confused and we end up following "different gospels".
For some reason, we seem to be sticking with the New Testament without giving enough careful thought to the Old. At risk of repeating myself, that is why I think we need to look at what God, in the Old Testament had to say as well as what is taught in the New. To round out our knowledge, to actually taste the "meat" of God's Word. (Understanding being the meat that comes from understanding the entire speech of God on a particular subject.)
I think that the reason we don't understand what is written in the New is because we don't understand what He first said in the Old.
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Of course it is very good to read/hear the Old Testament, but being mostly ignorant of it does not prevent someone from knowing by the Spirit that Jesus is the Son of God who died for our sins and was raised from the dead for our justification so that we, too, can be resurrected and go to Heaven. If you are a Jew, then you can read/hear Sts. Peter and James proclaim the Good News to the Jews. If you are a gentile, St. Paul told us very succinctly what the purpose of the Law (Old Testament) was: so that those who were under the Law could know that they were sinners in need of a Savior. Now follow the Law of Christ which the Spirit has written in your heart.
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I'd like to add here that some people even go as far saying that we can completely ignore the Old Testament because it is irrelevant, I feel this line of thought is wrong because the New Testament is a continuation of the Old.
Also, some people say that the Mosaic Law is irrelevant but we still adhere to it.
Why can't the Law and Grace go together?
I mean you can't have Laurel without Hardy and Rogers without Astaire........
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Oh one more point I'd like to mention here is that in the book of Isaiah God is directly communicating with us, He is talking directly with the reader.
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A guy by the name of Robert Courlic edited the KJV and changed the thees and thous to you and made it easier to read. He also printed the words of God in red as some Bible editors do in the New Testament. The Bible is titled "KJ 2000".
(This version can be found in many Bible programs, but not all carry the words of God in Red. However, Bible Analyser 3.5 does.)
I decided to make my own copy because one can't purchase it in hard copy, only as a program. As I am working on this task, it brings home to me the importance of God's Words in the Old Testament. Seeing God's own words highlighted, brings home to me the importance of them, and the laws that He spoke. As i read, some of them brought to the fore some of the issues that we are faced with today and how, if we don't study what He said, that we could come up with a lot of different ways of doing things, and therefore cause different denominations to develop.
One of the issues we argue against today is abortion. That is likened to the people in the Old Testament who offered their children, babies, to Molech. Now, if the women of today could hear the story of this offering, I think they would think twice about ever doing it. Because abortion is done of free will for the purpose of offering freedom of choice, they would understand (or I should say might) that this operation is much like offering their child to Molech, considering that Molech is a figment of imagination and no real god at all.
I am sure there are other examples as well, covered in the Old Testament, many of them.
Another is 'thou shalt not kill'. If God's capital punishment was served up to murderers, and it were carried out immediately, there would be many less deaths by murder. Same situation for the punishment named by God for other such sins. Adultry is a good one. In the Bible, there is a woman caught in adultry. Jesus stopped that stoning but why did He? Would it be that the man wasn't being stoned as well? Or that there went none present who actually caught her in the act?
The point that I am trying to make is that our Biblical instruction, without emphasis on these different sins, and biblical remedies are lacking, we are receiving an incomplete picture of God. Also leave the Word open to various interpretations. And so it has been.
I know that the Blood of Christ covers these sins but.....what about the person that never takes advantage of the Blood of Christ. The unsaved. He is still committing these sins, and the entire world suffers for it, both the saved and unsaved alike.
There are so many implications here. If the sins of a person were emphasized more greatly, I think more would understand the need for a Savior.
All in all, it gives me a clearer understanding of the things that should be emphasized to the unsaved.
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Remember that no one can come to Jesus unless he is being taught and pulled by the Father. These people may be prepared by reading or hearing the Old Testament, or they may simply know that they have sinned because of the Law written in their hearts, that is their conscience. Regardless of how they are convicted of their sins, what they need to hear loudly, clearly, and consistently from us is that Jesus died to save sinners.
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