Crucifiction

Any good passages refuting the Christian assertion they are no longer bound to the Law?

punk77

Read through this for posts from Noah

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=161210

he does a very good job of explaining things .

Nuwanda

Before you attempt to refute anything you should do a little homework. An easy place to start is with Galatians. It's only 6 chapters, you could finish it in maybe 20 mins at a slow rate. It explains why Christians are not bound by the Old Law.

Make sure you're not confusing the Old Law with the entire Old Testament. Most of the OT is not the Old Law. If you've spent the time to read LaVey's Satanic Bible and want to woop on Christians, do a little research on your opponents book first. Good luck.

noah

Xians are bound by the Law unless they want to call themselves Paulinians.
Is Paul a member of the Trinity? What or who was Paul's authority to rewrite and undo the Law of JC and his Father Yahweh? What was his scriptural support for calling the Law a curse? Did JC say his Law was a curse? Did Yahweh say his Law as a curse?
If Jesus and his Father Yahweh's Law was a curse why did JC and his Father Yahweh say it was the key to salvation?
JC said his Law, his Father's Law, was the key to salvation. Nowhere in the so-called Old Testament is any mention made of faith in a human blood sacrifice named Jesus. Jesus himself never says he is a human blood sacrifice.
Jesus says follow his Law and you will be "saved".
Review Mathew 5:17-20 and tell me why you do not believe the words of Jesus Christ your saviour.

See this post this post and this post.

Javaman

Paul's attempts to make Judaism more palatable are clearly his own creation (based on his 'visions') and not backed up by the words attributed to Yeshua. Noah is quite correct.

Nuwanda

You don't really want to have this debate, do you? It sounds like you've read a few books about the Bible with aims at discrediting Christian faith, but have never read the actual Bible with intent to understand.

Here's my answer to Mathew 5:17-20 (though I doubt you're serious about this debate). Do you really believe Jesus would tell His followers that they must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees to enter the Kingdom, a task that is utterly impossible? Everyone would have just thrown up their hands and gone home. Read on and you find that Jesus is pointing His followers to the 'spirit of the law.' It is this spirit of the law that Isaiah prophesied would be written on believer's hearts. Not on stone, but on flesh. Christ's whole point was: you will never complete the law so I'm going to complete it for you. When He died on the cross and cried out, "it is finished" the law was abolished just as He said it would be once it was fulfilled.

This is good and bad news for atheists. Good news because they can accept the free gift of God by trusting in the Saviour and be freed without paying for their sin; bad news because it gives atheists one less attack on religion.

Strip away all of Paul's writings and the case for Jesus fulfilling the law is untarnished. If you truly care to investigate it, I'm more than happy to help, but if you're only jesting then you'll only bore me to death with more sloppy scripture quoting.

Toto

Please refrain from preaching in this forum. How can an atheist who does not believe in god accept the free gift of god? Why is that one less attack on religion - when the whole repulsive idea of sin and someone dying to atone for something is there?

These are rhetorical questions, so don't answer them here, or if you must go on like this, I will split this out to some more suitable forum.

noah

Yes actually I do.

My how sounds alone deceive. I suggest you rely on a different faculty when interpreting members' posts here.

Try me. Hey he's not my saviour. You're stuck with him and what he told you to do.

You have another problem here. You're assuming without a lot of evidence that JC was sane. You don't know that he was sane. You can not prove that he was sane. Moreover, there are places in the bible that make you wonder whether he was sane. (I'm sure my fellow members will pony up a few examples). So it''s perfectly logical to posit that this verse is the utterance of an unstable individual. In fact, I would argue that you have to be unstable/mentally ill to have the power JC did and demand that your followers do what you know is the impossible.

How do you know it's impossible to be more righteous than the Pharisees? JC said they were a bunch of hypocrites? If the Pharisees did not keep the Law in JC's judgement than it makes sense to assume he was saying to his followers to keep the Law better than the Pharisees did.

Another point - Just because JC was might have been exaggerating about the degree of obedience to the Law that he expected of his followers does not mean that he expected no observance of the Law. In fact, we know from the other verses in this passage that JC did expect obedience of the Law and that JC promised entry into the highest ranks of heaven for those that kept the Law.

Not really. Not when the rest of the Sermon makes more obvious sense. They might have taken JC to mean that he was trying to pound home the necessity of following his Law by exaggerating.
Teaching through exaggeration is a common pedagogic device.
It's kind of like telling your kids to clean their messy room and that if you find one speck of dust anywhere you will ground them for a week. Do you really think anyone believes the child is capable of cleaning his room to that extent? Of course not. But you have made perfectly clear to the child that you want a spic and span room. Likewise with JC saying you have to be more righteous than the Pharisees. Of course you can do no better than perfection but that doesn't mean you don't try at all to keep the Law. In fact, Yahweh/JC make clear that the goal is to keep trying to obey the Law. Perfection is not the only criteria for salvation. God just has to see that you are giving it a whirl.

Sure and when you read on you encounter verses which contradict your Paulinian approach to Jesus' Law and to Jesus himself. Take a look at Matthew 7 which reinforces JC's and His Fathers' message that you keep the Law. Look at verse 21. Verse 21 not only informs us that you have to keep the Law but it contradicts your notion that calling JC lord equals salvation.
What was JC's Father's will? You guessed it. Keep his Law. Keep his Law and find salvation:
Psa 119:174
You also encounter Mathew 19:16-17 where JC says once again the key to salvation is keeping his commandments:
see also Psa 119:1-5
Do you suppose Yahweh was kidding? Playing a joke?
Any mention of faith in JC as a human blood sacrifice?

You keep going in Mathew and you find Matthew 19 where once again we find JC telling someone that keeping his commandments is the path to salvation:
Was JC joking? Any mention of faith in JC as a human blood sacrifice as the only means of salvation?

Keep going and you find verses where JC is saying that it is your love of JC that you obey his commandments for example John 14:15, John 14:21, John 15:10. Other verses say the same thing: 1 John 2:3, 1 John 5:2 2 John 1:5 and 2 John 1:6.

BTW the Sermon on the Mount is in part a regurgitation of OT commands.

You need to bone up on your Lord's Commands. Written on your heart does not mean ignored or otherwise disobeyed. Yahweh was clear that his Laws were real were substantive and literal and were meant to be carried out. See Deut 6:2,5,24-25 and Deuteronomy 11:1 for example.
You're not arguing that the laws against murder, theft and lying are figurative are you?

If the Law is just a figurative reference why was it so important to Paul to claim (falsely) that JC was born under the Law in Galatians 4:4?

Book/Chapter/Verse? This is nothing less than a blatant misunderstanding of not only JC's Law but of any law at all. JC's Law was not made to be fulfilled or completed. You can't complete a law. The term makes no sense at all.

Nice try. There's absolutely no evidence that JC was referring to the Law when he said "it is finished". None. In addition no act is powerful enough to abolish Yahweh's Law.
Actually no. JC and his Father Yahweh make perfectly clear time and time again that the Law is the path to salvation. Please review Ezekiel 18:20-27. No mention of JC as a human blood sacrifice.Unproven assertion.
Really? Please tell me where (Book/Chapter/Verse) JC or Yahweh say abandon their Law and believe in JC as a human blood sacrifice instead.
Do you find it in the Sermon on the Mount? Deuteronomy? Leviticus? Genesis.
Revelations 22:14 or Revelations 14:12?
Please tell me where JC/Yahweh said their Law will be fulfilled. Please tell me if you know how weird the idea of "Fulfilling the Law" is. The Law was not designed to be fulfilled. Period. No law is. This is like saying I don't have to answer the phone anymore because answering the phone has been fulfilled. It just doesn't make sense.

Your other problem here is that not only is your claim that JC fulfilled the Law false but as the bible makes clear, you show your love of god by obeying the commandments
Why do you go on the attack like this? Why do you sound so conceited? All we're doing is discussing the bible. You haven't taken one insult from me nor have you proven that I am sloppily quoting. There is a difference between form and substance you know.

See the three posts I referenced in my first post.

Nuwanda

Noah, to begin with your entire argument is crippled with one sentence: the old law was not written for gentiles. If you don’t buy this, find a practicing Jew who believes that the old law was written for anyone outside of the nation of Israel, and second explain why the Jerusalem council decided not to hold the gentile church responsible for the old law in Acts 15:22-29.

I’ll address your points anyway (excluding all writings by Paul in accordance with your presupposition).

Okay, are you willing to claim that the billions of followers and those artists, philosophers, politicians, musicians, etc, who were inspired by this lunatic are all insane as well? If not insane at least hoodwinked by the greatest hoax in history? I don't find this argument to be particularly sane. We disagree, that's fine, just make sure the disagreement is clear. You are posing an extremely fringy belief that very few non-believers take seriously.

More righteous than Pharisees whos fulltime job it was to keep the law? Nobody could do it, and to instead raise the bar and say "be better than the Pharisees" would not have been gospel (good news).

Here's the "will of the Father" (Mat 7:21)
Mat 7:12 - "Everything you wish others to do for you, do also for them, for this is the law and the prophets" (Greek translation)
Mat 22:40 - "On these two commands the entire law and the prophets hang" (to love God and love your neighbor).
John 6:29 - "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent" (Jesus).
John 15:12 - "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."
See also Luke 16:16, and John 1:17.

Mathew 19:16,17 is answering the question "what must I do to enter the Kingdom." If mans efforts are the way, then you must "keep the law." He does not include having faith in Christ's shed blood for a number of reasons. Jesus is talking to an old covenant man pre-death and resurrection of Christ. What Christ tells him is exactly right under those conditions.

Fair enough. Isaiah 53:5,12; Jeremiah 31:31, 32; Habakkuk 2:3,4; Mark 2:5-11, 9:13, 16:16, Luke 5:20, 22:20 (Christs blood was shed for sin, just as Israel was saved from the death plague in Egypt by the blood of lambs, those who believe in Christ are saved by His shed blood), Luke 24:44-49; John 3:3, 15, 16, 19; 6:40; 10:9; Acts 26:18; Heb 9:12, 14, 28; 10:2, 12, 38; 11:6; James 1:25; 2:5; 1 Peter 1:13-21; 2:24; Jude 1:21; Rev 2:5 (work of faith); Rev 3:10 (keep His command, love and faith).

You also made the point that much of John tells believers to keep the commands. Ex: John 14:15 "If you love Me, the commands of Me you will keep" (Greek translation). Again what are Christs commands? - love and faith in Him. Good Hermeneutics would allow the reader to see that Jesus is saying "if you love Me you have kept My commandments." See the difference? See also: Mat 7:12; 22:40; Luke 16:16; and John 6:29.

You also said the idea of "fulfilling the law" is weird. The best way to explain is through the law of marriage. A woman is married to her husband until he dies. Once he dies the law of marriage that bound them together is no longer in effect. She is free to marry whoever. This is similar to the law of covenant which God had with Israel. Jesus' death was the fulfillment of the covenant and the end of it. His resurrection was the start of a new covenant.

and You're right, I apologize.

I'll let you have the last word, Noah. I enjoyed this discussion.

Soul Invictus

Yeah Paul even admits that the doctrine he preaches is of his creation alone.