Misunderstand Jesus? I think I understand perfectly. I've learned, from the Lord and from experience, that when I sin, trouble comes into my life. Therefore, it is best to resist the temptation to sin. Would you have me do otherwise?
The Great Commandment
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GEN2REV
Well-Known Member
You appear to be distancing yourself from the specifics. Maybe it's just me.
What exactly do you consider sin?
It was a process for me learning God's law. I would sum it up with one verse: Jeremiah 31:33.
But I think it would be safe to say that if you took the two great commandments (Matthew 22:34-40) and added the Ten Commandments, you'd have the list. Keep in mind that these commandments need some definition. That's what the rest of the Bible is for. For example, I believe you will learn, if you haven't already, that looking lustfully at people, fornication, and homosexuality are all acts of adultery.
It makes a lot of difference...our righteousness comes from Him...the Bible says there is none righteous...no not even one. Righteous living is the same as living without sin. We are the righteousness of God through Christ Jesus.
Our flesh was born corrupt and remains corrupt until Jesus returns. The flesh wars against the spirit daily. God said He knows the frailty of man and that we are made of dust. Without Jesus and the Holy Spirit working in us we would never be able to achieve a righteous life.
Randy Kluth
Well-Known Member
No, of course not. Jesus is saying to "be perfect" in that sense, of entering into a class of persons who choose the right standard. That's what he meant when he said, "be perfect."
Randy Kluth
Well-Known Member
That says it all. You don't accept the word of God. God's word made the 10 Commandments to be part of the Law of Moses.
The 10 Commandments, along with all the Law of Moses, were an eternal testimony to Christ as the fulfillment of this system. The New system implies that the Old system was going away. You are still in the OT, if you are not in the NT. Very bad theology, brother! It's rather you who need to study theology better.
Randy Kluth
Well-Known Member
Yes, I would agree. However, that doesn't address my initial concern I had when you suggested it's easy to obey God's 2 commands "perfectly." I may have misunderstood?
The way you've been expressing this I have zero problem with. We both agree we should be following a *perfect* standard, and that we should belong to that class of people who choose the perfect Christ as our way, truth, and life.
Repenting of failure to do this is, for me, a lifetime confession of small and a few larger failures. I try to minimize my failures, obviously, when we adopt such a standard of love.
For me, to "be perfect" is to adopt the right standard for living. It is accepting Christ as the perfect way, and to belong to that class of people who do this.
I can't remember saying it was easy to obey the Lord's commands. I have my struggles.
Randy Kluth
Well-Known Member
Post #7 may have thrown me off where you seemed to challenge my comments with:
"I can't figure out why people think it's impossible to be perfect. Jesus told us we needed to be just that. There are a handful of commandments to obey, and they aren't always easy, but when you sin, you repent and try harder."
I don't know you well enough yet to know where you were coming from. Sounds like you have a humble enough attitude--sorry if I got you wrong! At any rate, I've long had trouble explaining to extreme sanctification adherents that Jesus was only drawing us into a class of people who follow him and his perfection--not telling us that we must become sinless.
You did say "they aren't always easy." But in saying they're only a "handful of commandments to obey," and that you can't understand inability to follow them, I wondered if you belonged to the "extreme sanctification" camp?
I agree, though, that Jesus said his burden was light, though not because there is no fight in the game. To overcome our flesh requires that we die to our own selfish desires. And that isn't always easy, as you seemed to indicate?
I belong to no groups such as "extreme sanctification" groups. I just know we lose our peace of mind when we sin.Post #7 may have thrown me off where you seemed to challenge my comments with:
"I can't figure out why people think it's impossible to be perfect. Jesus told us we needed to be just that. There are a handful of commandments to obey, and they aren't always easy, but when you sin, you repent and try harder."
I don't know you well enough yet to know where you were coming from. Sounds like you have a humble enough attitude--sorry if I got you wrong! At any rate, I've long had trouble explaining to extreme sanctification adherents that Jesus was only drawing us into a class of people who follow him and his perfection--not telling us that we must become sinless.
You did say "they aren't always easy." But in saying they're only a "handful of commandments to obey," and that you can't understand inability to follow them, I wondered if you belonged to the "extreme sanctification" camp?
I agree, though, that Jesus said his burden was light, though not because there is no fight in the game. To overcome our flesh requires that we die to our own selfish desires. And that isn't always easy, as you seemed to indicate?
No, I wouldn't call it easy, but I think it's easy to understand.
Randy Kluth
Well-Known Member
Not according to our own whims . . . by the Holy Spirit we are to love as God loves. We don't make it up. We yield ourselves to Him.
Much love!
If you obey the Law of Love, you don't steal, and instead give. It's not that you don't steal because the commandment is to not steal, rather, you don't steal because you want others to have their things. It's not at all the same thing.
Much love!
Randy Kluth
Well-Known Member
This is my 2nd response to this post. the 10 Commandments are in fact a subset of the entire Law of Moses. Placing the 10 Commandments separately from the record of the rest of the Law does not set it apart from the Law. It only distinguishes it as an especially-important part of the Law.
God's commandments under the Law, including the 10 Commandments, are never said to be anything other than part of the Law. When the Law of Moses was given, the 10 Commandments were given as part of that Law. What was given at the covenant of Horeb included both the 10 Commandments and other decrees and laws, which together constituted the Law of Moses.
Mal 4.4 “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel."
Again, you sound like an unbeliever, who doesn't know God. When you know God, you know what He is like. You know His love. And you don't need to have explained to you what exactly His "love" is!
But yes, we do need guidance on some of the specifics, because there are those who misconstrue what God's "love" is. And that's why the NT was written, to keep us on track. You will notice that when John or Paul tries to teach the Church they acknowledge that in a sense we "already know the truth," and that they only wish to "remind us of things we already know, since we already know Christ ourselves." For example...
1 John 2.27 As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.
Israel needed a set of laws to keep their covenant with the true God clear in the face of all of the paganism surrounding them. But those laws do not themselves guarantee that a person will know God and what He is like. Rote, or ritual observances do not alone make a person righteous on the inside. Perfunctory observances of religious rules can be done apart from the full devotion that God requires in order to impart a lasting knowledge of Himself.
Sabbath and other such laws were fulfilled in Christ. They only presented fallen Man's need for final redemption, inasmuch as they showed a necessary separation between fallen Man and the eternal Tree of Life. Sabbath laws separated Man from God on the seventh day, showing at least one day a week that Man's works aren't worthy of acceptance before a holy God apart from Christ's eternal redemption. But now that that redemption has already come, we don't need any separation at all--no religious rituals to teach us separation now that we've been eternally united by faith in Christ.
I wouldn't at all say I don't follow the rule not to kill, steal, and commit adultery. I just don't do those things as part of the Law of Moses. I do these things as they are, an expression of who Christ is on the inside.
I try to be righteous as he is righteous. He fulfilled those laws in himself so that we could fulfill that righteousness in him.
I do not steal because Christ does not steal and he has given the gift of his own righteousness to me. Just following the rule doesn't make me like him. Following him does make me like him.
GEN2REV
Well-Known Member
And writing the 10 Commandments IN STONE? Does that distinguish them from the rest in any way?
No, that's not what Scripture says.
"These are the words of the covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which He made with them in Horeb."
Deuteronomy 29:1
Also, the Commandments weren't just given to the tribes of Israel who were present at their giving, like so many false teachers proclaim.
"Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath; But with him that standeth here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day:..."
Deuteronomy 29:14-15
Therefore, this proves that the 10 Commandments were given to all mankind ... for the duration of the existence of the earth.
There's just no getting around it.
As proven above, none of the 10 Commandments were ever to be fulfilled, in the way that you mean - to be repealed. And they will never be repealed.
They were written in STONE for a very dramatically symbolic reason. And the event of the giving of them was second to none in its dramatic nature - again, for a very dramatically symbolic reason.
Even Hosea speaks of the forgetting of the Law as grounds for profound condemnation by God in His very well known quote.
Hosea 4:6
Also, the well known 'Lord, Lord' scenario speaks of "workers of iniquity." These are Christians who were as positive in their stance as you all are here today, teaching your no Commandments hog vomit, and the Lord turned them away because, as He stated, they were workers of iniquity.
Matthew 7:22-23
Iniquity is defined in the Bible as Lawlessness. Just as 1 John 3:4 defines sin as Lawlessness, the breaking of the 10 Commandments of God.
These people, like you all, were Law breakers and also taught to break the Law, that it wasn't binding upon Christians and that God no longer cares if you break His Laws that He made such unprecedented dramatic events around the presentation of.
That's the future for those who teach exactly what you all are teaching here today. You've been warned - with God Almighty as Witness.
Randy Kluth
Well-Known Member
Distinguishing the 10 Commandments as a special subset of the entire Mosaic Law in no way separates them from the entire Law of Moses! Each set of laws may have their own peculiarities. But distinctions do not essentially separate them from the body of Law that includes them all.
A repetition of the Law of Moses to a new generation is in no way a different Law! It is all a single body of Law, including the 10 Commandments. They all constitute the Law given at Horeb, or the Covenant established at Horeb, notwithstanding its repetition later at Moab and any additions. There is no biblical claim of a separation of any of these components of the Law, excluding any of them from the Law of Moses.
God gave the Law of Moses as a *continuing contract,* ie to be applied "generation after generation," or "to all your generations." It was, however, a covenant that could be broken and either restored or completely abandoned. In the time of Jesus it was completely abandoned, by design, in order to redeem the human race.
Not at all. The Law of Moses was given only to Israel, and to sojourners who lived temporarily in Israel, who had to keep certain essential portions of the Law that would apply also to them.
On the contrary, Jesus said on the cross, "it is finished." He said to those who he required all of the Law to be observed, it will be fulfilled in himself.
Matt 5.17 I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
It is important to note that Jesus said this before the cross, while the Law of Moses was still in effect. He did not come to revoke the requirements of the Law, though he would recognize that *Israel* would completely apostacize under the Law, rendering the Law null and void. A failure on Israel's part in this covenant renders the contract a failure--it only takes one party to a contract to fail to live up to its requirements for the entire contract to fail!
It's the same thing in a marriage. If one or the other part fails to live up to terms of the marriage covenant, the entire covenant fails. In fact, God alludes to this failure in a couple of places in the Prophets. Since Israel was guilty of national apostacy, God would divorce her, 1st the northern Kingdom of Israel and later the southern Kingdom of Judah.
Isa 50.1 This is what the Lord says: “Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce with which I sent her away? Or to which of my creditors did I sell you? Because of your sins you were sold; because of your transgressions your mother was sent away.
Jer 3.8 I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery.
That's pretty rude. Have you no manners?
Yes, he was referring to the era of the Mosaic Law, when sin was defined for Israel as breaking the laws of God. The NT equivalent is the breaking of the Moral Law of God, which requires that we defer to Christ and embrace his model and word. John referred to it as a "New Commandment."
1 John 2.7 Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. 8 Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.
You think you're some kind of prophet while you call fellow Christians names, and threaten them with "God's judgment?" You should be careful lest the "teacher" have his own words fall back upon himself.
James 3.1 Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
James 2.13 because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
Strive for the "mercy" part! I will too.
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GEN2REV
Well-Known Member
In the time of Jesus? Just make it all up as you go along, eh?
Jesus obeyed all the 10 Commandments per John 15:10.
All of His disciples obeyed them as well, during His lifetime, immediately after His death on the Cross, and for centuries thereafter.
Your ... faction ... claims that Paul was "just a Jew" so that's why He obeyed them all, but when this next verse took place, He was very much a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ. An elder spoke these words to him at that time:
"... thou thyself also walkest orderly and keepest the Law."
Acts 21:24
In what "time of Jesus" were these Commandments abandoned?
Sin is defined in the Bible as the breaking of the 10 Commandments. Sin is also spoken of many times in the Bible prior to the giving of the Commandments on Mt. Sinai. In fact, Exodus 20 introduces the Mt. Sinai event, but as far back as Exodus 16 we see God testing the people to see if they will obey His Sabbath Commandment.
How is it God was testing people to see if they'd obey, and punishing people like Cain and others for their transgression, if the Law did not exist at that time?
"... where there is no law, there is no transgression." Romans 4:15
Oh, this is a beauty. So Jesus making the very general statement "It is finished." upon the Cross was clearly a defining moment in Biblical history where Jesus Christ made THE definitive claim that the 10 Commandments of God were now to be ignored by all Christians for the rest of time, huh? I don't even need to say anymore about that champion of a claim.
GEN2REV said:
This is another home run for you. I don't even have to say much, you've already done all the work for me.
John wrote this roughly a century, or more, after the Cross of Christ. And what, exactly does he say? "... sin IS lawlessness." 1 John 3:4
That would be present tense.
I'm not a prophet. Hosea is the prophet; and Jesus just told us all exactly how it will go down with those who sin and teach others to do the same.
No skin off my hide.
Randy Kluth
Well-Known Member
You doctored what I said. I don't appreciate you making my quotes look like it was from me, when it's you editing my comments. It shows the lack of respect you have for others. If you want to have a conversation, quote what I say, and don't add to it.
This is what I said:
"God gave the Law of Moses as a *continuing contract,* ie to be applied "generation after generation," or "to all your generations." It was, however, a covenant that could be broken and either restored or completely abandoned. In the time of Jesus it was completely abandoned, by design, in order to redeem the human race."
Here is what you said I said:
"Randy Kluth said: ↑
In the time of Jesus it [the 10 Commandments] was completely abandoned, by design, in order to redeem the human race."
And then you begin to argue that I said "the 10 Commandments" was completely abandoned. Clearly, I said the entire Law of Moses was completely abandoned, which of course would include the 10 Commandments. But here you are suggesting, as if that's what I wrote, that I was only referring to the 10 Commandments that were abandoned.
You are not a fair partner in discussion. And in fact you call me awful names, and suggest I'm ripe for judgment. Bye.
Bible Highlighter
Well-Known Member
The fullest version of the first greatest commandment is found in what is considered one of the least (i.e. humblest) of the gospels (Which is Mark).
Mark 12:29-30 says,
“The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.”
The Breakdown of the 1st Greatest Commandment:
#1. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.
#2. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.
#3. You shall love the Lord your God with all your soul.
#4. You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind.
#5. You shall love the Lord your God with all your strength.
#1. Hear O Israel. Paul says that we can be Jews inwardly (Romans 2:29). So when Jesus says “Hear O Israel,” it can also address us New Covenant saints as being inward Jews or Israelites. We are to hear that the Lord our God is one Lord. Meaning, we are not to have any gods, idols, or anything that should come before God in our lives. God is the only One we should worship. We should not worship movies, music, homes, friends, family or anything besides GOD. That is why God is our one Lord over our life. We are not to let anything else take lordship over us besides the one true God. How is the Lord your #1 for today?
#2. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. Dealing with the matters of the heart involves love. Jesus said if you love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15). If we keep His commandments, we shall abide in His love (John 15:10). So we should focus and meditate on loving God by finding a way to obey the Lord today by one of His commandments to show that we love Him with all our heart. This could also include our adoring God in worship and praise His name for His goodness with all your affection and emotion, too.
#3. You shall love the Lord your God with all your soul. Paul says we are to offer our bodies as a willing sacrifice unto God which is our reasonable service (Romans 12:2). Meaning, we should dedicate our whole life to God today and forever. We should find a way to deny ourselves and pick up our cross and follow Him today.
#4. You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind. Meaning, you shall love God with your mind by focusing your thoughts on God and His love. You should focus your mind on the good things of God according to His Word, and to study His Word to show ourselves approved unto God (2 Timothy 2:15).
#5. You shall love the Lord your God with all your strength. We have no real strength on our own. The Lord is our strength (Exodus 15:2), and therefore, we should ask God by way of prayer constantly for us to love Him by the working of His Spirit and power and not our own effort alone.
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