The point is this, when you relate obedience, or being in a saved state to obeying the TC we are all guilty, for Paul referred to that law as ''The letter that kills the ministry of death and condemnation'' That is what he told born again christians in the present tense.
Do the Ten Commandments still apply under the new covenant today?
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Brakelite
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First, you forget whose commandments they are. They aren't mine. I'm not trying to entice you into obeying me. Obey God. If you think you need not do that, then have the courage to say so, with your reasons.
I think it fascinating you believe we don't appreciate what you term, the pristine level of the law. You say we only focus on the letter, believing it to be at a level inferior to "pristine". Yet you refuse to obey even the letter. If you cannot even consider obedience to the law set at it's lowest bar, how can you think it possible to meet the requirements of God laws when seem in their true light?
And your references to the council of Jerusalem are laughable. Do you really believe that Gentile Christians were given so little by way of counsel regarding their Christian walk?
Please explain why Gentile Christians pleaded with Paul to explain further the Christian religion the following Sabbath after hearing his sermon on the synagogue. And what happened? Did Paul tell them to meet with him the next day, Sunday?
Brakelite
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And yet he also said there is no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus. It would seem strange indeed if Paul was excluding obedient Christians from the "no condemnation" group, while you seem to want to. Particularly when everywhere else in the scriptures it is the obedient who are accepted, and sinners excluded.
Brakelite
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Glad you brought this up. Who are we talking about again...oh yes. Gentile Christians. That was what the council was for. To settle a dispute within the church. Acts 15:13-20. So they gave instruction at that time only 4 specific guidelines. They restricted it to 4 because they didn't want to burden them with too much to think about. Why was that? Because of verse 21. The Gentiles were already meeting in the synagogue in every city, hearing the teachings of the law and the prophets.
By the way. What instigated the whole controversy was the issue of circumcision, along with the rest of the 600 odd laws and statutes that through the blood of Christ, had passed away. That council was not concerned with Sabbath keeping. There was no controversy over the observation of the Sabbath. No arguments, no accusations, no finger pointing by the Jews that Christians were trampling on God's holy day, not even a hint that the Christian Church had set up a rival day to the ancient Sabbath. Strange that.
Really? God's applicable laws are not arbitary, you can't pick and choose which applicable laws you follow and which laws you ignore? You can pick and choose whether you commit sin or not? Is that really your view? It is wrong anyway, years later the leaders of the church reitterated to Paul they were STILL only asking gentiles to follow the same four laws(Acts21:25) Im afraid it is an indisputable fact, if you and your denomination are correct concerning applicable law, the first century church leaders, including Peter, James and Paul gave gentile converts a licence to sin for the whole of their lives, no way around that Im afraid
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What you mean is, no condemnation as long as you obey the letter that kills the ministry of death and condemnation. What you fail to realise is, judge a persons justification according to law termed as such makes everyone guilty, including yourself. Which is why no one who holds to your views can practice what they preach/insist of others.
If only you understood the new covenant. They were discussing what Paul termed in Rom14:1 as ''disputable matters'' NOT, moral law .The meeting went on for a long time, much debate. Do you really think they would have had to endlessly discuss whether gentiles should not murder, steal, commit adultery?
Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved. Acts15:2
That's why they went to Jerusalem!! And the Jewish laws of rite, ritual and ceremony were then discussed, NOT the moral law:
Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.”
The apostles and elders met to consider THIS(THIS) question. VERSES5&6
You and your denomination are all over the place here. Not only, if you were correct did the first century church give gentiles a licence to sin, but you say the righteous will obey the TC. But then you accept people as christians who do not and never have followed a set saturday sabbath. So how can you state the righteous will obey the TC? You keep making statements you do not really believe!!
Sin is the transgression of the law 1John3:4
Through the law we become conscious of sin Rom3:20
Two things you avidly agree with.
Therefore, it is impossible not to have heartfelt conviction of sin concerning any law you wilfully transgress lets say that is in your heart.
So, as you and your church accept people as christians who have no consciousness of sin at failing to observe a set Saturday sabbath, it shows you have no discernment as to the outworking of the new covenant in a believers life
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Big Boy Johnson
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That's just what you think along with those that refuse to accept the whole counsel of God.
2 Peter 2:20
For if after they have escaped the pollution of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
Hebrews 3:12
Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
*A person cannot depart from something they were never a part of to begin with
1 Timothy 4:1,2
Now the Spirit speaks expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron
*A person cannot depart from the faith is they were never in the faith begin with
I got washed in the Blood of the Lamb and no longer go around violating God's Commandments thru the power of the Holy Ghost so I'm no longer guilty
Feel free to continue being guilty if you so desire.
The guilty will not be allowed in to the Lord's Kingdom so beware that is being on the highway to hell
Paul Christensen
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There is nothing wrong with taking a day off work to rest and to engage in Christian worship and fellowship, as long as it is not made a legal requirement for a successful and holy Christian life.
If we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us 1John1:8
Button
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God's laws are written in our hearts.
Your philosophy is contrary to this.
Paul Christensen
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Thank you for the kind words. I agree with you that Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments” in John 14:15, and that is the safest place to begin any discussion, because His words never change.
About the Sabbath, Jesus Himself kept it, taught in it, and said He is Lord of it. Nothing He ever said removes it. He warned that God’s commandments stand until heaven and earth pass, and heaven and earth are still here.
Regarding the passage you quoted from Colossians, the “handwriting of requirements” that was nailed to the cross cannot be the Ten Commandments, because God spoke those commandments with His own voice and wrote them with His own finger on stone, they are not from Moses. The Bible never calls the Ten Commandments “a shadow.” In Scripture the shadows are the temple rituals, sacrifices, feast-day sabbaths, new moons, offerings, and all the handwritten ordinances Moses wrote in a book. Those pointed forward to Christ’s sacrifice.
The weekly Sabbath is different. It was blessed at creation long before Israel existed, spoken by God, written by God, and called “My holy day” by the Lord. Jesus said it was made for all mankind.
So when Paul speaks about “sabbaths that are a shadow,” he is referring to the ceremonial sabbaths connected to sacrifices and feasts, not the weekly Sabbath Jesus honored. The disciples themselves continued to keep the weekly Sabbath after the resurrection, and Gentile believers met with them on that day to hear the word of God in Acts 13 and Acts 15, which shows the moral command remained.
So to answer your question: the “it” in that passage refers to the handwritten ceremonial requirements Moses wrote in the book of the law, the same ordinances that pointed to the coming sacrifice of Christ. Those shadows ended when the true Lamb came. The commandments of God that Jesus taught did not.
The righteous obey God’s commandments. I say it because Jesus said it. He taught that those who love Him keep His words, and those who hear His sayings and do them are the ones who stand. He also warned that anyone who breaks even the least commandment and teaches others to do the same becomes least in the kingdom, while those who keep and teach them will be called great. Jesus said that only the ones who do the will of His Father enter the kingdom, and that many will call Him Lord while still living in sin, but He will say He never knew them because they did not obey.
I am not saying this about myself. I am only saying what Jesus said is the true path. His words judge all of us, not our opinions.
Jesus our Lord,kept the Sabbath and taught in it (Luke 4:16). He said, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). He also said, “Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to destroy but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17).
Jesus never changed the Sabbath to another day. He showed it is God’s holy gift for all people. How people later chose Sunday is not recorded in His words. Jesus’ teaching points to keeping God’s commandments, including the Sabbath, in spirit and truth.
Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15). He also said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). He warned that those who break even the least of God’s commandments and teach others to do so will be least in the kingdom (Matthew 5:19).
Faith and grace alone are not enough; obedience is required. Jesus made it clear that love for Him is shown in doing His commandments, not just in belief or feelings.
The problem with this statement is that it abandons what Jesus actually taught. Jesus never said the Ten Commandments “kill” anyone or that obedience to God’s law is impossible for His followers. In fact, He said the opposite: “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15), showing that obedience is the proof of true love and relationship with Him.
He also said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Salvation is not simply a feeling, a title, or a faith without works—it is living according to God’s will.
The Ten Commandments are God’s standard of righteousness. Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17). He fulfilled what was required, but He did not remove the moral law. Claiming that the law “kills” believers is misleading because Jesus Himself teaches that obedience, guided by His Spirit, is the path to life, not death. The Ten Commandments are not a tool of condemnation for the saved; they are the very measure of righteousness Jesus calls us to follow. Saying otherwise ignores His clear teaching.
When Paul wrote about “the letter that kills” (2 Corinthians 3:6–7), he was not talking about the Ten Commandments. If he had meant the Ten Commandments, then he would have contradicted Jesus, who said, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17), and “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15).
The “letter that kills” refers to the ceremonial or written ordinances under Moses that pointed to Christ, such as sacrifices, feast laws, and ritual observances, not God’s moral commandments. These were shadows pointing to the real substance—Jesus Himself (Colossians 2:17, Hebrews 10:1). Jesus never abolished the Ten Commandments; He kept them perfectly and taught His followers to obey them.
So unless someone believes Jesus was wrong, it is clear that Paul could not have been condemning the Ten Commandments when he wrote about the “letter that kills.” It was the ceremonial law, which pointed forward to Christ, that ended.
Grailhunter
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I am a Theologian and a historian, you have to be both to understand the scriptures or people will make the same mistake you have.....You have to keep things in perspective of time periods and the sequence of events. Yeshua was still observing the Law and the Sabbath because they were still in the Old Covenant during His ministry.
The Jewish-Christians were still observing the Law and worshipping in the Temple. They did not recognize the changes to the New Covenant. So Yeshua instructed Paul and sent him on a ministry. You notice they do not say anything against polygamy and concubinage. They died out around the end of the 1st century....No Apostles were added after they died out.
The Gentile-Christians were not allowed in the Temple and did not observe the Sabbath or the Mosaic Laws and soon started to worship on Sunday the day that Yeshua resurrected instead of the Jewish Saturday Sabbath. They discontinued polygamy and concubinage. And we eventually stopped slavery and we are working on making females equal members in Christianity and allowing them to preach.
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The ceremonial or written ordinances/rite ritual and ceremony laws could faultlessly be obeyed, even by the worst of sinners(Phil3:6) Law you can faultlessly obey never would be described as the letter that kills, the ministry of death and condemnation. Indeed, if only that law had been given at Sanai, man could have been justified by the law, for law you can faultlessly obey you can indeed be justified by obeying.
Paul said the law engraved in stone was the letter that kills, the ministry of death and condemnation NOT the law written on parchments. The only law engraved in stone was the TC. You are wrong
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So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5 For when we were in the realm of the flesh,[a] the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. 6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. Rom7:4-6
Which law must you die to in order to bear fruit for God?
Which law arouses sinfull passions in us?
Which law are we released from so that we sere in the new way of the spirit, not the old way of the written code?
In the next five verses Paul carries on, giving a personal example from his own life as to why he had to die to the law as he put it:
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet/one of the Ten Commandments.
8 But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence(confirming verses 5). For without the law sin was dead.
9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.
11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.
You cannot die to the law as Paul termed it, if you believe the righteous obey that law, not possible
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