Likewise, Jesus did not establish the New Covenant for the purpose of negating anything that he spent his ministry teaching...
That was certainly true in the Persian Restoration--the Law was simply reasserted. However, I wasn't saying that Jesus' New Covenant "negated" his ministry or moral law, nor did it negate the *purpose* of the Law of Moses.
Rather, what Jesus negated was the application of the Law in condemning all men apart from the redemption of Christ.
Again, Jesus was born under the law (Galatians 4:4) and circumcised on the 8th day (Luke 2:21), so he was a member of the Mosaic Covenant who was subject to the Law of Moses, so you insisting otherwise is contrary to the Bible.
No, Jesus declared himself "Lord of the Sabbath." He was above the Law. The Law was for sinners, and yet he was sinless. He required no resort to the Law for temporary redemption, for pacifying God in order to maintain covenant relations.
This is Bible--not your perversion of it. To say Jesus required observance of the Law is a perversion, since he was not a sinner. He only had to obey his Father for purposes beyond the need for his own redemption.
In following the rituals of the Law Jesus was acting out what sinful Jews had to do. He portrayed what he wished others to do for the sake of God's covenant with Israel. But he did not expect Israel to follow the Law beyond his own generation since he anticipated his own demise.
Jesus being Lord the Sabbath means that the Sabbath is about him, not that he was not obligated to keep the Sabbath holy as a member of the Mosaic Covenant. There is nothing that Jesus said after the cross to negate anything he taught before the cross.
Then you've missed the whole purpose of the cross. It was in the very act a negation of the covenant of Law. Israel failed to uphold their part of the agreement.
Therefore, the agreement failed. It was synonymous with the failure of the whole of humanity to obtain justification by the Law, since in the act of rejecting Christ all Israel became guilty.
Even those who did not actively oppose Jesus were found to be complicit in Jesus' rejection--even Jesus' disciples. Peter could not even avoid betrayal at Jesus' arrest.
In Matthew 28:16-20, Jesus commissioned his disciples to make disciples of all nations teaching everything that he taught them.
He had taught them that his coming was to *fulfill the Law.* That would, he clearly stated, lead to his death. And that required his introduction of a new covenant, just as he exhibited in the Lord's Communion.
You sound like an Ebionite, and not a follower of Apostolic Teaching. You are clearly pushing Rabbinic Judaism, and not Christianity. At the very least you are pushing an aberrant form of Christianity, replete with Jewish legalism.
In Galatians 4:4, it notably does not state that Jesus was born under the era of the law, but that he was born under the law.
You don't understand what Paul was saying. Paul never taught that Jesus was subject to the Law as an ordinary Israelite obeying the Law. He was divine Messiah, fulfilling the Law--not pursuing a covenant relationship with God.
He was the Son of God, and not a sinful man. Your failure to distinguish between Christ and an ordinary Israeli is telling. They had different purposes for following the Law.
Most of the Mosaic Law has nothing to do with sacrifices and most of the types of sacrifices have nothing to do with sin....
What are you talking about? The entire Law had to do with human sin! It was a covenant designed to pacify God so that He could continue to have good relations with a nation!
All of the feasts and holy days had to do with this. You clearly don't understand how the letter of Hebrews explains it. Virtually everything under the Law was sanctioned by blood. That had to do with representing the violence of sin, or the death that results from it.
I didn't say that Jesus was a sinner, but that he embodied the Mosaic Law by living in sinless obedience to it.
It makes no sense to say that Jesus is subject to a Law that was designed to redeem sinners from the consequences of sin.
If all of Jerusalem had accepted the Gospel message, then the 2nd temple would not have been destroyed and sacrifices would still be being offered.
The point was that God had expected that all of Jerusalem would unveil human sin at its worst, when a nation's sin had fully matured. At any rate, it was never God's purpose to perpetuate animal sacrifices once Jesus had died.
Christ spent his ministry teaching his followers to obey the Mosaic Law...
We follow Christ, and not the Law of Moses. At the Transfiguration Peter, James, and John were told not to look to Moses, but to Christ. The Apostle John wrote that the Law came by Moses, but grace and truth by Christ.
Jesus did not come to show us how to live by the Law perfectly, nor to even tell us to live by the Law. He did that with Israel for only the short time of his earthly ministry.
Rather, Jesus came to fulfill the failure that the Law was designed to exemplify, by giving us a way apart from the Law. He died outside of the camp where sinners could apply for his redemption (Heb 13).
In Acts 5:32, the Spirit has been given to those who obey God, so obedience to God is part of the way to receive the Spirit, however, Galatians 3:1-2 denies that "works of the law" are part of the way to receive the Spirit, therefore that phrase does not refer to obedience to the Mosaic Law.
What does that even mean? Yes, we receive the Spirit by obeying God's words in our hearts. But that doesn't mean we obey God's words as if they are requiring us to obey Moses' Law!
There are many things God's word to our conscience tells us to do or not do that has nothing whatsoever to do with Moses' Law! Anything not of His love is forbidden to us. We do this without any reference to Moses' Law whatsoever!
In Romans 3:27-31, Paul contrasted a law of works with a law of faith, so works of the law are of works while our faith upholds the Mosaic Law..
That's absurd. We are *never* told that our faith upholds the Law! Our faith is in Christ who himself fulfilled the Law. The Law is *only* fulfilled by Christ. Our faith is *only* in him.
Again, according Titus 2:14, becoming zealous for doing good works in obedience to the Mosaic Law is the way to believe in what Jesus accomplished through the cross.
So you say, and yet it is completely untrue. We don't obey Moses. To follow Jesus is to bypass the Law of Moses entirely since by that system all efforts at self-justification were destroyed.
We obey Christ because only he justified us. That is, Moses' system was based on self-justification because it was carried out by sinners who could never justify themselves--not even in their obedience and faith. It was required that they direct their faith to Christ alone.
The fact that Jesus gave himself to pay the penalty of our sins should make us want to go and sin no more by living in obedience to the Mosaic Law...
You miss the whole purpose of the Law, which was to lead to the cross and to its nullification. This was necessary to relieve us of the inevitable condemnation of the Law.
, not consider ourselves free to do the things that God revealed to be sin through it. In Romans 8:1, there is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ, and in 1 John 2:6, those who are in Christ are obligated to walk in the same way he walked, so there is only no condemnation for those who are walking in obedience to the Mosaic Law.
Your claiming that following Christ is following his model of "obeying the Law" is heresy. You've added that because it's not found in any of the NT Scriptures. You are following Old Covenant Law!
While we do not earn our righteousness as the result of obeying the Mosaic Law because it was never given as a way of doing that, that does not mean that we are not obligated to obey it for the purposes for which it was given.
Right, since the Law was never given for purposes of self-justification it was always designed to orient Israel to Christ who would provide a way *apart from the Law.* This is what we read in Jer 31. It is a New Covenant, different from the Covenant given at Sinai.
For example, to say that God is righteous means that He is a doer of righteous works and it would be contradictory to say that God is righteous if He were not a doer of righteous works.
Nobody is saying that Christians should avoid being obedient to the word of God. But the word of God is no longer directing Israel, or us, to obey the Law of Moses.
Its purpose was completely fulfilled in the cross of Christ, and in his resurrection from the dead. Following him no longer requires following a Law that was only designed to reveal him as beyond the Law and its condemnation.
