Don’t talk to me about custom, law, treaties, history or tradition. While I normally take those things into account, they are not binding on me. I am free. Not that those things cannot bind my flesh, or kill it, but they don’t matter to my spirit, the part they cannot touch because they had nothing to do with it. I am free because I am alive in the spirit.
There is only one standard to which men can point which matters, and that is the Bible. No, not just the book itself, since the words printed on paper, in very many different translations in many different languages, can be made to mean any number of conflicting things. No, ultimate truth cannot be rendered in mere words of human language. Rather, it is the Bible as read by those who are born of the Spirit. Further, it is what that binding means to you in the context of the moment in which you live.
It is altogether likely your understanding of the same passage between today and tomorrow will shift somewhat. If you really do intend to understand what God requires of you, that happens. It happens because no one of us is where we ought to be when He comes to us. We have to be moved gradually. Choosing to bring you into His domain is His choice, but in a very real sense, once inside you have to cooperate every step of the way. And as your cooperation improves, so does your grasp of what God expects of you. So it is our understanding of that Bible will move some over time.
You are bound under that best understanding you have at the moment of decision. Not in the performance, for even that is a miracle of God. No, in your commitment to do what He wants.
Nothing any man comes up with makes a hair’s breadth of difference in moving me one way or another in the basic decisions. Those things are burned into the very being of my spirit and soul. Again, I am responsible for knowing something about man’s requirements, but only so I can with open eyes see how it conflicts with my commitment to Christ.
Jesus is my only Lord. All others are either partners, allies, bystanders or enemies in terms of what I must try to do. We would surely disagree with what we see in that Book, because we are not at the same place on our individual paths. But we can still choose to cooperate by making room for each other, however much room that may be. But in the final analysis, I must do what the Spirit and Book demand. Nothing else matters.
If you’re allowing yourself to be governed by a 2000 year old book, with absolutely no historical basis in fact; then no, you are not free.
If you are not moved by my words, feel free to do and say as you please. You make the accusation it has no basis in history, but you offer no grounds for such a judgment. There is no room here for a full blown debate, but the least you could do is offer some good scholarly links. That book is just the historical record of messages from a bunch of folks who lived by the Spirit of God. In that sense, that book is God’s Word, and it is my duty to warn you neglecting to obey it is perilous. But if God does not confirm that word of warning, nothing I could say or do would change your choices, and I certainly would never presume to enforce mine on you.