You folks need to repent.
When I read between the lines, the dominant theme of writing about church religion these days reeks of a rejection of divine standards. Let’s make this clear folks: God’s Law is the nature of reality. Granted, if you analyze things by the logic of human intellect, you will not even see the moral truth of God’s revelation. In that condition, you are utterly incapable of perceiving good from evil.
However, if you walk the heart-led path (AKA, by your convictions), you begin to hear directly from Creation itself. Reality will speak to you about how God’s Law is nothing more than His divine moral character, which is the framework for all Creation. In other words, God’s Law is the standard for how reality operates. It is reality.
So, if you submit to Christ as your feudal Lord, then His promise is that He will (1) reveal Himself in your convictions and (2) fire up those convictions so that you have the will and strength to obey. You will desire God’s Law; you will become obsessed with making Him smile.
So God’s Law is privilege, not a duty. If all you have is a duty, then you are walking in your fallen flesh. You cannot please God in the flesh. It won’t matter what you can compel your flesh to do, what makes God smile is your heart of passion for Him and His reputation. You’ll want everyone to see just how amazing and sweet is the feudal service of your Lord.
So it riles me to no end the way most people write about Christian religion as if it’s a chore, as if it’s a hard thing to do. What’s hard is getting out the way of God’s Spirit working in you. You will find your own fleshly nature intolerable, as it nags and drags you down every moment. You’ll want to keep the hammer and nails in a carpenter’s apron tied around your waist so you can nail your flesh back up on the Cross every time you turn around.
Over and over again: Covenant Law is a privilege.
* The terms “God’s Law” and “Covenant Law” are synonymous. Those are just names for God’s will for us. Pay attention to the whole context of Romans 6, because the reference to “law” in verse 14 refers to the civil enforcement authority of Judean government, not the divine will of God. If all your holiness comes from human enforcement of a code, then you have no righteousness before the Lord. If you commit to Him with all your heart, then He will grant His Holy Spirit to change you and set you free from your fleshly nature.
Its hard to do as in hard to convince anyone else to do because its a religion with no authority because its a religion that is rebellion against all autjority. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” I.e. this religion denies any human has authority to punish sinners. Therefore it promotes Sodom and Gomorrah, and that’s what it brought forth. Sodom came from the English speaking Christian West and Gomorrah was established in the Anglosphere first of all places in the modern world and spread out from there because the KJV put that fake Pericope Adulterae that’s only in a few mss into John 8 and that passage from hell denies all authority to enforce God’s Law on any level, even tribal and feudal as you like.
Interesting how you managed to inject a lot of impertinent stuff there. Christ was granted authority above all human authority, so rejecting human authority in principle is no sin. He came to end the reliance on human authority for moral structure. If it’s not in your heart already, there’s nothing eternal to gain from having a human authority impose the structure externally. Don’t confuse the Two Realms and how they work. We try to stay out of the way of human authority, and we know it can take our property and lives, but in the final analysis, we obey the heavenly realm in how we live. The only reason we bother living in this world is to demonstrate the glory of Christ. This life is one big lie in the first place.
As for the Pericope Adulterae, you are missing the whole point of that passage. The comment Jesus makes there is that the Jews had so corrupted their observance of the Covenant that they had no valid authority, no real shalom to protect. The whole purpose of the Code of Moses was to provide a structure for faith. It was meant to cultivate genuine faith, not to be used as a weapon to oppress. The Jews who accused the woman had no faith in the first place, and had no standing to accuse anyone of anything. Your rambling about Sodom and Gomorrah is impertinent.
I don’t mind you asking questions, but this blog is not a debate forum. If you have the urge to write and dispute, nothing stops you from having your own blog or some other forum for expression.
Walking in faith and in Christ is such a beautiful, personal and inexplicable way of being, becoming one with Him and all creation. You become a new person, seeing the world with new eyes. John 3:21 If you don’t or can’t understand or relate to that, He will show you if you ask and listen. That’s the whole point – having a pure and real relationship with Christ as He dwells in us. Making it complicated or turning it into a debate is foolishness. Ps 53:1; Prov 28:26 Keeping “the devil and his workshop” busy many folks are. Yep, repentance (turning away) sure is needed. Hopefully folks will see that soon.