In a fallen world, divine revelation is divisive. The substance of the Fall was turning away from the heart-led way of obedience to God, and choosing to trust in human capabilities to discern truth. Thus, the whole world is born without the leadership of the heart in matters of morality. It was the choice to become one’s own god. To then hear the calling of our Creator and turn back to the heart-led way of living makes you a target of the wrath of those convinced you have betrayed human dignity, among other things.
Jesus was divine revelation personified. His teachings called for a return to living by the convictions the Father burns into our hearts. He called for training the mind to surrender and obey the truth from the heart. This was a return to something Jewish leaders had long rejected, so it constituted a revolution, a radical restoration of the ancient Hebrew ways that de-emphasize trusting human reason as a source of truth.
His teaching was a fiery and divisive gospel message. It was the purpose of His life. The image of fire represented the Holy Spirit, to be sure. However, it also represented the fire of persecution that comes from listening to the Holy Spirit speak in your heart. It would set fire to your life in both ways. Jesus was eager to get on with the mission, wishing that the fire had already been kindled.
But there was one more intervening step before He could send that fire. He referred to it as a baptism, a common figure of speech for a hellish testing. But instead of hesitating, He felt driven hard to make it happen. He was actually eager for His trial and crucifixion. It was the whole reason He lived, and this was how His Messianic Kingdom would be born.
The conflict was necessary. Did anyone imagine the Messiah would somehow bring peace to fallen mankind? By no means! This was not the end of the fallen world, but the opening of a spiritual kingdom not of this world. Their hearts would be conquered first, long before this world was finished. Otherwise, no one could enter. And the hearts would fall to Him one at a time, individually, based on nothing that humans could understand. Thus, human family households would be divided.
All the old human loyalties of the past would no longer matter. The new kingdom would transcend such things, resting entirely on a changed heart.
Few christians know that Jesus preached only to Jews, the lost sheep of Israel. He said he was not sent to Gentiles. He taught the OT law which was why He said keep the commandments. It was Paul who taught the gospel of the grace of God.
I hope you aren’t trying to separate Grace and Law, because law is grace. That is, without a law covenant, grace is unknowable. What Jesus preached as a Hebrew way of life is, at its core, the way of life for all humanity. The specific applications of law must of necessity change with the context, but Jesus remains the Living Law of God and we must embrace His approach to life or miss out on God’s favor.
Paul taught that those who put themselves under the law are under a curse. The law, in and of itself, was good, but God’s grace is better. (read Hebrews) The law cannot save anyone. Only faith, belief in the death/shed blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins does. We cannot have both law and grace for one cancels out the other. It is true that the law made one know how sinful they are. Like Paul said in Romans 7:7, “I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law.”
You twist the words of Scripture with your legalistic reading. We aren’t part of the Western Christian traditions here, sir. Your blog is loaded with belief in all kinds of pagan mythology (Semiramis as the mother/wife of Nimrod? Please…) and other nonsense. This is not a forum for debate, but if you can contribute to the ongoing process already established here, or to ask questions, that’s fine. Otherwise, the above was your last comment. Feel free to disagree, even write bad things about me on your own blog, but don’t disrupt something you don’t understand.
I guess you really didn’t read my posts. I was writing about paganism and how we got Christmas, etc.
I did want to ask you, what do you do with Romans 6:14. What about what Peter said concerning law being a yoke (Acts 15:10) and Paul stated it was bondage (Galatians 4.3, 31) and commanded believers to “cast out the bondwoman,” i.e., the Law. (Gal 4:30)
If you can use some scriptures to show where I am wrong. Not wishing to argue but to understand where you are getting that law is grace.
Context is everything, sir. Quoting passages don’t help if your intellectual approach to Scripture is the same as the Pharisees. Jesus and His disciples were Eastern men; the Bible is an Eastern book; Christianity is an Eastern religion. I realize it does take some time to learn, but if you don’t approach the Bible with their intellectual traditions, you cannot possibly understand their Scripture. You cannot read the Bible as “propositional truth” because nobody in ancient Hebrew culture would have done so. The Apostles didn’t either. Jesus taught them to restore the ancient Hebrew mystical approach to understanding things. The Pharisees were wrong because they adopted the Hellenistic intellectual approach which was foreign to Hebrew language and culture.
So perhaps you do understand that the Talmud is not the Law of Moses? Jews in Jesus’ day did call it that, but what they really meant was the mystical Covenant of Moses perverted with Hellenistic (Aristotelian) analysis. Jesus called it the “traditions of the elders” and condemned it consistently. They had built up an imaginary “God” who didn’t exist, and considered the Law binding by the words, approaching it in the same manner as man-made legislation. It was all a matter of syntax and grammar, an approach wholly foreign to Hebrew intellectual traditions. Judaism today is even farther along those same perverted lines. It has this body of human reasoned traditions now written in a fat library of perverted legalistic nonsense. “Law” is a very bad English translation that conjures up a concept utterly foreign to how ancient Hebrew people thought of the Covenant.
Quite often in the New Testament writings, “law” is a reference to this perverted Talmudic reasoning. It was something that the leadership held over the heads of the people so they could oppress them. David flatly says in Psalms that the Covenant is the heart of God. Not just this thoughts, but His personal moral character. From what we can know about Eastern literature as a whole, we can say that the Covenant was a contextual manifestation of God’s divine moral character. The actual Covenant wasn’t “law” as we think of it, but an indicator, a path to grace. When you read that New Testament passage where Paul says “not under law but under grace” he is distinguishing between the Jewish false traditions and the original revelation of God. Nothing God says is something to bind you in any kind of slavery, but is designed to set you free, to restore us to His design for us, to the design of Creation and to reality itself.
See through the Covenant provisions to the heart of God — that’s what ancient Hebrew language itself assumes you’ll do. If you keep approaching it from Western intellectual traditions (Greek/Roman/Germanic traditions) you’ll always get it wrong. The Covenant was God’s initial effort to restore us from the Curse of the Fall. The Hebrew people lost their way from that path back to Eden, so God sent His Son, the Law personified. In Psalms “Law” is revelation, not words that bind us under legalistic particulars. Law is a gift from God; it is an expression of Grace. The New Testament used the word “law” quite differently in many cases, so you have to read the context to get it, because it’s cast against the background of false Jewish belief.
Yay, Ed.
I really wish the “law” translated was made more specific. Most pastors use “law,” as you said, Ed, as the OT Mosaic law, as something to show we need grace (since Mosaic laws were “contradictory,” logically).