Christian Laws

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I already gave you one important requirement - deny yourself and follow the Lord, ie. picking up your cross to follow Christ.

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And further down Jesus says: "In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple."Jesus was not talking to future believers, he was talking to the people of his time, the people who could physically follow him as the twelve did.Christians are obviously not giving up everything.When the master left, did he just leave the slave with a handful of metaphors and catch phrases to follow?As I said in Message 6Christianity dishes out catch phrases and metaphors. Laws or rules of behavior should never be left to interpretation.A master who provides clear instructions, isn't reduced to a computer flow chart. He is a good master.A master whose words can be twisted to suit the whims of the slave, is not a good master.If the slave can't tell me what his master's will is, then the master did not make his will clear.Edited by purpledawn, : Msg

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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the jews of later times were the ones who created the 'oral' torah. It wasnt at Gods direction, it was as a way of teaching the law of moses...unfortunately they began to view the oral law as more important then the mosaic laws.

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What later times? I already told you that according to Jewish History the Oral Torah sprouted around the end of the 2nd century bce. It provided the practical application of the law. Existence and UsageHow can you accept Jewish tradition for Mosaic authorship, but not for the Oral Law?Show me in reality that the Jews viewed the oral law as more important than the Mosaic Laws.In Matthew 15:1, Jesus is pointing out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, not condemning the Oral Law. As I showed in Message 89, the author of Matthew has Jesus telling people to do what they say, but not what they do since they don't practice what they preach.

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these oral laws clearly violated Gods laws about honoring ones mother and father...so it easy to understand why Jesus condemned the use of them.

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1. Show me that Verse 5 was part of the Oral Law.
2. Show me that all the Oral Laws violated Gods laws. Just because Jesus disagrees with one or two of the oral laws, doesn't mean he disagrees with them all. As I showed in Message 89.

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your links dont explain how the christians taught the oral law...can you explain it.

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Because that wasn't the point of the article.In Message 80 you said: Jesus never quoted oral Jewish traditions, he always quoted from the inspired scriptures. And I provided - Adultery can be committed with the eyes (Leviticus Rabba 23:12) which is from the Oral Law.From the article "The Oral Torah in the New Testament". From the article "Jesus and Oral Torah"Paul and Oral Torah In Message 1 you included this verse as a Christian Law. Two of those on the list are from the Oral Law, not the Written Law.

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Surely if they did, their writings would show them teaching such...do the NT teach the oral law or not? If yes, show me.

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The gospels do not cover everything Jesus taught during his ministry. We have no idea what the Twelve taught after his death, and we don't have all of what Paul taught.Each author had a purpose for his writing. They didn't need to include the Jewish teachings that Jesus agreed with since that was taught in the synagogues. They only had to include that which was different.Edited by purpledawn, : Msg #

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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It seems your sole concern is to rationalize disbelieving in Christ. You seem to be mustering your intellect to discredit the Gospel.

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As for me, I always asked God to lead me to Christians who could help my faith rather thatn hurt it. So what faults of preachers or teachers I never allowed it to discourage me from following on to know the Jesus who I met in the privacy of my living room.

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I did not hunt for reasons to doubt Christ. Nor did I labor on rationals and excuses to not receive Him as Lord and Savior. So while you are standing on the wayside complaining, many of us are going on to deepen our experience of this Wonderful Lord and going on to the kingdom.

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The gates of Hell shall not prevail against the builded church, even if they make a lot of mistakes on the way to the end.

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And still you don't answer the question. Your concern is rationalizing why you can't tell me specifically what the Master's will is. No confusion, no interpretation, clear to everyone what he will judge when he returns.I don't present doubt of Christ, I present doubt of Christian tradition.

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PD writes:

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A master whose words can be twisted to suit the whims of the slave, is not a good master.

It will be interesting to see someone like you stand before God and charge Him with such a moral lesson.

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Why? God didn't write the NT or Christian traditions.

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PD writes:

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If the slave can't tell me what his master's will is, then the master did not make his will clear.

Are you saying that you wish to be a slave of Jesus Christ ? Or are you saying that from a distance you have decided that it is not worth it ?

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You don't have to answer to me. It is a matter between you and God.

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Good grief! I'm continuing the analogy you quoted in Message 117 from Luke 12:47. Are your comprehension skills that bad?Please stick to the topic of the thread.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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But the way I speak to you is the way I would speak to ANY convert to the Gospel. First you have to learn to Abide in Him and allow Him to Abide in you.

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Well stop, you aren't taking to converts. It is a debate and the task is to provide the Christian Laws (Peg's term, not mine) for which Christians are held accountable.

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One more time. Start here with this requirement - Abide in Me and I in you.

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Chapter 15 from the Book of John (90-120CE). Jesus is talking to his disciples there with him. What makes that a practical application for the average Christian today?The "laws" don't have to be thou shalt or shalt not, but they do need to be clear instructions and not ambiguous catch phrases and metaphors.Example in your own words: So to abide in the Lord and to allow His grace to empower them to live Christ they must excercise their spirit and turn to their spirit where the Spirit of Jesus is.

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Once again, the Christian's very first requirement is to abide in Him and allow Him to abide in us.

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So what is the practical application of this requirement?
How does one or anyone else know if one is achieving this requirement?

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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To abide in Christ you have to learn how to deal with many things like confession of sins, opening the soul to Christ, obeying the sense of life, learning to feed the inner man with the word of God, fellowshipping with other Christians, etc. many lessons.

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The commandments are the key to abiding according to this author.

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With patience and practice and a life long commitment of consecration, we, just like John or Paul or Peter, may learn to abide in Christ and He abide in us.

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It would go faster if someone just knew what the commandments were just like John, Paul, and Peter did. Not so much left to wild interpretation.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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But you have to abide in Him in order to receive His moment by moment commandments.

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So Christians get moment by moment commandment updates. They don't have them provided in the NT.So only those tuned in can actually know what is expected of them. Interesting.You could actually be wrong about the process to receive such updates. How would you know if you were wrong or how would anyone else know that what you presented was right or wrong? Just trust the unknown man behind the screen?Not good to come before the Master and find out that you got the wrong message.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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The wild imagtination is in those who want to invent a non Christ Christian life. They imagine that they can do anything without abiding in Christ. He said that apart from Him we can do nothing.

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According to you. Of course since nobody seems to know the commandments today, everyone is apart from Jesus.

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John, Peter, Paul all learned to abide in the living Christ. There is no "short cut".

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John and Peter actually heard Jesus so they had the commandments. You bet they had a short cut. They had a direct line. Christians don't have that today. Paul had access to the original disciples, so again a direct line to information.Not quite the same set up as Christians have today after 2000 years of drift.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes, even forever. Do not be carried away by various and strange teachings ..." (Hebrews 13:8,9a)

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Good to know I'm not supposed to get carried away by your various and strange teachings.Without checks and balances, people can't really tell what is required and what is strange. Notice what you dish out compared to what Peg dishes out. Which one is strange?Neither can list the Master's will.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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Obviously life can be very complex. There is no Bible verse telling us exactly what to do in billions of situations.

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Exactly!Like Hillel before him, Jesus brought a more humane and universal notion of Torah interpretation. The spirit of the law as opposed to the letter of the law. If one gets the spirit right, the details will take care of themselves.We look at what the authors are trying to tell their audience and bring that spirit forward when obeying the laws of our own individual nations all the way down to our communities and families.There are no Christian laws, there are only Christian principles derived from the spirit of the ancient writings and the experiences of people who have gone before. Message 114

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You're trying to push me into imagining a New Testament with a trillion pages of commandments covering all manner of very detailed situations. So we need the living Lord along with the living word.

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No I'm not. I agree we shouldn't stagnate in laws over 2000 years old.

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Let this sink into your ears. All the diciples of Jesus are bound to make mistakes. Paul made mistakes and he was quite mature. So did Peter and John make mistakes. We cannot abvoid as disciples of Jesus to make mistakes.

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I agree. Never said people didn't make mistakes, but to repent one must know what is considered incorrect. Christianity isn't consistently clear.Edited by purpledawn, : Msg #

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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In the New Testament it is a matter of God Himself coming to live in man. This is a matter of Christ's life becoming our life, who have receive Him into our beings. This is very subjective and makes Christ's life our life.

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"When Christ our life is manifested, then you also will be manifested with Him in glory." (Col. 3:4)

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Nice visual, but practical application is the key, not just more catch phrases.Colossians 3:4 Parallel Bible Christ may be your life, but that doesn't make Christ's life your life. It just means those who have devoted their life to better behavior as taught by Christ, they will be with him in glory when he appears.The writer's point, as was Hillel's and that of Jesus was Paul and pseudo Paul gave their audiences the practical application of their time. What's the practical application of these characteristics in a Christian today?As I said, "We look at what the authors are trying to tell their audience and bring that spirit forward when obeying the laws of our own individual nations all the way down to our communities and families."

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For "Our life is hidden with Christ in God ... Christ our life" means that God, Christ, and the believers in Christ share one life.

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Actually the writer is speaking to his audience, not us.

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We all have lived by our natural life all our natural lives. We have to learn, as Christians, to ABIDE in Christ our life and learn to walk and live by the divine life that has been dispensed into us. As I previously stressed Christ's command "Abide in Me and I in you."

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Again, nice creative writing, but no practical application, which really is the point of this thread. Get past the catch phrases, the metaphors and the creative writing and give plain unvarnished practical application of what the Master wants.

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PD writes:

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I agree. Never said people didn't make mistakes, but to repent one must know what is considered incorrect. Christianity isn't consistently clear.

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This matter of confession and repentence must go along with the conviction of the Holy Spirit with the word of God. It deepens as the Christian grows in the divine life.

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The more light from God the more we see our faults. The more we confess the more the life grows. The more the life grows the brighter the light shines. With brighter light there is yet deeper confession, deeper repentence. Then there is more growth in life and subsequently more penetrating light. With more light there is more confession still.

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Still all smoke and mirrors, but no substance. No practical application. To repent, one must know what is considered incorrect.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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So you can see that this obedience to Jesus is far far deeper than outward actions. The rebellion in man's mind must be subdued and the thought life made captive to the indwelling Jesus Christ.

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This takes a life time and is very practical yet hard to codify in a list of Dos and Don't.

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Unfortunately, the idea that people had time to "get it right" isn't really supported by the urgency that Jesus and Paul presented. Both made it clear that the kingdom of God was at hand.It is arrogant to think one has "time" to play the "need to know" game you're presenting. No one knows when they will die.Rather unfair for the Master to leave the slave with only a few requirements with the idea that he'll have to find or figure out the others as he needs them. Then the Master returns and the slave is held accountable for what he didn't find. As the verse concerning the Master said, both will be given stripes for actions that deserve it, one just won't be as harsh.If one wants to avoid stripes, one has to know what actions deserves stripes. They need to be made clear or be clearly available since the Master can come back at any time. Remember? No one knows when.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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Your complaints sound to me like your hunting for objections to the New Testament salvation. When a person is presented with a turkey dinner, I don't see the need to try to keep them from hunting only for bones to choke on.

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You really are missing the point of this thread. From Message 6Christianity presents the idea that believers are not under "law" to be counted righteous, but one must follow "law" to show faith. Even Paul speaks of throwing off the old behavior and taking on the new. What are those new standards based on? I feel that Jesus and Paul based it on Jewish law (written and oral).As I said in Message 152: Like Hillel before him, Jesus brought a more humane and universal notion of Torah interpretation. The spirit of the law as opposed to the letter of the law. If one gets the spirit right, the details will take care of themselves.We look at what the authors are trying to tell their audience and bring that spirit forward when obeying the laws of our own individual nations all the way down to our communities and families.Neither you nor Peg has shown anything more specific. If there is more to the behavioral part, then please share clearly.Edited by purpledawn, : Msg #

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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Shame on you, twisting what I wrote to be summarized as "Laws Take Time".

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Shame on you for continually not addressing the point of this thread.I've made my intentions and my request very clear in Message 6 and throughout this thread.
I want to know what specific behaviors or actions are required by Christians to manifest their faith in God?
What will the Master judge specifically as worthy of stripes upon his return?The request is based on a statement by Peg in another thread. I'm not interested in all the nuances of Christianity. This is a very specific thread about a very specific aspect of Christianity.The parable you chose from Luke 12 supports that actions are important and the slave will be held accountable whether he knows the Master's will or not.

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But there is another kind of ignorance which arises from not wanting to know.

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I do want to know about the laws or behaviors for which Christians are held accountable.
I'm not asking how long it takes an individual to learn the rules.
I'm not asking for the process the religion uses to teach the rules.
I'm asking for the unvarnished rules and the authority that makes them the Master's will.Very simply, what will earn a slave stripes and what won't?
It should be as simple as that.Edited by purpledawn, : Msg #

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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The only simply answer for this question is this:

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Live as christ lived. Love as Christ loved. If we strive to do that, then God is pleased and we will get a favorable judgment.

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However, this requires accurate knowledge of what he taught, and what he believed and why he acted the way he did. The only place to get that knowledge is from the writings of the NT.

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So list how Jesus lived and show support.
List how Jesus loved and show support.Jesus lived as a Jew (religion). If you disagree, show that he didn't.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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Does that approach a reply to your question ?

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No. You're just listing generalities.I want specifics.
How are you supposed to think?
How are you supposed to talk?
How are you supposed to treat others?
How are you supposed to think about others?
How are you supposed to think about yourself?
How are you supposed to sleep?
How are you supposed to eat?
How are you supposed to handle your money?
How are you supposed to post on the internet?Please show specific support, not just more analogies and metaphors. Love is not a specific answer.
Abiding is not a specific answer.What is the practical application that is the same for everyone.
Standard Operating Procedure. Same across the board. Nothing left to interpretation.Why is this so difficult?
Shouldn't a Christian be able to rattle them off?

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz