Thou Shalts and Thou Shalnts

The old friends are the best... Me? I'm a filthy, manky, greasy, dirty sinner myself. But someone gave me a coat to wear over the muck. It ain't made out of polyester/cotton. It's made of righteousness.There's a lot of God-in-my-own-image-and-likeness adherents out there. Vegatarian-in-my-own-image too it seems Any view on Gods law re: adultery being good?

If you follow the law you will feel the warmth that comes with it..and vice(sic) versa. We all experience that. We all feel good when we do good and feel bad when we do what we know is bad (even if it quickly gets buried)The point is you can't break any part of the law or else it is the same as breaking all of it. Condemnation is guarenteed. Not much blessing in that is there? Jesus summed up the whole law in this. The spirit behind the letter if you like. You don't see condemnation in there? Try following it to the letter - say for a month. Let me know how you get on Thankfully, you don't have to work it up. God works it up. Essentially, all you have to do to be saved is to stop burying what he works up. Do it. Spend a little quiet time examining your conscience - say a 10 minute trawl through what you've done wrong recently. Follow through on the consequences for others because of what you've done: the people you've hurt, the selfishness (of shellfishness if you're Chiro ), the nastiness, the gossip, the malice. It's difficult, (I know) but do it. You may find yourself feeling uncomfortable.Then watch the discomfort evaporate. Watch it disappear. Buried.

Your answer was ambiguous. I'll assume you mean that you agree that the law against adultery is a good law. It is also achievable. No one MUST commit adultery. They just choose NOT to keep it. The law is reasonable and good. It is people who break it who are not reasonable or good.Why can't people just be reasonable and good? Well...they've fallen. That's why they can't follow the law - reasonable and good though it is.

Or the people were good but then became bad and a method for making them good again was decided upon. Showing people how far they've fallen (which is what the law is intended to do) might result in the people asking for the only person who can make them good to make them good again.The alternative is to lower the standard of the law. Bad then becomes the new good. He is God. He chose the former. His right. And there's little point in getting into a tizzy about it...

Law does not save. It cannot. Anybody out there feeling the pressure of their sin in their lives. Rejoice then... the Gospel is good news for bad people (ie: people who know their bad) Read Romans 4 and see where righteouness comes from. Faith. Not law. But the law is there. It has a purpose. "Keep of the grass" and what do we do? "40mph zone" and what do we do? "Don't touch the exhibit" and what do we do? Put a law up and we'll want to break it.It seems obvious doesn't it. If there is no law there is no transgression of the law. The law was necessary in order to show transgression against a holy God in a way we could understand. The law shows us that we are sinners. The downside is that we have no excuse: we know we are sinners.Read on the rest of Romans 7. Only a man who has had the law do its work on him can empathise with the man here. A man lead to Christ by the workings of the law

You quoted someone quoting Jesus, I quoted Paul quoting Paul. Who has the high card now? We go on the basis that all scripture is of equal merit or this discussion becomes impossible. The discussion is about what scripture says not about the relative weight of one piece versus the other - which is a different discussion altogether. Agreed?Jesus said the law is summed up in those two commandments. Condensed down to, all pointing towards, etc. The condemnation is in the fact that he who is guilty of breaking any of the law is guilty of breaking it all. Do you keep the two laws Jesus said were it, in a nutshell. If you don't, you are breaking the law and your condemned.Forget the fact you're in a discussion for the moment Ringo. Answer the question for your very own self and see what I mean:Do you love God with all you heart soul and mind?
Do you love your neighbour as yourself?Well do you Punk? Which means you cannot trust reports on what Jesus said or anybody else. Which just terminates the discussion. What is there to discuss if none if it can be trusted as accurately recording what the original writers wrote?You need to decide the terms under which you discuss Ringo.

People are unworthy to start with. They are born unworthy. That's the whole point. The default position is that everybody born has destination hell stamped on there forehead. The 'game' doesn't start in a neutral position. God is on a mission to rescue whoever would be rescued. The mission has constraints in that all Gods attributes must be satisfied. He can't just step in out of love and save us all. That would conflict with his Just-ness. He can't just stand by and watch us all be condemned - that would conflict with his Love.The standards aren't arbitary. God's standards are simply perfection because that is who he is. He can't be less than that. He can't have a relationship in eternity with less than that (which is why even the tiniest (by human standards) breaking of any of the law results in condemnation.Get this whole concept of jumping over the bar out of your head. The purpose of the law is not that we meet it. The purpose is to show us we can't meet it. THAT'S ALL. Quit talking about whether it is fair or not. Examine it's place in the full plan then you'll see the sense in what he did. Get condemned by the law. Let it do what it was meant to do.Relax and let it condemn you Chiro. When the pressure of it condemning you gets too great, you will cry out to the only person possible to cry out to. Then he will save you. An interesting juxtapositon. The thus versus the goody (Chiro). However the bible describes YOU as the filthy sinner. "Whilst we were still sinners, Christ died for us". You would have to wonder about a God who sacrificed his own son for a person steeped in filth. Thug is hardly an accurate description.Like it ain't his sin CP. It's yours. And like us all, you know it. Take a look inside and see it sometime. Really check out your own badness. Examine it and cringe...

A fair assumption. Now in assuming that is there not another assumption that must automatically follow (purely for the purposes of discussion)? The only way that Jesus words can be considered accurate is that God inspired the writers to ensure this would happen. After all, there is no record of scribes recording everything Jesus said (and even if there were, these people could have made mistakes). Furthermore, two of the Gospels are written by people who weren't quoting Jesus from first hand experience.God inspiring the writers so as to ensure no error would mean Paul was as inspired as any recorder of Jesus' words. Would it not?

But in order to assume Jesus words as prime and Pauls as secondary, one would have to make an unwarranted assumption. Partial inspiration. There is no basis for this. Either assume (for the purposes of this discussion) that all of it was inspired and discuss or none of it was and the discussion ends due to all being potentially inaccurate - with no way of knowing for sure what is and isn't accurate. Just speculation and off topic discussion about how we know some to be accurate and other stuff not.

If the bible isn't assumed (only for the sake of discussion) to be accurate then no objective internally focussed discussion is possible about interpreting what it says. Only subjective discussion - in which any view on it is as good as the next one.You yourself point to Matthew 25 as evidence of something. But what use the evidence of something if you don't know that is what Jesus actually said. If you say this is evidenced elsewhere (ie: internally, scripture measured against other scripture) then how do you know that is accurate.Surely attempt at discussion become ridiculous You assert this but how do you demonstrate it as fact? Have you got an example of an error so I can see broadly what you mean here? What kind of external verifcation allows us to ascertain any part of it is accurate?

Discussion has progressed because folk are assuming what Jesus said is accurate. But when faced with having to take account of what Paul says revert back to "well that bit can be dismissed - it's only what Jesus says" At which point I raise the question I raise. I'm sure they're not - except that there is no objective way of knowing the relative merits of any of them as a soon as you start talking about the bible being inaccurate (for want of being unable to say objectively which bit is accurate or not). The discussion turns to what this theologian says versus that theologions. Subjective speculation which some may enjoy, but which ends the discussion about what the bible says. "How do you know Jesus/Paul said that?" is the first response that can be made to any comment Have you got a specific example: like with enough text to see the background and context? Can you be a bit more specific? Can you be specific as to how any of these things let us know anything Jesus, for example, said is actually what he said. As far as I am aware there is sufficient extra-biblical historical evidence to say a man called Jesus who claimed he was God etc actually lived. But what he actually said as reported in the Gospels? How can we know any of it for sure?

For the purposes of discussion it matters not a jot whether its true or fiction. All that matters for this discussion is the decision to assume (for the duration of the discussion) the whats written is scripture.As soon as these constraints are stepped outside then what's good for the goose becomes good for the gander. If Pauls writing is not considered accurately reported and relevant scripture then neither can Matthews be..

And who decided what that is? If the material has some extra-biblical constraints put on it, why stop with Paul? Where is the absolute measure against which relevancy,accuracy etc are measured You've presumed the the message of the Gospels to be the standard against which to measure. On what basis do you suppose this to be the standard however? If you say "Jesus' words" how do you know the gospel writers recorded them correctly or that they had a great handle on Jesus message? (assuming for one second that there is any conflict between Jesus and Paul - which I don't)

"Jesus' words" you say. They are the words the Gospel writers say Jesus said. What is prime therefore is the words of the Gospel writers vs the words of Paul.Or can we at this point clear that up and decided simply that what is recorded is (for the purpose of this discussion) accurately recorded and examine it in that light ie: Jesus words are accurately recorded as are Pauls. I would agree. And I would like to investigate what these alleged differences are. I have been saying that there are none. The message is one message. Jesus proclaims it Paul explains it. Two halves of the same coin if you likeBut escape into the arbitary decision that one part of the bible is recording inaccurately and the other recording accurately won't wash here. Romans 1-8 is an expostion of the workings of the Gospel. Very little in here has anything to do with the church in Rome specifically. Paul comparing the man in Christ and the man not in Christ throughout is universal Here we go again Jesus said "Love God..." and "Love your neighbour... that's the commandments/Law in a nutshell".Now hands up all those who follow these commandments. And to the first person who is says "I don't all the time..but I try...and that's what counts" I say show me where Jesus (or anybody else in the bible for that matter) says that trying is how salvation worksI'm not interested in personal theory here "logic (read "MY logic") says so" I'd like the bible to say so. Given that thats what we supposedly examining here.Cos if it ain't in the bible it's in your own head. And with all due respect...

Sigh...If scripture is mans construct, then Jesus' words are not necessarily Jesus' words. Thus it is pointless to try to may any case, including "damnation by not trying" from Jesus' alleged words.If it's an imperfect map then which bits are the correct ones and how do you know which?