Indeed, extremely interesting and I take these scriptures for what they were intended to teach the new converts. Let me ask a few questions as part of my answer here Sean. Would a murderer or rapist have to quit murdering or raping to receive salvation, to be a part of the church? Why did the Council of Jerusalem only include these 4 provisions of the Mosaic law? Did these 4 provision include the sub-provisions associated with them?Sean wrote:RND,
What do you make of these scriptures?
Act 15:5 But some of the sect of the Pharisees who believed rose up, saying, "It is necessary to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses." 6 Now the apostles and elders came together to consider this matter.
So the matter they were to discuss was Gentile circumcision and keeping the Law of Moses. What was the decision?
Act 15:19 Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, 20 but that we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood.
Interesting.
The sect of the Pharisees were attempting to force and insist that strict observance to the Law of Moses was necessary for salvation. But the promises of God don't come through law but faith in those promises (Romans 4). Our righteousness is determined by our faith then. Does that make the law useless and null and void? Hardly. One can't "keep" the law and expect salvation. That doesn't mean the law is bad, it simply means that strict observance of the law doesn't make one saved.
Verse 4 gives us the answer. We are "dead" to the law that says we can't marry another, because we are "married" to Christ, yet in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us "lust" is adultery. So on one hand Paul is telling us we can ignore the law to be "married" to Christ, and yet Christ tells us even looking at a woman with bad intentions is a violation of the law.Also, what do you make of Paul's statements here:
Rom 7:1 Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?
Rom 7:2 For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband.
Rom 7:3 So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man.
Rom 7:4 Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.
Just in case we miss his point Paul says: Rom 7:6 But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
RND, what are we to make of this?
Obviously, it's not the "law" that's the problem.
The "letter" says that sleeping with another man's wife leads to death. The "Spirit" says looking at a woman (wife or not) with bad intentions leads to death. We CAN NOT obey apart from the "Spirit." In fact Paul tells us it is impossible.
Romans 8:6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. 7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
Does this mean that one can keep every point of the law and still be lost? The whole purpose of the law is to show us our sin, and point us to our need for a savior.