You do not believe you can be idolatrous in any way, shape or form? Then you are unlike the rest of us.
It has to: Jesus is the one who said that His Father is still working. The only reason that makes sense is that due to Adamâs sin He had to go âback to workâ.
I occurs to me that there are two different things happening with the Sabbath: as a principle, it was established early but it wasnât a command; after all, thereâs no indication that Abraham even knew of the Sabbath. But as a rule it doesnât appear until Moses, and thatâs an important distinction! As a command, itâs superseded by the Holy Spiritâs declaration in Acts 15; as a principle it is still valid.
Taking Sunday as a rest day, then, is fine so long as it is a rest day and not given to a frantic pursuit of âfunâ, though the Orthodox probably have the right idea: Saturday as a preparation day for the Resurrection celebration on the first day of the week as the first Christians did.
I have sometimes wondered if that was partly behind Lutherâs division of the coveting bit into two commandments, people in one and possessions in the other.
No, the reading of the Sermon on the Mount as requiring new laws has to be abandoned. And that conforms to a basic rule: the less clear passage is to be interpreted by the more clear. The ruling in Acts 15 is very clear, while Christians have argued over the meaning of the pertinent sections of the Sermon on the Mount pretty much from the start.
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The Sermon on the Mount did not require new laws, it required new hearts while not rescinding any moral law.
Yes, it is very clear that the audience was Jews who knew the basics (the basic 10 for instance), no one was suggesting or expecting they go away, and that they did not want to add extra burden on Gentiles, Gentiles who were conversant with Jewish law as well. It did not negate Jesusâ stipulations about the law in the Sermon on the Mount.
Furthermore, it basically uses my argument to end that section:
âFor the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.â
As you know, east and west developed along different tracks. In the west, philosophical approaches and interpretations seem to have followed earlier tradition in the west (Roman/latin), not as much what was written in the east. Although the basics of the doctrine should be the same, based on ecumenical councils, east developed different interpretations in various matters, for example about the original sin. No surprise if the interpretations about the resting days became a bit different.
Some influential persons in the west were seriously interested about the writings of the Greek church fathers, persons like the Wesley brothers. In some branches of the reformation, the eastern interpretations got more hold than in others, so the current situation is a mosaic of western and eastern influences. I have heard a claim that for example, Pentecostals are in some interpretations âhidden orthodoxâ, closer to eastern than western tradition. That claim was made by a Pentecostal theologian specialized in systematic theology. No wonder there are also different interpretations about Sabbath and Sunday in the west.
I tend to think Fatherâs heart is important and knowable.
I thought the covenant was with Abraham, which was before the Law? I always viewed the Law itself as temporary in nature, even if much of it reflects good morality, eg it is still viewed as âwrongâ if someone murders another.
The problem Paul had with the Law was not the Law itself, but that Jews were relying on it for their salvation, when it saves noone. Only the suffering servant of Isaiah could deal with the sins of people.
I think you may have overlooked the following teaching of Jesus:
Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, âListen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.â After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable.
âAre you so dull?â he asked. âDonât you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesnât go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.â (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) (Mark 7:14-19 NIV) [My emphasis of the last sentence in Mark.)
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The same way Mark assigns all diseases to evil spirits you mean.
Kosher is not about defilement or eating unclean food. it is about doing wat God commands for reasons that we do not understand. Kosher is basically a very clean diet that has minimum chance of infection from it. As we learned more about hygene and bacteria it became less essential, but the commands to the jews are still there. It is not the reson detre that matters, just the existence of the commands. Jesus was not talking about Kosher specifically, He was talking about the transmission of sin. (or not). Context is not just about how a sentence fits into a passage, it is also about how a passage fits into the setting and subject.
IOW, I disagree with you.and dispute your interpretation of that specific scripture.
(But I am not claiming you must accept my view, unlike some others here)
Richard
So far Iâve only seen some wide range claims from the Bible that supposedly support the opinion regarding the law is no more needed while not even one here cared to take in consideration the early church division and different positions on the subject . Itâs sad really.
People you need to understand that citing you own interpretation of the bible does not mean your position is valid .
Since the bible is unreliable and incapable of doing its job of making us understand the majority of details it has our looking should be on history .
While I am far from being an expert on this, there is a prevalent Christian theology called Dispensationalism. My understanding is that indeed there will be coming a special dispensation from God to fulfill his covenant with the Jewish people. The other view is covenant theology in that salvation has been already given to both Jews and Gentiles already. I will stop here to avoid any misleading statements but I suggest you study this from resources available on line and elsewhere.
Actually, your stance rather directly engages with the teaching of Jesus in this pericope. Here he talks about those who use the thinking of men to undermine what God desires. God has unleashed the power of the resurrection, not just to vindicate his Son, but to be the means of salvation for us all. We die and rise to walk in newness of life through the power of resurrection. In this life, there is no Jew and Gentile. This power could only be unleashed at tremendous cost through the death of his Son. [content removed by moderator.]
you are ignoring the fact that the Sabbath institution both predates sin and Israelites were REMINDED of the need to keep the Sabbath thousands of years later in the Sinai desert.
The claim God needed to return to work is not supported biblically as the bible clearly demonstrates the opposite of that claim for example in the life of the Messiah who kept the Sabbath as was His custom! You an entire cultures history demonstrating faithfulness to God by keeping the Seventh Day Sabbath for thousands of years after creation and the fall and a Christian church who clearly were still keeping the Sabbath years after Christâs death. A classic example of this was that of the story of the Waldensies
one of the primary sources of evidence of Waldensian Sabbathkeeping during the first half of the thirteenth century comes from a collection of five books written against the Cathars and Waldensians about 1241-1244 by Dominican inquisitor Father Moneta of Cremona in northern Italy.
Moneta passionately defended himself against criticism from Waldensians and Cathars that Catholics were transgressors of the Sabbath commandment. In the chapter De Sabbato, et De Die Dominico he discussed the significance of the seventh-day Sabbath of Exodus 20:8, âRemember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,â and contrasted it with the value of the Lordâs day, his term for the first day of the week.5
Moneta claimed that the Sabbath was for the Jews, pointing out that it was a memorial of Creation and of their liberation from Egypt.* Were Waldensians Sabbath-keepers? | Adventist World
Likewise in the 12th century, Inquisitor Moneta of Cremona railed against the Waldenses for seventh day sabbath keeping after the manner of Jews.[52] Johann Gottfried Hering in 1756 in his Compendieuses Church and Heretic Lexicon defined Sabbatati (a sect of the Waldenses) as those who kept the sabbath with the Jews.[53] In the early Waldenses prose tracts there existed an exposition on the 10 commandments which put forth their own explanation on the 4th commandment which defended sabbath keeping.[54][55]Waldensians - Wikipedia
I have no idea how what I said could be construed as denying anything about Christ and salvation. I was talking Kosher and nothing else.
Furthermore I strongly object to the accustion.
Richard
Itâs either that or there never was a seventh day â Jesus said, âMy Father is working till nowâ. If God rested on a seventh day then plainly He went back to work.
aw come on St Roymond, surely you know your bible better than thisâŠwhat is it that is said about the Seventh Day SabbathâŠits was made for man? How do you get that God needs a rest in all of this? The Sabbath was sanctified and Hallowed, it was set aside as a special day of worship from which all mankind could rest from their labours and spend time with God. The Israelites were specifically told âREMEMBERâ the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. The Sabbath did not start during the Exodus wanderings in the desert rather, the Israelites had spent so much time in captivity being exposed to Egyptian paganism, these were slaves who were not given days off for worshipâŠthe Egyptians didnt care for the Jewish special daysâŠso the Israelites were reminded of the Sabbath and the very special importance of this institution that was setup at Creation. It is a command that predates sin and will exist long after this world is cleansed of sin.
The Bible only says He rested from His creative acts and it probably envisions the earth as His temple if you compare it to other ancient Mesopotamian myths. I mean, God is interacting with world all throughout the Bible. He doesnât just leave creation. He sends a flood a few chapters later. And I doubt many Christians today think God actually needed rest or was exhausted.
Iâd say the account wasnât written before the sabbath was established. The sabbath was extremely important when this account was written and it clearly serves as an etiology for it.
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I read that in the creation story, ârestingâ means that God settled in His temple (creation) and started to rule. This interpretation is from John H. Walton âThe lost world of Genesis oneâ, if I remember correctly. No resting by God in the sense how humans rest. Rest for humans in the sense that we can leave the work of ruling the creation to God.
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I can see that 100%. And ruling isnât not acting (resting). I think we all agree God didnât go to sleep. Isnât that one of the Bible stories where the prophet (Elijah or Elijah?) asks if their god is on the toilet?
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God did not rest from his redemptive work â which included bloody sweat â until the first day of the week, the Lordâs Day of rest.