reply to post by JohnnyCanuck
Yep, those claiming Christianity are a confused lot. What group isn't?
IMO the law has never been done away with. In fact, perfect keeping of the law is defined as righteousness. So, did Christ do away with the law? No
way! I think he satisfied it perfectly for all time. There are two points I think worth making.
First, the law must be interpreted and keeping it has side-effects. If I do evil by keeping the law, am I righteous just because I kept the law? No.
Jesus deals with this issue continuously throughout his ministry. Jesus demonstrated amply that not only was nobody keeping the law literally but
that they more importantly weren't keeping the spirit of it. Nothing has changed in that - none of us is righteous.
Second, according to God's rules there is a sacrificial penalty to be paid for breaking the law whether intentionally or unintentionally. The
complexities of this are explained in Torah for both intentional and unintentional sins. IMO, what Jesus did was to pay that penalty for everyone,
for all time. Since the point is that this sacrifice is made, we have only to accept it to be the beneficiaries of it. It doesn't remove the law -
we're all still condemned. If you determine to keep the law - fantastic! As a Christian, I would never tell people that their salvation depends on
it because I believe Jesus has paid the price.
Again, only in IMO, much of what discussions like this come down to is who is going to be your authority in life. Is it God? Yourself? A personal
guru? The government? We all have a natural inclination to reject or question authority. I personally believe that by accepting God's authority
and trying to follow the spirit of the law, we'd all be much better off. But I'm willing to allow for everyone to have the freedom to go sinning
the head's off within the confines of civil law.