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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | The Law has been nailed to the cross | Col 2:14 | alanh | 171902 | ||
The question may be asked "if the Ten Commandments have been removed, how can Christians oppose worshipping idols, taking the Lord's name in vain, and committing adultery?" Our reasons for not dishonoring God and for not engaging in immoral behavior are not tied to the Ten Commandments, but to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We can know it is wrong to commit adultery, for example--not because Moses wrote in the Ten Commandments--but because what Jesus and the apostles taught (Matt 5:28-29; 1 Cor 6:9-11). The Judaizers among the Galatian churches were seeking to bring Christians under the "yoke of bondage" (Gal 2:4; 5:1). Who can doubt that the yoke of bondage included keeping the Sabbath? The gnostics (or pre-gnostics or incipient gnostics)--teachers who had combined some Christian doctrine w/ Jewish mysticism and Greek philosophy--at Colosse were attempting to bind Sabbath keeping on the church. Paul refuted their false doctrine by arguing that the death of Christ on the cross "blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us" (Col 2:14). Paul then forbad the Colossian Christians from allowing anyone to judge others on the basis of meat, or drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days (Col 2:16). If the Sabbath had been binding on the early Christians would it not have been legitimate and even mandatory yo judge others' faithfulness on the basis of Sabbath keeping? 2 Corinthians 3 provides one of the most powerful arguments concerning the removal of the law of Moses and the institution of the Gospel of Christ. The Corinthians were "manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart" (2 Cor 3:2-3). In using this language, Paul does not intend to deny the inspiration of the Old Testament (or covenant), but to show that it had been removed and the New Testament had been given to bring us to faith in Christ and to obedience to His word. The writer of Hebrews stress the same truth (Hebrews 10:9-10). The law God gave to Israel yhrough Moses included the Ten Commandments which were written "in tables of stone." The Old Testament writers speak only of the Ten Commandments as being written in tables of stone. This fact is very significant as one examines the rest of 2 Corinthians 3. In contrast to the law's being written in tables of stone, the Gospel of Christ is written in "fleshly tables of the heart." Both covenants originated in the mind of God, but the old was temporary and carnal; the new was bound on mankind to the end of the age. "For if that first covenant (or testament: diathéké same word in both contexts) had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second...In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away" (Hebrews 8:7 ,13). If the old covenant were waxing old and ready to vanish away more than 2000 years ago, how could anyone imagine it is still binding on anyone? 2 Corinthians 3 teaches plainly as any passage could that the covenant of God made w/ the Jewish people was better than any law any nation had ever known. But when it served the purpose God sent it to accomplish--"to bring us unto Christ (Galatians 3:24)--it faded away. This does not mean that Christians should not read the Old Testament, but that the precepts and the laws--including the Ten Commandments--are not binding on anyone during the Christian era. |
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