Quote:
Originally Posted by Humble Bricklayer
Should you, then, as a professed LAW-keeper, fail in just one little point of that LAW, then you immediately come under the CURSE of the LAW. That's why it is written:
"Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them" (Deuteronomy 27:26).
The verse above is the one unique standard of the LAW:
'Continue...in...all...things'....
'Continue...in.. all... things'
And it is an IMPOSSIBLE standard to keep. Why? Because absolutely no one can ever, or has ever, continued in all things that are written in the LAW to do them..
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Well, I certainly did misread your initial post. But I still don't know what it had to do with Bear Bear's first post. It seemed that you were contradicting him, but perhaps you were just using his word 'law' to veer off on a tangent.
(btw I think posters often do this - including me - we see a verse or word that we use as a platform for our prepared speech. But it has nothing to do with the OP)
Regarding the law of Christ, the original post, my thought was that James 2:8 shows the royal law, which is another way of saying the same thing. Love the person near you. Even if they are unlovable, unlovely, unloving. You still love them, not just on lip service but in action. That was my reading of it.
Regarding Deuteronomy, I feel that the [only] one who kept the law was Jesus Christ. He was(is) the King, the Law-Giver, and as such was the Law-Keeper. Only he could speak to Moses' law, because Moses' law spoke of him. What was impossible for you or I (or Paul, or John) was not only possible but was his destiny. And as such a one, his 'royal law' supersedes all else for us. Everything feeds into Jesus Christ and everything comes out of Jesus Christ. He is the singularity, unique. He is 'the' Christ. His word is 'the' law.
Regarding my misreading Acts, not sure what you meant. Jesus kept the law. Therefore, it isn't impossible. And Peter said, "I have never eaten anything unclean". Either Peter lied or the word never means never. So, seven years after Christ's death, Peter is seen strictly following dietary restrictions. Am I misreading that?
The other person that I failed to mention was John. At the end of the Bible, John writes of the 'Nations'. Most Christians interpret this as what? I see the same word used throughout the NT 'ethnoi' and into the OT, in the Greek LXX. It means "ethnics", those who are not Jew. Or is the meaning in the last book of the Bible different from the other 65 books? Revelation 21:24 is not a hidden verse, or secret. It is plainly published, now for centuries. "The nations walk in it's light". To John, the New Jerusalem was a Jewish city, and the nations are the non-Jews around. No different from in John's day.
What happened is that the church, now fully gentile, wiped out the idea that there was some distinction between Jew and Greek. So Christians would read right past this verse, as if it were not there. Or else, they would assign some special meaning to this word, as if it were different from all the other times the Bible said 'ethnoi'. No, the meaning is consistent. It is used because it had meaning to the writer, and to his readers. But the wholly gentile church effaced that.
I am a gentile, not opposed to being a gentile. Perfectly happy, frankly. Not in any mood to become something I'm not. But I can see what the church did to the Jews. "You cannot be a Christian and a Jew". But Paul was a Jew.
(see, e. g., Stroumsa, G. A. (1996). From anti-judaism to antisemitism in Early Christianity. JCB Mohr.)