Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mls@cbnewsm.att.com (Mike Siemon) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Law and Love Message-ID: Date: 5 Oct 89 03:15:58 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 184 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu David Buxton and Zach Lewis are engaged in a passionate defense of Sabbath observance (apparently, of the Jewish Saturday variety), and I think that the passion of their cause blinds them both to the weaknesses of their arguments and the integrity of opposing positions. They disclaim any intent to judge or condemn other positions, yet their words make a claim that we who hold other views are flagrantly ignoring divine commands. And they seem to be unable to respond to the opposing views -- they simply return to highly peculiar exegesis and repeat their claims. I see David and Zach as straining at gnats and swallowing camels, gnats like limiting Paul's use of circumcision as if it symbolized "ritual" and not the whole of the Law (as it yet does for the B'nai Berith who are the sons of the Covenant and are marked so by a b'ris, a circumcision), gnats like their odd distinction of the laws written on stone from the rest of the law. And having strained out these gnats, they swallow the camel that they are preserving part of the Law (which they claim to be in effect for us as it was for Israel at Sinai) while ignoring the rest (apparently, they can ignore all practical law as long as they keep a highly symbolic Sabbath?) Clearly, they will not see the same things as gnats and camels that I do. But what I want to impress on them is that unless they can deal directly with the points urged *against* their position, no amount of sincerity in repeating that position carries much weight. They can be personally convinced that they know the will of God, but that in itself carries no conviction to anyone else. I want to look here at the Torah of Israel, at law as it applies to all of us in our mere humanity, and at the true law of God that is written in our hearts and which is the obedience to God's will that Jesus pointed to in the Sermon on the Mount -- an obedience that we all find impossible except through the grace of God living in us, through Christ. I. The first point is that there is an exaggeration inherent in Paul's claim that the Law brings death, just as there is exaggeration in Jesus' condemnation of the Pharisees. Zach cited psalm 119, and indeed it is worth dwelling on that for a moment: Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes And I will keep it unto the end. Give me understanding, and I will keep thy Law, Yea, I will keep it with my whole heart. There are in every generation Jews who delight in the Law, and do so not as hypocrites but as those who love God and their neighbor, whose delight in the law is derived from a God-given grace to obey the great commandment as Jesus taught it. I want to point out to Zach and David that THIS commandment is NOT one of those inscribed on stone. And if, as Jesus says and as Paul says, all the law and the prophets hangs on this command, what use is your distinction of laws in the Torah? The distinction Jesus makes, condemning the Pharisees as blind guides, is that they "have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith" (Matthew 23:23-24). If we are to have priorities in the Law, then I will follow Jesus' priorities over an odd interpretation of why the decalogue was written on stone. Anyone who has worked alongside orthodox Jews knows that Sabbath observance has two effects. And both of these are important in Jewish regligion: - a day set aside as holy to God, for study of Torah, can keep the love of God and God's commandments aflame in the heart of his people - this day also sets Israel as a people apart from the nations; as God is holy and the Sabbath is holy, so the people of Israel are thereby holy As Christians, our difficulty is *not* the first part, but the second. Almost all that we gentiles disdain as "ritual" has -- quite deliberately -- this same effect; it DIVIDES Israel from the nations, it DEDICATES Israel to God as God's chosen people. And rightly observed, such law is a continual reminder to Israel of its dependence on God. Of course, it doesn't always have that effect; in every generation of Jews there are also the hypocrites, self-righteous in their "own" worth, boasting of their performance of the Law. But even when performed out of love for God and humanity, the Torah -- and most especially "ritual" Torah like the Sabbath -- separates Israel from the nations. Yet Christ has erased that division; in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor free. By accepting *any* division, we reject the gospel. Jesus associated with publicans and sinners and most especially did *not* keep himself apart as "too holy" for contamination -- it was the Pharisees, the _perushim_ who were the separators, their "holiness" compromised by eating with the _am ha'aretz_. Jews have never held that Sabbath observance was a law for all nations, nor does the inscription of the decalogue on stone make it any the less a gift to *Israel* and a part of the Covenant between God and his chosen people. It is a part of the Law *for Israel* even if it is taken as the capstone of the law. But Jeremiah prophesies a law written not on stone but in our hearts, and we have in Jesus our New Covenant in His blood. A Law code made by God to separate his chosen people from among the nations is superceded by a "code" that lives in us and commands us to love our enemies, to make *no* separations between Jews and the Samaritans or gentiles who obey a different law. II. A law code (or a treaty or covenant) is more than just one or two of its provisions. Similar -- even identical -- individual laws or provisions may be found in quite different codes, quite different covenants. Zach seems to feel that if I "break" the Jewish sabbath law I am somehow (logically?) constrained to "break" the other laws of this covenant (whether the 10 or the 613 of the rabbis) -- that a sabbath breaker is somehow the same thing as a murderer or thief or one who dishonors his parents: > The TEN Commandments Written in stone are not binding ? > Then maybe I can kill people now since there is no clear text that say > that the Law is binding RIGHT ? This is unbelievably insulting. And if Zach and David do not realize that they are condemning people and doing so on the basis of the flimsiest kind of "logic" then they should email me and we can discuss the matter in whatever detail they like. In case Zach and David have never looked at the world, there is *no* society which does not forbid murder and theft and encourage (at least in words :-)) the honoring of parents. This has *nothing* to do with the stones of Sinai; it is the merest consequence of the way God created us -- as human beings we are moral creatures, even though as fallen we do what we ought not and so we make laws and sanctions against our own misdeeds. This is a fact of ALL human existence; it is the "lesson" we have to draw out of Genesis. Jewish exegesis finds many covenants in scripture, notably a covenant with Noah to which all the nations are (or should be) subject. As the moderator has noted, there may be some trace of that theory behind the proclamation in Acts of the "council" of Jerusalem. This exegesis is at least mythologically sound: we have a covenant with God written in our DNA, that is the source of human morality. It does not require revelation for men to know the right; it requires grace for us to *do* the right without corrupting it in the process of "obeying." Where our actions require us to judge others (more on this below), we use this human "common" law. I have no standing to judge a Jew on his obedience to Torah, nor has he standing to judge me thereby. Why a Christian thinks he can judge me out of the Torah, I am completely unable to comprehend. It is true enough that I "break" the law against Sabbath observance, and by that and by many other departures from the Torah I set myself outside the Law as it was given to Israel. But Israel's covenant is nothing of mine, except insofaras I am adoptive into Israel by the death of Christ, by His blood. But this blood dissolves the stones of Sinai as it dissolves the hardness of my own heart. III. No, the 10 commandments are NOT binding, any more than any other part of the code in God's covenant with Israel is binding. I am not bound by law at all, except as I am bound by human nature to that covenant in DNA I noted -- I am far more securely "bound" by the love of God. If Christ lives in me and I in Him, my heart beats with the living fulfilment of the Law. I will do no evil, and fear no evil, because my acts derive from the grace of God and in no way from my own merit or lack of merit. Do not misunderstand me -- my sinfullness still resists God and resists grace; I'm not talking about my acts when I turn my back on God. *Then* my heart turns to stone, and the Law *is* the stones of Sinai or the Twelve Tablets of Rome or Hammurabi's Code or any other stony accusation of my own fault. The common law of mankind is there to accuse me, when my heart is dead to God. When Paul speaks of the Law bringing death, that is part of what he means -- if we live to Christ, the Word sprouts in fertile soil and brings forth its fruit, and if not, no observance of Torah matters. (Or better, it matters only in the practical sense that *all* human law matters, as a very imperfect device for preventing harm and fostering good -- when I am dead to Christ, my obedience to law may matter to others, and I may need the constraints of society to force my obedience, but that obedience aids *me* not one bit.) Christ tells us not to judge others; given human nature, the only way this can be possible is if we *have* no laws to indict others on. The law in my heart is quite sufficient to convict *me* -- but that cannot govern any other person, so I have *no* ground in Christ to judge any other. I said before that we *will* judge, on the basis of common human law. I see no way to avoid that, since we have children to raise, representatives to select, choices that we *must* make for ourselves and others. But these practical judgments must not be made as if I were an agent of God's judgment; they must be subsumed in the life I lead to Christ -- who came to save sinners and shrugged off the dutiful elder brother of the prodigal. Second guessing God is a bad business; the "laws" I observe, whether inferred from human society or the demands God makes on me through the Spirit (and granting me with these demands the strength to meet them) are laws *to me* but I can generalize them to others only by a mutual grounding, either in simple human nature or in the love of Christ (which is human nature brought into the Spirit by the atonement.) Where we do not meet in love, or in God's love that grounds our creation, we have no "code" by which others are granted "jurisdiction" over us. And if we meet in Christ, jurisdiction is irrelevant as it is taken up in faith, hope and love. I can only conclude that for the Christian, there is no law other than Christ. Does that mean we flout all the laws of men? Of course not; human nature is not negated in Christ, it is transformed as to its *quality* by the Spirit, and we slough off the slavery attendant on our sin. But if in Christ we cannot sin, then there is no law we obey; we, like Christ, are simply obeying the will of our Father, as any child obeys the will of a beloved parent, while needing the parent's help to do so. -- Michael L. Siemon The Son of Man has come eating and drinking; cucard!dasys1!mls and you say "Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, att!sfbat!mls a friend of tax collectors and sinners." And standard disclaimer yet, Wisdom is justified by all her children.