The Evangelical Universalist Forum

What laws are Christians obligated to obey?

Ahh that is the rub. In my opinion, the separation between God and man *because of sin *has been permanently reconciled through Christ. In other words, God does not hold sin against us. This is important for it Makes Christ’s sacrifice eternally effective. Not conditional as to whether we accept it or not.

If you lie, cheat, steal, have adulterous affairs etc, you are correct, you are not being a friend to God.

I need to follow the laws of my country in order to not get thrown in jail or fined. Thus following those laws keeps my relationship intact.

If I lie cheat steal etc, my relationship with my neighbor will at some point be strained or severed, and that is always tragic.

But the good news is God took it upon himself to make his relationship to man complete, even when we don’t reciprocate.

Once again, just my .02 worth :smiley:

We are obligated to obey all that Jesus taught,

Yes and his apostles whom he sent and there are over 150 laws/principals in the NT.

Jesus indeed fulfilled the Law FOR US:
plēroō: *“after, be complete, end, expire, fill up” (Strong’s), “so that nothing shall be wanting” *(Thayer’s).

During His earthly ministry Jesus functioned under the Old Covenant of the Law. He did not break the Law, He fulfilled the Law. The New Covenant was initiated by the death of Jesus on the Cross. Therefore, our way of relating to God changed after the Cross and the initiation of the New Covenant. So, the believer on this side of the Cross is totally forgiven (past, present, and future) at the time of salvation.

Satanically inspired dogma—the legalistic embellishments and threats added to God’s communications by Moses—were nailed to the cross by God:

Col 2:14 “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances [DOGMA] that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;”

DOGMA: *"…2. The rules and requirements of the law of Moses; carrying a suggestion of severity and of threatened judgment." *(Thayer’s)

God is a unipolar Daddy of LOVE. Like many still today, Moses did not understand that, and so he sometimes conflated God with Satan in his understanding.

Only the “royal law” applies nowadays: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Js. 2:8. And that single law can only be genuinely followed by those who have Jesus in their hearts.

Or was the law given to Israel, not the Gentile nations? And Jesus only speaking to those of Israel:

The law given to Israel was the Mosaic Law and that was what Jesus fulfilled. But Jesus and his apostles also gave over 150 laws/principals/guidelines that covered most aspects of the Christian life that “Love your neighbor” didn’t specifically address like guidance on divorce or marrying unbelievers or giving to charity etc etc.

NO! I do not believe that we need to do something to receive Christ’s gift!

However, I do not believe that Christ’s gift is what you seem to think it to be. It is not a means of satisfying God so that our evil deeds (whether in the past or continuing in the present) will receive no consequences.

Christ’s gift to us is DELIVERANCE from the evil in our characters. If we refuse to be delivered, we are thereby not receiving Christ’s gift. God will never stop working on us until we become righteous.

However, I do not believe that Christ’s gift is what you seem to think it to be. It is not a means of satisfying God so that our evil deeds (whether in the past or continuing in the present) will receive no consequences.

Christ’s gift to us is DELIVERANCE from the evil in our characters. If we refuse to be delivered, we are thereby not receiving Christ’s gift. God will never stop working on us until we become righteous.

These are not mutually exclusive, they are not either this or that! :bulb:

I think they ARE mutually exclusive, since God doesn’t obtain SATISFACTION for ANY wrongdoing in the sense that Christ was our substitute and “paid the penalty” for sin. For God does not require anyone to pay a penalty for sin. Only man demands a penalty to be paid for wrongdoing. God is interested only in seeing the wrongdoer become righteous through His enabling grace (made available through Christ’s sacrifice. As my signature statement affirms:

God will obtain SATISFACTION only when He sees a sinner repent and become righteous with the help of His enabling grace.

paidion said:

Your contention is that until we accept the deliverance, deliverance is not possible?

Jason, how is it that in the thread [size=150]‘what laws are Christians obligated to obey’ [/size]That a Paidion response has the heading[size=150] ‘How can God be satisfied’ ?[/size] just asking…

Chad, you simply change the heading in the Subject: box just above the posting box, to whatever you want it to be.

Suppose you went to a prison, with a notice from a judge that the prisoner had been legally freed. But suppose the prisoner does not believe the notice, and refuses to come out of the prison. How is it possible to deliver him from that prison?

Perhaps the following is a better example:

Suppose an alcoholic is offered a program that can enable him to be delivered from alcoholism. But he doesn’t want to be delivered, and so he refuses to participate in the program. Since he doesn’t accept deliverance from alcoholism, how is deliverance possible?

These are good examples. So a prisoner is suddenly freed from his/her capture, the freedom is there… If they choose to walk out of the cell, they will experience the freedom. If they choose to not walk out of the door, they will not experience the freedom of Christ, but none the less, the door, BECAUSE OF CHRIST is open. Christ has done what the Father has willed, the reconciliation has happened.

My position is to not somehow degrade Christ’s work because a person chooses not to accept it. :open_mouth:

That is as plain as I can Make it. :smiley:

My position is *what Christ has done *and your position seems to be what we are lacking when we do not choose to follow. In the end it is maybe the same. :confused:

You are right! The door is still open no matter what their choice!

No. Any individual will be reconciled with God only if he chooses to be, through having a change of heart and mind, and submitting to the will of God, and afterward by faith receiving God’s enabling grace. God wants righteous people. If a person is unwilling to submit to God, then he will continue living in the same way without deliverance. He cannot be reconciled to God. But when he submits to God, his reconciliation to God takes place, and God begins to deliver him. Without submission to God, it’s a similar situation to that of the alcoholic who refuses to submit to a program that could deliver him from alcoholism.

Your view is understandable but flawed… Gods door is open. In this life we will choose whether we acknowledge and accept him or not. Our reconciliation in this physical life is as you say contingent upon understanding about what Christ has done. But the door is always open… Christ did the work and paid the price… The door , because of Him is always open! I think that when we travel from this side to the other, we will totally understand who and what Christ is and is about. :open_mouth:

MM, The Jewish law was incompatible with God. Jesus gave us the Law according to God, so that we would know the way of salvation. As I mentioned before, some of what was in the Levitical Law was NOT from God, and there were also misinterpretations. Because of this, many were held captive by the law. The works of God were not getting done.

qaz, When the children of Israel delivered from Egypt, as 1Corinthians 10:3 says, “They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them. And that Rock was Christ.” This means that they were all raised in the Word, given the manna from heaven( the bread of life/bread of heaven)and united in the Spirit( the same things Jesus taught). However, shortly thereafter, some turned away and worshipped the “golden calf” as it says in Psalm 106:19-22,“They made a calf in Horeb and worshipped a molten image.Thus they exchanged their glory for the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt.” These people became the sons of Abraham through physical relationship only. No longer of the same spiritual “seed”, they returned to the foreign ways of the pagan gods, thus a mixing of the “seed”. Some of these beliefs are reflected in the Levitical law. Some were changed because the spiritual meaning of the words became lost and were instead taken literally. As Galatians 3:9 says, the Law was added to because of transgression. It was not God who added to the Law, it was man. It is a transgression to add to, or change Law. Neither are we to mix the seed as Deuteronomy 22:9 points out; “You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, or all the produce of the seed which you have sown and the increase of the vineyard will be defiled.”

An interesting question came to me. What are the beliefs of Eastern Catholics? And the answers are surprising, according to the forum discussion at forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=442041. Let me share one answer here:

Hi LLC
Please forgive me if I miss interpret you, but are you saying that some of the ‘LAW’ in Deuteronomy and Leviticus that are in our (and I’ll say protestant) bibles are not from God? :astonished:

Cheers :smiley:

I understand the Easter Orthodox to teach that there is only one “place” in the presence of God. God’s people experience it as heaven but those who have rebelled against God all their lives, experience it as hell.

I am reminded of C.S. Lewis’s children’s story—I think it is “The Last Battle.” The children and many others are in “Aslan’s Country.” But the black dwarves were in a stable, and even though they have passed into the next life, they think they are still in the stable. When someone offers them delicious food, they reject it in disgust, believing that they have been offered rotten turnips that were in the stable. When they are offered the choicest wine, they are even more disgusted. They think it is filthy urine from the troughs behind the animals.

qaz, There are many who believe the same thing as what you have said. However this is not true. As Psalm 119:89 says: “Forever, O Lord , your word is firmly fixed in the heavens.”
Psalm 33:11
Psalm 55:19
Psalm 102:25-27
Psalm 119:152
Psalm 119:160
Malachi 3:6
Isaiah 40:8
Matthew 5:18
Hebrews 13:8
James 1:17
1 Peter 1:25
All of the above verses, plus many more, say that God’s word is unchanging and was established at the foundation of the world. There is only one God, one word, one way to salvation. It is what Jesus taught, the way man should walk according to God, and was made known from the beginning. If God is the one changing the Law, His word cannot be trusted. What if someone came tomorrow and said, " What Jesus taught you is not working because people are still sinning. You must return to the Levitical law and start sacrificing animals, etc. etc. Maybe this will teach you to obey God’s words." Would you believe they were from God ? Why or why not?