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cognitivemagic -> RE: Confusing verses. (6/25/2008 2:27:21 AM)
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quote:
So, in other words you have gone to great lengths to place everyone back under the Law in your previous post, and then tacked onto the end of this post the little disclaimer that, of course, it is all propelled by the Spirit.
Would it not have been simpler to just have stated this at the beginning and be done with it?
The God in whom we have placed our faith, as Christians, does indeed produce good works, by the indwelling Holy Spirit, through us. These are the only works that matter, for God alone is good and only He can produce good works. These are the works that endure eternally, all other works are merely wood, hay and stubble.
Heavendweller has done no such thing as "place everyone back under the Law", if by "Law", you mean the ceremonial and civil aspects of the Law. Of course, such ordinances were a shadow that was fulfilled in substance by Jesus Christ.
However, we are duty bound to obey the moral precepts of the Law (i.e. the 10 Commandments); which are summarized in two maxims:
"You shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength"
and
"You shalt love your neighbor as yourself"
And, of course, the Lord assured us that all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
But let me quote from a Protestant who summarized what obligations we have to the law:
quote:
"Concerning the Moral Law, of which I am now to treat more especially, that is partly abrogated and partly not: abrogated, as to some of its circumstances; but not as to any thing of its substance, authority and obligation.
(1) To believers The Moral Law is abrogated as to it condemning power. Though it sentences every sinner to death, and curses everyone who continues not in all things written therein to do them; yet, through the intervention of Christ's satisfaction and obedience, the sins of a believer are graciously pardoned, and the curse abolished, it being discharged wholly upon Christ, and received all into his body on the cross, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us" (Gal. 3:13); so that we may therefore triumphantly exult with the apostle, "There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:1)
(2) But, as it has a power of obliging the conscience as a standing rule for our obedience, it remains still in its full vigor and authority.
It still directs us what we ought to do; binds the conscience to the performance of it; brings guilt upon the soul, if we transgress it; and reduces us to the necessity either of bitter repentance, or of eternal condemnation. For, in this sense, heaven and earth shall sooner pass away than one jot or tittle shall pass from the law.
Therefore, Antinomianism is to be abominated, which derogates from the value and validity of the law, and contends that it is to all purposes extinct to believers, even as to its preceptive and regulating power; and that no other obligation to duty lies upon them who are in Christ Jesus, but only from the law of gratitude: that God requires not obedience from them upon so low and sordid an account as the fear of his wrath and dread severity; but all is to flow only from the principle of love and the sweet temper of a grateful and ingenuous spirit.
This is a most pestilent doctrine, which plucks down the fence of the law, and opens a gap for all manner of licentiousness and libertinism to rush in upon the Christian world; for, seeing that the Moral Law is not other than the Law of Nature written upon man's heart at the first, some positives only being superadded; upon the same account as we are men, upon the same we owe obedience to the dictates of it.
And, indeed, we may find every part of this law enforced in the gospel; charged upon us with the same threatenings, and recommended to us by the same promises; and all interpreted to us by our Savior Himself, to the greatest advantage of strictness and severity. We find the same rules for our actions, the same duties required, the same sins forbidden in the gospel as in the law.
Yet, withal, a higher degree of obedience is now required from us under the dispensation of the gospel than was expected under the more obscure and shadowy exhibitions of the gospel-grace by legal types and figures. We confess that the Israelites, before the coming of Christ, were no more under a Covenant of Works than we are now; but yet the Covenant of Grace was more darkly administered to them: and therefore, we having now received both a clearer light to discover what is our duty, and a more plentiful effusion of the Holy Ghost to enable us to perform it, and better promises, more express and significant testimonies of God's acceptance, and more full assurance of our own reward, it lies upon us, and we are under obligation, having all these helps and advantages above them, to endeavor that our holiness and obedience should much superior to theirs; and that we should serve God with more readiness and alacrity, since now by Jesus Christ our yoke is made easy and our burden light.
So that you see we are far from being released from our obligation to obedience; but rather, that obligation is made the stricter by Christ's coming into the world: and every transgression against the Moral Law is enhanced to an excess of sin and guilt, not only by the authority of God's injunction, which still continues inviolable; but likewise from the sanction of our Mediator and Redeemer who hat invigorated the precepts of the law by his express command, and promised us assistance of his Spirit to observe and perform it.
"Understanding the Ten Commandments" by Ezekial Hopkins in Essays in Old Testament Interpretation, ed. Walter Kaiser
But let me add C.S. Lewis' insights about this:
quote:
I find a good many people have been bothered by what I said in the previous chapter about Our Lord's words, 'Be ye perfect'. Some people seem to think this means 'Unless you are perfect, I will not help you'; and as we cannot be perfect, then, if He meant that, our position is hopeless. But I do not think He did mean that. I think He meant 'The only help I will give is help to become perfect. You may want something less: but I will give you nothing less.
Taken from "Counting the Cost" in Mere Christianity.
But I like what St. Gregory of Nyssa had to say:
quote:
Now in all things which can be measured in the order of sensual things, perfection is always bounded by certain definite limits, as, for example, in the case of extension, whether it be continuous or discrete. Every quantitative measurement presupposes its own proper limits. Anyone who considers, for example, the cubit, or the number ten, will see that their perfection consists in having a beginning and an end. But with regard to virtue we know from the Apostle that the one determination of perfection is it not having any limit. For the divine Apostle, a man who was vast and profound in spirit, in his course on the path of virtue constantly stretched forward to the things that lay ahead (Phil. 3:13). To stop in his course, he felt, was unsafe. Why? Because every good is by its nature unlimited, and is bounded only by the presence of its contrary--as life is bounded by death, and light by darkness. Thus everything that is wholly good ceases only at the point where its opposite begins. Thus, just as the end of life is the beginning of death, so too, to stop on the path of virtue is to begin on the path of evil. Hence by statement was not incorrect when I said that it was impossible to define perfection. For we have shown that what can be contained within limits is not virtue.
Now my saying that it is impossible for those who pursue a life of virtue ever to attain perfection I shall also explain in the following way. The sovereign and highest Good, whose nature is goodness, this is divine nature itself; and whatever perfection can be conceived in such a nature, this He is called and is. Now since we have shown that the only limitation of virtue is vice, and since the divine nature excludes anything that is contrary to it, then it follows that the divine nature is conceived without bound or limit. But the soul that pursues true virtue actually participates in God Himself, because He is infinite virtue. Now since those who have come to know the highest good, desire completely to share in it, and since this good is limitless, it follows that their desire must necessarily be coextensive with the limitless, and therefore have no limit. Thus it is absolutely impossible to attain perfection; for, as I have said, it cannot be confined within limits, and the only determination of virtue is that it is boundless. How then can a man reach the boundary he is looking for it it does not exist?
But though my argument has shown that we cannot attain our goal, we must not, for all that, neglect the divine command, 'Be you perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect' (Matt. 5:48). For though it may not be possible completely to attain the ultimate and sovereign good, it is most desirable for those who are wise to have at least a share in it. We would then make every effort not to fall short utterly of the perfection that is possible for us, and to try to come as close to it and possess as much of it as possible. For it may be that human perfection consists precisely in this constant growth in the good.
Taken from "The Life of Moses"
and
And so my discourse has shown that what appears so terrifying (I mean the mutability of our nature) can really be as a pinion in our flight towards higher things, and indeed it would be hardship if we were not susceptible of the sort of change which is towards the better. One ought not then to be distressed when one considers this tendency in our nature; rather let us change in such a way that we may constantly evolve towards what is better, being "transformed from glory to glory" (2 Cor. 3:18), and thus always improving and ever becoming more perfect by daily growth, and never arriving at any limit of perfection. For that perfection consists in our never stopping in our growth in good, never circumscribing our perfection by any limitation.
Taken from "On Perfection"
Cited from From Glory to Glory: Text From Gregory of Nyssa's Mystical Writings, Jean Danielou, S.J. and Herbert Mursillo, S.J.
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