Love: Objections to God’s Law

There are 2 categories of OBJECTIONS to God’s Law:

1. From people who don’t believe in God or otherwise don’t believe the Bible is “the “Word of God, or who otherwise do not accept the Bible as having any authority in this world, and
2. From most “Christians”, aka ‘churchians.’

We’ll discuss both in this blog entry.

First off, I want to say a word to “unbelievers” (#1 above). The key to seeing the value in God’s law is what I talk about at the beginning of my blog “Love: Which Laws Apply?” So go read that one to get more detail on what I’m about to say. The best way I know how to say this is by asking you this question: What is it about a person that enables you to TRUST them? Is it familiarity? Is it family ties? Is it professional competence? Is it government authority? Is it their religion? Is it their riches? What exactly is the thing or things that enable you to trust someone? Same with a group of people: What is the thing or things that enable you to trust a GROUP?

My life’s experience taught me that the foundation for TRUST is CONSISTENT GOOD BEHAVIOR. In other words, their behavior is RELIABLE. I found that when someone consistently treats me good, and doesn’t harm me in any way, THEN AND ONLY THEN can they be TRUSTED. Notice that I didn’t say “doesn’t hurt my feelings in any way”. Also note that I will trust them only to the DEGREE they show behavioral consistency in the area that we share a common interest. Whether or not they make me FEEL good is beside the point. CON-MEN make you FEEL good. But they ROB you every chance they get! So it’s not about “feeling good”. It’s about not being HARMED.

For example: At work some people are lazy and others work hard. Some are competent, and others, not so competent. The people I get along with the best are hard workers and competent. I can trust their work-product. I can get things done on time. I don’t have to chase them down or do their job. You get the point. But the ‘others’ I have issues with, because they cause me problems, and even HARM. In one way or the other, THEY COST ME.

So for you “unbelievers” in God and His law, here’s another question: What STANDARD do you establish for people to follow that you can GUARANTEE, that if they diligently follow that standard, they will be TRUSTWORTHY IN EVERYTHING? That’s the key to this discussion for you.

Now to the point: GOD’S LAW is the ONLY STANDARD that’s trustworthy. Why? Because it came DIRECTLY FROM GOD. What other law do you know that has come to us humans that way? We call this “special revelation” (in contrast to “general revelation”), which I talk about in the blog on “interpretation” (hermeneutics).

So there you have it: God’s law is the ONLY STANDARD we need in order to properly SELF-GOVERN, which results in being able to get along as a community.

Now on to the “Christians” …

Having gotten a degree in ‘theology’ in a ‘nondenominational evangelical’ college, and having worked a little bit in ‘Christian religion’ (both “church” and “para-church”), I can tell you that the evangelical churchianity I knew will VEHEMENTLY OBJECT to my definition of “the gospel of Jesus Christ”. And why not? They’re running a ‘limited liability [eternal] fire insurance scheme’. If they actually do care about “the salvation of your soul”, they sure do have a strange way of showing it!

Like they say in Israel: “Ain’davar!” (Whatever!). Not that I take lightly ‘dissing’ 4 centuries (more like 2 millennia!) of religious psycho-babble, but heck, someone’s got to! It’s about time someone set the record straight.

I’m not trying to start-off on the wrong foot in this blog entry by being negative or pugilistic, so let’s not waste any time rehashing 400+ years of propaganda, re: “THE LAW’S NOT FOR TODAY!” AND “ISRAEL’S NOT THE CHURCH!”. If you want to know the arguments AGAINST obeying God’s Law, then look it up for yourself. There’s plenty of that garbage on the internet, and plenty of books by famous personages in the modern churches. I learned C.I. Scofield’s version of this propaganda. He called it “dispensationalism”. A Scofield Reference Bible in the King James Version was “required’ in college. Talk about a propaganda mill FOR PROFIT! Anyways … whatever brand of ANTINOMIAN ideology that you ‘believe’, it’s nothing more nor less than a man-made ideology. And let’s be clear on one thing: The only dispensations in the Bible, according to the text (Luke 16, Ephesians 1:10, 3:2, 9, etc. – NKJV) are government offices, both man’s and God’s (“an office is a matter for the king” – old English law). “Dispensations” are another topic for a blog entry, time permitting.

In any case, the way the Bible says people get into a “relationship” with God is through COVENANTS, that is, BINDING LEGAL AGREEMENTS. And today, the ONLY Biblical covenant from God is the one Jesus Christ ratified with his death on the cross. And the ONLY “stipulations” of that covenant (at least that I know of in the Bible) are the DIVINE COMMANDMENTS, aka: God’s Law. That’s what the Bible says. That’s not my personal opinion. That’s why the NT is called the New TESTAMENT. “Testament” is the old English transliteration of the Latin word for the Greek NT word for COVENANT: diatheke. Really, it’s that simple.

One quick thing about God’s law: IT’S NOT FRAGMENTED AND IT DOESN’T CHANGE, that is, God’s law does not differ during the various epochs of human history (like theologians and Bible peddlers would have you believe). The fact is, creating CONFUSION about God’s law is their JOB, because that’s how they keep you trusting in their ‘authority’. Think about it: How many different forms of gravity are there in the world? One for when you’re at sea level? One for when you’re under water? One for when you’re on a mountain top? One for when you’re in an air plane way up in the air? One for when you’re on an elevator ‘going up’? Same with God’s law: THERE’S ALWAYS ONLY ONE LAW FROM GOD FOR HUMANITY. The reason: HUMAN NATURE AND HUMAN SOCIETY ARE CONSTANT THROUGHOUT HUMAN HISTORY. So let’s not complicate the matter. Let’s stick to COMMON SENSE. God’s has ONE LAW FOR ALL TIME for humanity.

One Important Note: Let’s also not confuse the fact of DIFFERENT GOVERNMENT SYSTEMS with GOD’S LAW. Men create government systems (“administrations”) by their own devices. It’s all about “law enforcement”, or as some say, APPLICATION of the law. The way it works here in the USA is a total violation of fundamental law, besides being absurd! The legislature makes GENERAL laws, and they expect the executive branch to “flesh them out” with Regulations that instruct bureaucrats and law enforcement personnel how to APPLY those laws. Only thing is, by the time the laws get applied, you have to wonder how they got to where they went in contrast to the legislative enactments! Worse yet, you have to wonder how the legislative enactments got to where they went after reading fundamental law! What it boils down to is a PROTECTION RACKET: Laws that protect the vested interests at the expense of the general population. That’s how man-made government systems work. That’s how it was when Jesus lived. It’s a matter of government controlling every aspect of everybody’s life “by law”.

Anyways, a GOOD government system, regardless of its STRUCTURES and PROCESSES, will be driven by LAWS that are ALL based on GOD’S LAW. Why? Because AS OUR CREATOR, GOD KNOWS HOW WE OUGHT TO LIVE AND MANAGE OUR SOCIETIES. So “why reinvent the wheel” by starting from scratch and devising your own laws? Or why use the law as a weapon of mass destruction? It’s far easier to stick to basics and go with good authority … like God(!). You can’t go wrong trusting God and His Law. But you CAN go drastically wrong TRUSTING IN MAN and HIS LAWS. I believe the present times provide ample evidence of that.

The ONLY “exception” to the above “rule” about DIFFERENT GOVERNMENT SYSTEMS is the Aaronic/Levitical Priestly system in Moses. Per Hebrews 7:12, God changed that system when Christ brought redemption. The reason: CHANGE OF PRIESTLY DUTIES. The system changed because the requirements changed. Hebrews 9 gives the essentials on it.

The thing about the future Theocratic government administration is, the Bible doesn’t say much about it. So for the time being, we’re stuck with man-made government systems. HOWEVER, that in no way negates the fact of the existence of God’s law, nor of the obligation of “Christians” to obey it, nor of its superiority to all of man’s laws BY APPLICATION. Nor do the circumstances negate the fact of God’s law always being of Greater Authority than man’s law. After all, this planet and all it contains is God’s property, because He CREATED IT. More on this in another blog entry. The key here is that we want our man-made government systems “enforcing” God’s law, and doing so in accord with God’s intent for His law (not what we see today, with all the corruption and oppressive enslavement of the populaces world-wide).

So let’s not waste any more time on religious PROPAGANDA. And no, I’m not going to list all the objections that theologians and other Christian writers state in objection to my proposition:

BIBLICAL LOVE = OBEDIENCE TO GOD’S LAW = YOUR “RELATIONSHIP” WITH GOD.

Let’s be clear on one thing, for those church people who think this is “earning your salvation”: OBEYING GOD’S LAW IS THE MATTER OF “SANCTIFICATION” (more below), not “Salvation”. You can’t make any covenant agreement with God UNLESS you understand and acknowledge that God enacted Christ’s “substitutionary death” as your redemption (more on that in another blog). IOW, Christ’s work of redemption is the ONLY thing that enables you have a “relationship with God”, and there’s no amount of obedience to laws (“works”) that anybody can do to “earn” THAT. The NT is packed full of texts stressing that fact. For example:

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

This one fact remains constant: When you AGREE to be in a relationship with God, you are agreeing to the WHOLE THING, meaning you agree to DO WHAT GOD REQUIRES OF YOU, which is to say that you are ACCEPTING the ‘terms and conditions’ of the covenant agreement. This covenant agreement is like a CONTRACT, only much more serious. A contract usually has to do with goods and services that relate to material things. But this covenant agreement has to do with LIFE, in both the present and in the hear-after. It also has to do with ALL of life, both on the individual level and a nation’s social institutions. Quite a difference in magnitude of importance, would you agree?

For church people who want to take issue with my thinking, I have this to say: If you can’t understand this, then you need to GROW UP and quit thinking like a child. I apologize to those of you who are not in religion who are reading this blog. Church people, for the most part, are very difficult to talk to. When you disagree with them, they become belligerent, unreasonable and mean. That’s why I don’t talk to them anymore. But this blog is for those church people who are ‘searching’ for more than they’re getting in their man-made “religion”. I’m also talking about church people who want to “repent” and “get right with God”. They call it “back-sliding”. But it equally applies to religious ministers as well as all the other “faithful” church goers who consider themselves to have ‘ARRIVED’. So please bear with me, as I have a lotta ‘reserve’ angst from being driven out of many a congregation merely for being REASONABLE, and asking questions that nobody cared to answer. Back on topic …

“Obeying God’s Law” is the ONLY answer I’ve found that defines, IN MEASURABLE TERMS, “Biblical Love”. I’ve not found any answer in any theology book that gives you the ability to MEASURE whether or not you are practicing LOVE as a Christian (or Jew, for that matter). Later in life I learned that this idea of measuring progress is called METRICS. That’s what people do in the corporations. The project managers have a Gantt Chart to help them map-out and measure their progress during a project. It helps them sort out all the “capital, labor and material resources”, etc. Same with good doctors: They have a “treatment plan”. Same with career advancement at the corporate and military levels. ANYBODY who wants to measure progress uses METRICS as their means and method. One key element of Metrics is EXAMINATION. Everybody knows what exams are! SO WHY SHOULD’T CHRISTIANS US METRICS to measure their progress in Christian living?

I remember when I was a young “Christian” and had many questions about the meaning of things, I would request clarification from ‘the authorities’. But every time, and I mean EVERY TIME I asked a pragmatic question about a point of theology that was otherwise simply “believed”, I would get every kind of reaction and response except the one I was looking for: HOW CAN I CONNECT THIS IDEA TO REALITY? After a while I learned to focus my approach by asking this one simple question: PLEASE EXPLAIN THAT IN MEASURABLE TERMS. That’s when I began getting kicked out of churches! But that didn’t stop me from asking questions. It took MANY years, and TONS of “school of hard knocks” to get answers to my many questions. I still have MANY more, but that’s the nature of life. Bottom line: IF YOU CAN’T MEASURE YOUR PROGRESS AS A CHRISTIAN, THEN YOU AREN’T LIVING IN REALITY.

Let’s take a quick look at some other NT verses that affirm what I’m saying about LOVE:

Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but obeying the commandments of God is everything. (1 Corinthians 7:19)

That’s PAUL writing. You know: The PAUL who teaches Christians that they don’t have to obey God’s law(!) … the PAUL who comes from the HELLENISTIC PERSPECTIVE(!) … the PAUL who departed from Judaism and rejected his past as a Jew(!). Yes, we’re talking about THAT Paul. Just to be clear about Paul’s ideas about God’s Law, let’s re-translate the above text from the original GREEK:

ἡ περιτομὴ οὐδέν ἐστιν καὶ ἡ ἀκροβυστία οὐδέν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τήρησις ἐντολῶν θεοῦ. (1 Corinthians 7:19)

The circumcision not is, and the uncircumcision not is, but keeping commandments of God [is].

This is what I get out of that:

Forget about being a Jew (“circumcision”), and Forget about being a Gentile (“uncircumcision”), because THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS obeying God’s commandments.

In other words, whatever your national laws and customs are, THEY DON’T MATTER TO GOD. What matters to God is YOU ARE OBEYING HIS LAW. Yup, that’s what PAUL said. He’s the guy who talks to NON-JEWS. Yup, he said that to NON-JEWS!

One thing I observed about Paul’s words, as-interpreted by the theologians, Christian ministers, and other idle babblers: They REVERSE his meaning. They do it pretty much every time on certain subjects. If they didn’t do that, what Paul’s actually saying will DISCREDIT the idle babbler’s message, thereby reducing his following. Result: Reduction in flow of income. I’m certain the reason they do that is because they really have no idea where Paul’s coming from. Let’s face it: MOST “preachers” in the churches of ALL denominations have one agenda: KEEP THE REVENUE FLOWING IN, BY KEEPING UP CHURCH MEMBERSHIP. Take, for example, the televangelists. There are just too many to list! We’re talking about “the business of the church”. It’s sad, really!

Look: I’m not trying to be negative here, but am just stating the facts of my observations. Remember: I was IN RELIGION for many years. I saw stuff go on at the upper levels of both church and para-church ‘organizations’ that would make you BLUSH (or more like make you ANGRY). It’s disgusting what goes on … the petty bickering, the political maneuvering, the addictions, and outright SIN! But let’s not get into all that. No point in kicking a dead dog. We can let the social vultures eat that roadkill. Back on topic …

At this point, the question begs to be asked: What was in Paul’s head when he penned his words (or when his scribe wrote what he ‘dictated’)? Simple: Think HIGH LEVEL, VERY POWERFUL, 2nd TEMPLE BUREAUCRAT. Today’s equivalent: FBI + JUDGE all rolled-up into one man. Or maybe IRS CID Agent, take your pick (you know how they do whatever they want and get away with it!). If you do your research into the HISTORY of the 2nd Temple, you’ll likely arrive at where I’m coming from when I read Paul. The thing about reading Paul from this perspective is, you will find that much of the time he seems like he’s about ready to BUST. I mean, he’s ALMOST SCREAMING a lot of the time in his letters. And at other times, he’s RANTING. It’s really comical when you get right down to it.

The next question that begs to be asked about Paul is: What exactly was in his mind? I mean, what was his perspective? That’s very simple: He was a LAWYER, JUDGE and POLITICALLY ACTIVE LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENT OF THE STATE. Sound familiar? You have to ask yourself what that kind of person thinks like, in order to get into Paul’s mindset. But I promise you: You will NEVER be able to relate to that kind of person unless you ARE that kind of person. And very few of us will ever get into that profession, let alone rise up to that level of Office. And THANK GOD we won’t! Can you IMAGINE what society would be like if EVERYBODY was a LAWYER or a COP … or GOD FORBID a JUDGE?! Our nation wouldn’t last a year! LOL …. Jesus had something to say about that too (and rightfully so):

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. (Matthew 23:25)

Let’s put that into modern lingo:

Woe to you lawyers, bureaucrats and public officials, hypocrites! Because you spend piles of money on controlling the media to maintain public appearances, but your ‘MO’ is GREED and SELF-INDULGENCE!

Sound familiar?? Now that we have a foundational idea of where Paul was coming from BEFORE his “conversion”, we are better able to figure out what he was thinking AFTER his “conversion”. The reason: Because BEFORE he “believed in Jesus”, he PERSECUTED Christ’s followers, whereas AFTER he “believed in Jesus”, he BUILT Christ’s communities. He had what we call “a 180 degree turn-around”.

I remember when I “got saved”. Right after that, I had a predilection to quit doing certain things that I was accustomed to do, as well as having a strong motivation to learn what GOD expected of me. Hey, why not? After all, “He saved me from the fires of hell!” Well, at least that’s what I was told. But really, the reason I felt like that was because, I now surmise, I got the “indwelling Holy Spirit”. And that’s what He was motivating me to do (the “indwelling” vs. the “empowering” is the subject for another blog entry). Bottom line: I was eager to “please God”. After all, he was my new “Father” (another covenant term, which I didn’t understand back then). And doesn’t every good kid wanna please his daddy? That was me. I presume that’s what went on with Paul, especially considering all the YEARS he ‘went into hiding’ to get ‘re-educated’ in “the gospel” (Galatians 1):

11 For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; 12 for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

13 You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. 14 I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. 15 But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.

18 Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days; 19 but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother. 20 In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie! 21 Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, 22 and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; 23 they only heard it said, “The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they glorified God because of me.

Those are Paul’s own words. Who can argue with him? Did I, or didn’t I, properly represent him in the preceding?

Can all you church people acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, what I’m saying about Paul is true? If so, then we have a LOT of work to do to CORRECT the MISINTERPRETATIONS of Paul which the scholars, theologians, churches, and Jews have been pumping into your heads for the past 2 millennia, and especially since the time that (a perverted version of) Martin Luther’s teachings have gripped the minds of evangelicals. Amen??

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not ‘dissing’ Luther. I really like the guy. He was a HUGE historical personality. Without him, we might not have had a “reformation” or an “evangelical church” … or ‘God-forbid’, AMERICA! Can you IMAGINE the Pope running the WORLD? LOL … boy would THAT be a tragedy! It was that way during Luther’s time, and BOY was it bad! Why do you think America’s founders prohibited a state religion (more on this below). How much more with today’s technology! Judging from what I’ve read on Luther, today’s evangelical church has ‘used and abused’ his teachings. That’s all I’m going to say on the subject at this point. Maybe more in a future blog entry.

While we’re on the subject of the modern church, let me just say one word about who they REALLY are, in contrast to who they SAY they are. Then in another blog I’ll get into the juicy details. But first, we need to lay some foundation … a STANDARD of sorts. So let’s review LOVE based on the first two Commandments of God’s Law (Exodus 20):

Then God spoke all these words:

2 I am the YHWH your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3 you shall have no other gods before me.

4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, 6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Verses 2-3 constitute Commandment #1.

Verses 4-6 constitute Commandment #2.

Commandment #1 is what I call THE ALLEGIANCE COMMANDMENT.

Commandment #2 is what I call THE OBEDIENCE COMMANDMENT.

Therefore, God commands his people, in Commandment #1, to give Him their ABSOLUTE ALLEGIANCE. Think about those two words for a moment. Compare that with where your ALLEGIANCES lie today. Now compare that with where organized Christianity’s ALLEGIANCES lie today. Still not getting it?

Here: God commands his people, in Commandment #2, to give Him their TOTAL OBEDIENCE. Think about those two words for a moment. Compare that with your sources of OBEDIENCE today. What about organized Christianity’s sources of OBEDIENCE today?

Now let’s APPLY those two Commandments to the American Christian churches in a bit more detail. The vast majority of churches are INCORPORATED. Many religious ministers are LICENSED BY THE STATE. I don’t know any churches that aren’t incorporated, although I bet they do exist. Same with unlicensed ministers. So let’s talk about the churches in general with that in mind.

What does it mean to be “incorporated” as a church? It means you have PLANNED A FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENT WITH THE STATE. The purpose for this kind of “nonprofit” incorporation is to evade and escape TAXATION and personal LIABILITY. It’s basically the only available means you have of keeping money that other people are coerced into paying to the state. It’s also a means of escaping responsibility for what goes on in your church that is SIN. In the case of American churches, the fiscal state is THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

Think about it for a moment: If the state cares about nothing but their revenues, and if they really don’t care about morality (“religion”), then what’s stopping them from ‘turning a blind eye’ to sin in religion that’s not infringing their tax monies? Hence: “The fox guarding the hen-house.” AKA: NO ACCOUNTABILITY by government for religious organizations and religious ministers. Anyways …

When a church incorporates, its ‘officers’ have to sign papers for the state, which amounts to the officers of the church ENTERING INTO AN AGREEMENT WITH THE STATE based on the state’s TAX LAWS (and any other laws that can be used in a law-enforcement scenario – which for most tax agencies, is pretty much anything they can get away with). Note that those church “officers” are STATE AGENTS under the authority of the church corporation. Essentially, when a church enters into an agreement like this with the state, the church is WILLINGLY and KNOWINGLY giving it’s allegiance to THE STATE. Huh?

The question now begs to be asked: IS THE STATE THE “GOD” OF EXODUS 20 ABOVE? LOL … think about it. Let’s keep this simple so a child can understand it. IS the state, or is NOT the state the GOD of the Bible? Your answer to that question is the answer to WHO the church is SERVING when it incorporates. Now compare that with God’s requirement in Commandment #2. So ultimately, when you are ordering your society (your church) to comply with the dictates of the STATE, you are effectively giving your allegiance to the STATE (and NOT to God). You may SAY you give your allegiance to God, but in reality, your ACTIONS speak louder than your words. Now just think what would happen to a church if the IRS discovered that you’re propagating ANY political viewpoint that the establishment doesn’t have a taste for, which cuts-into their tax ‘takes’ and their control of the populace. Therein lies the rub.

Can you see WHY it’s dangerous for state instituted religion? Can you also see WHY it’s so dangerous for people to know the true meaning of the first 2 Commandments of God’s Law, AND THEN OBEY THEM? What state will allow people to think that the state is NOT to be given their total allegiance? Make sense? This kind of GOD is supremely DANGEROUS to the state’s interests. Let’s return to Paul.

Now think about the church allegiance and obedience thing here in America and ask yourself what you think Paul would say about it, based on your knowledge of Paul as a LAW ENFORCER converted to a CHURCH BUILDER. Honestly now, do you think that Paul would approve of American churches signing agreements with the STATE so they can collect more money to build their little fiefdoms? I seriously doubt it. There are MANY reasons why, which I can, and may in a future blog, cite out of Paul. But suffice to say that NOW you can begin to surmise WHY the modern churches do NOT want you to OBEY GOD’S LAW. It’s in their best interests, FINANCIALLY speaking (at the very least). Think of society as “a picking field” (where bureaucrats “pick” money). So long as they can control that “picking field”, they can “pick money”. That pretty much describes it.

The main thing that obeying God’s law will do FOR you is give you a new mindset that allows you to automatically see what’s going on in the political world. It’s like Paul said in Romans 12:2:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

The sooner you begin obeying God’s law, the quicker you will have a “renewed mind”. Be advised: It takes YEARS for things to begin dawning on you if you’re a typical emotion-led person. I guess that’s why the Bible wants TOTAL COMMITMENT, and why it’s supposed to be passed on from generation to generation. Ask any religious Jew what the “Shema” is in Deuteronomy 6.

The reason why a mind “renewed” according to God’s law is so dangerous to the establishment, whether church or state, is because your mind will begin to be able to SEE the SINS that people commit who are administering “the law” as-government. A renewed mind will also – get this, because it’s of critical importance – perceive THE DETRIMENTAL CHANGES TO THE SOCIAL PROCESS that are GRADUALLY occurring right before your eyes “by law”, but which you never before detected. You can BET that these changes have nothing to do with OBEYING GOD’S LAW. In fact, they have to do with one thing: COMMERCE … MONEY + CONTROL of the entire population. But you will NEVER see any of this if you are emotion-led, and especially if your mind has not been “renewed” through many years of OBEYING GOD’S LAW.

All of those ‘musings’ resulted from looking at this one simple verse:

Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but obeying the commandments of God is everything. (1 Corinthians 7:19)

So Paul is telling you he doesn’t care about all the propaganda your parents and educators filled your mind with as a kid, and then as an adult in society and the media. He doesn’t care if you got it from a Jewish society or a non-Jewish society. He just cares about one thing: DO YOU KNOW, AND ARE YOU OBEYING HIS LAW?

To reiterate: The problem with interpreting Paul’s words is that most people don’t know what his frame of reference was when he wrote them. And let’s be clear about those who think they know what Paul’s thinking: We all can only arrive at an approximation of the principles upon which he based his thought process. The two simple reasons for that are: 1. Because it’s nearly impossible for anybody to accurately know what anybody else is thinking, even if they tell you, and even if you know them personally (which nobody today can do with Paul), and 2. We can only guesstimate at a reconstruction of the setting that MAY have served as Paul’s frame of reference when he was alive. Why? Because there’s  NOT a lot of direct evidence or other material facts to draw from in order to do that. So everything is an EDUCATED GUESS. The more educated, the better the guess.

The one thing that was of inestimable value for my interpretation of Paul was leaning the difference between the MOSAIC LAW and “JEWISH HALAKHA”. That was the key for me. Once that distinction was made in my mind, the whole world of Paul and the Gospels opened up to me.

The key benefit of knowing this particular historical fact is that it enabled me to SEPARATE the Mosaic law from 2nd Temple “law” in the NT literature. Here’s one example:

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men … (Colossians 2:8)

I was taught in college that is a reference to “gnosticism”. But Paul wasn’t into “gnosticism”, besides the fact that the scholars’ are divided on the origin of the gnostics: Gentiles or Jews. They also can’t agree on precisely what gnosticism was! Most likely Paul’s referring to 2nd Temple man-made LAW; aka: RABBINIC JUDAISM.

Another key benefit to seeing that distinction is, it helped me see that the NT writers worked with BOTH types of LAW in their administration of the new covenant communities. They not only did NOT reject the Mosaic law, but instead, they ACCEPTED IT AS FINAL. AND, they also acknowledged the already in-place 2nd TEMPLE LAWS and customs that agreed with the INTENT of the Mosaic law as taught by Christ (which is what God intends for humanity). So not only did I come to realize that the modern churches are TOTALLY WRONG about God’s law and Paul’s ideas on the subject, but I also came to realize that God’s law is CENTRAL to Christian living. To reiterate:

GOD’S LAW IS CENTRAL TO CHRISTIAN LIVING.

Incidentally, I learned a lot of the historical background from reading David Flusser’s books and articles. He’s got some of the best references to “Jewish literature” that I’ve seen. He does excellent correlations by linking extra-Biblical texts to the Bible texts. The only thing I object to about Flusser is his conclusions. It’s obvious he’s promoting a political agenda. He also jumps to conclusions that are not in line with my view of Common Sense life. Anyways …

The technical theological term for the place God’s Law has in the Christian’s life is “SANCTIFICATION”. You can MEASURE your progress in “sanctification” when you are pursuing obedience to God’s law. Otherwise, you can’t measure it. You wouldn’t believe all the EMOTIONALIZED GARBAGE I wrote about this when I was in ‘churchianity’. Makes me wanna PUKE when I think about it! It’s embarrassing to say the least. But being able to MEASURE PROGRESS IN SANCTIFICATION is the key. Let’s call it “Christian METRICS”. Any other explanation I’ve read or heard is UN-measurable, and in my world, not worth considering.

SANCTIFICATION is another subject for another blog entry. It’s very easy to do if you have the “indwelling Holy Spirit”. If you don’t have the Holy Spirit, then you may not be up to the task of Sanctification. But what would it matter in the end? The “next life” is the whole point of learning to live like God wants us to live, and it’s open to us because of God’s gift of Christ’s redemption, not law-keeping. However, if you obey God’s law, you’ll still find benefits in THIS life (speaking from experience). So I guess it’s safe to say that if you don’t have the Holy Spirit, you may end up with the wrong result when you learn and obey God’s law. And if you are in government, you may even end up becoming a perverter of God’s law, like we see in the NT (like Paul was). You may even become a TYRANT! That’s the subject of another blog entry, but sometimes it will be sprinkled into some of these blogs.

Here are a few other verses in the NT that affirm the role of God’s law in the lives of God’s people:

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. (1 John 5:3)

Would you agree that statement is self-explanatory? I think so. There may be some tradition behind what John’s saying, but if there is, I haven’t yet found it. Not that I looked very deeply into the “Jewish literature” for it yet. But when you take that verse at face value, “it speaks loud and clear”.

You can bet that some theologians and religious ministers will balk at what I’m about to say, claiming, “That’s NOT talking about the Mosaic Law! It’s talking about “Christ’s commandment”. Most of the time they can’t define IN MEASURABLE TERMS what they mean by “Christ’s commandment”. But of the few who can, the best they can come up with is “Christ’s commandment is LOVE”. Well, there’s that word again, and it’s UNDEFINED as usual! These idle babblers get that from the immediate context of John’s “epistle” (letter), as well as the greater context. Plus, they get it from other of John’s writings. But is John defining Christian LOVE differently than Paul (as we’ve seen above)? If so, then don’t you think there’s a CONTRADICTION IN IDEOLOGY between these two public officials of Christ? I do!

But let’s not believe what the “experts” have to say about John’s meaning. Let’s just take John’s words at face value and approach the meaning from a different angle, instead of the theologians’ angle, which is: READ INTO THE TEXT YOUR DENOMINATION’S THEOLOGY. Incidentally, that’s a “hermeneutic error” called “EISAGESIS” (reading into the text ideas that don’t originally exist). You see that a LOT in the churches. You see it WAY LOTS in politics, about America’s founding fathers and “legal precedent”. Don’t kid yourself: The churches are part of the government propaganda machine … always have been and always will be, as long as they’re controlled by THE PURSE.

Anyways … let’s take “as established” the proposition that God did require 2nd Temple “Christians” to obey His law, just like he required 2nd Temple ISRAELI citizens to obey Moses (we won’t talk about the 2nd Temple man-made laws here, because it gets a little complicated). That being so, what do you think life was like during 2nd Temple times? Simple: VERY POLITICAL. This is the subject of another blog series. But suffice to say, that POLITICAL and LEGAL corruption was at an all-time high during 2nd Temple times. It was all done through GOVERNMENT REGULATION AND COMMERCE. We call it “the strong arm of the law”.

Basically, people were suing each other over everything, just like today. What happed, I presume, is they took Leviticus 19:17-18 seriously, and socially-developed their OBEDIENCE to that commandment to an extreme. I say that giving their society ‘the benefit of the doubt’. But if their ‘leaders’ are anything like today’s ‘leaders’, then I can’t give them any ‘benefit of the doubt’. Instead, the ‘no-brainer’ is: They CORRUPTED “THE LAW”. IOW, they had developed their society and their legal process into such a corruption of LEGAL OPPRESSION over the populace, that everybody was ‘chafing under the load.’ Here’s one statement by Jesus affirming this fact:

They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. (Matthew 23:4)

He’s not talking about laborers! There are many more verses on that, even for 1st Temple Israel (especially in the OT prophets). This gigantic subject is for another blog series in 2nd Temple political history. Maybe I can get to that eventually. Otherwise, my blog entries will expose some of this corruption sprinkled-in here and there.

The point: Life in the nation was VERY OPPRESSIVE through GOVERNMENT litigation, as well as PRIVATE law suits. IOW, “the law” had turned into a double-edged sword:

1. Used by public officials as a TRAP and WEAPON of enslavement to control of the populace, and
2. Used by individuals and businesses as a WEAPON of ‘protectionism’, much like it’s used today in business.

But what does THAT have to do with John’s assertion: Love = Obeying God’s Law? Simple: JOHN WAS RE-DEFINING LOVE TO MAKE IT A BASIS FOR EDIFYING SOCIETY INSTEAD OF MAKING IT A DESTRUCTIVE WEAPON THAT DESTROYS SOCIETY. Yup, that’s what I got out of reading the NT. So instead of using the law to MUG people, John was telling everybody that GOD INTENDED His law to be used by people so they could THEMSELVES BECOME GOOD PEOPLE, resulting in people being a “BLESSING” to each other and to greater society. John wanted to end the use of “the law” for EXPLOITATION and DESTRUCTION. It’s all about fulling GOD’S intention for His Law, not MAN’s intention. Make sense? See the “good” in that?

As an aside: One of God’s “attributes” is GOODNESS. That means God himself DEFINES the idea of “good”. Well, there you have it. He gave us His law for “the good”. Bank on this: God never intended men in political leadership to develop a system that uses His law as a CLUB to beat people into submission (although that is necessary with ‘law-breakers’). Instead, He intended His law to be used in government service as a BLESSING that brings order to everybody’s life and to society as a whole. His purpose: So everybody can be HAPPY! God wanted us humans to trust each other by everybody becoming trustworthy, as well as create a social and government process CONDUCIVE OF LIBERTY WITHOUT HARM. Compare that with the “freedom” philosophies that today’s state-paid political propaganda artists peddle in the name of “American Democracy”. They peddle that line to get you to ‘believe-in’ and agree to pay for their foreign warfare in the name of “spreading Democracy”. What Garbage! “Liars, one and all!” And they do it in direct violation of the fundamental law and the founders’ intent. Anyways … back to John.

So I take John’s above statement to mean God designed His Law to be a blessing to society. The way that happens is simple: SELF-GOVERNING people take the initiative to LEARN and OBEY God’s law, and to establish it as the governing process of their SOCIETY, including “law and justice”. That way, people are LIVING according to God’s law, not ABUSING the law by brow-beating good people into complying with sordid demands using “the law” in “the courts”. John was spreading Jesus’ teachings by requiring the Jesus people to FOCUS ON THEIR OWN LIVES AND FAMILIES FIRST. Christ’s message was: “get your act together first” (Matthew 7:1-5). IOW, God wants us to FOCUS on applying His law to OURSELVES first and foremost. In the process we’ll become the people God wants for his future Theocracy. Doing that has a way of preventing us from becoming OPPRESSORS.

An important note on the immediate context of John’s statement in the above verse: IT’S A TEST. John is telling Christians what the test is that reveals WHO A TRUE CHRISTIAN IS. Yup, that’s right. There’s a test in the Bible that gives you the ability to MEASURE PEOPLE to determine WHO IS and WHO IS NOT a Christian. Let’s face it: Many people today CLAIM to be Christians. The churches are full of them. The phrase they use is “PROFESSION”. They’re called NOMINAL CHRISTIANS. I call them “churchians”. The ideology behind the word “profession” is a gigantic church dogma that leads to co-opting the parishioners into doing the minister’s work of building his fiefdom. But that’s NOT what the NT teaches. The point is NOT “how can I do the work of the church”? Instead, it’s “How many of these “churchians” truly ARE “Christian”?

This is what John has to say about that:

[1 John 4:]20 If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. [1 John 5:]1 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.

The above text is basically an ALGEBRAIC EQUATION. You have to transfer the variables into the various sentences to get John’s meaning. Note: The bold words constitute the TEST. “Love”, “hate” and “brother” are covenant terms. “Brother” is equivalent to “fellow citizen” in today’s lingo. The italic words are the definition of “LOVE”. The greater context (4:7 ff, not shown) is equivalent to the covenant “preamble” which lays the foundational of what God did to “bless” people so they could become “Christian”: God sent Jesus to procure redemption, gave the Holy Spirit as the Seal of covenant citizenship, and gave His Law as the stipulations of the Jesus-covenant so Christians are not ignorant of what this Sovereign requires of them. And just so you know: The above text is TYPICAL “covenant formula”: What the Sovereign DID FOR YOU, and what the Sovereign REQUIRES OF YOU. Again, read Mendenhall’s article, “Law and Covenant in Israel …”.

More on Covenant as Treaty in another blog entry.

John’s words “love” and “hate” had legal significance to the Jews back when John wrote. They are basically opposites. More on that in another blog entry. Suffice to say John’s TEST is this: If you “profess” to be a Christian, then you will LOVE FELLOW CHRISTIANS, WHICH IS PROVEN BY THE FACT THAT YOU OBSERVE GOD’S COMMANDMENTS FOR THE BENEFIT OF OTHER CHRISTIANS. It doesn’t say “Christ’s” commandments, it says GOD’S. Which commandments in the Bible are “God’s”, at the very least? IOW, which Divine commandments came directly from God? THE 10 of course!:

When He [God] had finished speaking with him [Moses] upon Mount Sinai, He gave Moses the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God. (Exodus 31:18)

So at the very least, John is commanding ALL CHRISTIANS to OBEY THE 10 COMMANDMENTS. Do you agree?

Finally, there’s the words of Jesus. I won’t get into that in this blog entry. That will be part of a Matthew chapter 5 ff blog series.

For now, suffice to say the above texts provide us with more than enough affirmation of what we need to know to be convinced that CHRISTIANS HAVE A COVENANT OBLIGATION TO OBEY GOD’S LAW, both OT & NT.

The next blog will talk about APPLYING GOD’S LAW as Christians.