{"id":6769,"date":"2016-01-13T14:45:24","date_gmt":"2016-01-13T14:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pjhmail.wordpress.com\/?p=6769"},"modified":"2016-01-13T14:45:24","modified_gmt":"2016-01-13T14:45:24","slug":"believing-the-law-and-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/6769\/believing-the-law-and-jesus\/","title":{"rendered":"Believing the Law and Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"

John.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hope All Is Well\u200b!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bI was just reading through\u200b Chapter 5 \u200bof the Father and Son book, \u200band \u200bI \u200bneed help getting my thoughts in order\u200b.\u200b<\/span><\/p>\n

I follow the very important point you are making\u200b,\u200b and I can’t think of a better way to convey the message, but I have trouble believing \u200bthat anyone keeping the \u200bl\u200baw didn’t recognize Jesus. \u200bAfter all,\u200bJesus said,”\u200bIf you had\u200b \u200b\u200bbelieved what Moses wrote\u200b, you would have believed\u200b\u200b me.\u200b”\u200b<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bAlso, even when Paul says he had a clear conscious\u200b while he persecuted the saints\u200b, some of his actions \u200bat that time in his life \u200bwere contrary to the \u200bl\u200baw\u200b of Moses\u200b, were they not??<\/span><\/p>\n

Wendell<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bHere is the excerpt, from Chapter 5:<\/span><\/p>\n

Young Paul\u2019s respectable kind of wickedness, his self-righteous pride, was the same kind of wickedness that motivated the elders of Israel to persecute and kill Jesus.\u00a0 The sin of Israel\u2019s self-righteous elders was greater than any sin that the Gentiles, who did not have God\u2019s law, could commit, and it was greater than the sins of fellow Jews who did not keep the commandments.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Those self-righteous elders condemned others who did not know and keep the law (Jn. 7:49), but drunkards, harlots, and other outcasts in Israel were not the ones who pursued God\u2019s saints to destroy them.\u00a0 Only Jewish elders who meticulously kept the law and were proud of it had the strength to commit that degree of wickedness<\/span>.<\/p>\n

===============<\/span><\/p>\n

Hi Wendell.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks for the question. I think you are asking how it could be (since Jesus said believing the law meant that one would believe in him) that the elders of Israel, who seemed to be so intent on keeping the law, did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.\u00a0 Those in Israel who refused Christ Jesus did not keep the law as God intended for it to be kept.\u00a0 They only kept a version of the law, according to Jesus, a version that accentuated ceremony far above moral uprightness.\u00a0 Furthermore, the law they kept had been added to, which Moses had strictly forbidden Israel to do.\u00a0 The rulers in Jesus time revered, as equal to God’s law, “the traditions of the elders”.\u00a0 In fact, sometimes, they even honored their traditions above the word of God in the law.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

So, while it appeared that many in Israel observed the law and yet did not receive Jesus, such is not the case.\u00a0 Every person who sincerely believed what Moses wrote, and obeyed the commandments God gave Moses for Israel, recognized and loved Jesus as being the Messiah.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As for Paul, yes, I assume that some of his actions were contrary to the law, rightly understood. But he was among those who were diligently keeping a version of the law instead of the law as God gave it.\u00a0 And since young Paul clearly believed that keeping that version of the law pleased God, then it is not surprising that his conscience was clear at that time in his life.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Let us earnestly pray that God will save us from the deadly error of being confident we are right when He sees us as being wrong!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Pastor John<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John. Hope All Is Well\u200b! \u200bI was just reading through\u200b Chapter 5 \u200bof the Father and Son book, \u200band \u200bI \u200bneed help getting my thoughts in order\u200b.\u200b I follow the very important point you are making\u200b,\u200b and I can’t think of a better way to convey the message, but I have trouble believing \u200bthat anyone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-qa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}