"Indeed, the gate is wide that leads to destruction, as Our Lord prophetically told us" True, and the door to heaven seems only large enough to accommodate you and Consular, OC. Ok. Please let me know how well those sabbatarian prohibitions are working out for you....or all those levitical laws...or how well is your kosher diet doing? Bottom line: Salvation does not come from the keeping of the commandments but by grace through faith in Christ.
That is quite an unfair portrayal of what I'm saying. The moral law of God, encompassed in the 10 commandments, is eternal. The fact that we can't keep the law perfectly due to our sinfulness does not mean we can positively disregard it either. After all, can you lie, cheat, murder and blaspheme just because there's "grace through faith in Christ?" If we love Him, we will keep His commandments.
Mea Culpa. I meant no offense...where does it say that all 10 commandments are eternal? Faith hope and love these are the eternal things and do not pass away. Indeed, if we love Christ we will keep HIS commandments. As I have pointed out, I cannot recall anywhere where Christ ratified the 2nd Commandment. At any rate, I, as I have said, do not worship the crucifix, but I honor the event, an event I think I remember you calling the pinnacle and summit of faith in another thread, being portrayed through the crucifix.
The Cross is indeed the pinnacle of our faith, we're in agreement there. Our disagreement is in the lawfulness of the pictorial representation (or, more precisely, the alleged representation) of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. The Sacrifice of Christ itself is honoured, or better yet, cherished, contemplated and believed in our hearts through His word. That the 10 commandments are eternal is self-evident: do we have the duty to love God above all things? Or has that passed away after the Incarnation? Must we abstain from murder? Must we honour our parents? Must we be chaste? Of course! Grace does not mean licentiousness. Christ fulfilled the law, He did not abolish it.
Christ often summarised the commandments, He didn't abolish any. In that passage Christ didn't mention that one should have no other gods besides the Lord. Does that mean the first commandment doesn't count?
I beg to differ, what is self- evident is that the 10 Commandments were given by God to the people of Israel as part of the Mosaic Covenant so that they could dwell in the Land of Canaan. Deuteronomy says:
So you're saying that you don't have to abstain from murder and theft, for instance? That you don't have the moral obligation to worship God alone? That God's moral law was for the Israelites alone? Unlike the other commandments in the Torah, the 10 commandments alone provide the universal and timeless standard of right and wrong. This is true of both Judaism and Christianity. The Scriptures themselves indicate the unique status of the Decalogue among all the other Old Testament laws. They have a uniquely terse style. Of all the biblical laws and commandments, only the 10 commandments were written with the finger of God and the stone tablets were placed in the Ark of the Covenant.
We ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device; for men themselves, who are the offspring of God, and made after his image, are not to be compared to graven images of gold, silver, and stone, but are vastly preferable to them, they being formed by their art, and the device of their minds; and much less then should God, the Creator of men, and from whom they spring, be likened to, or represented by, any such thing; for so to think of God, is to think very unworthily of him; for if to think thus of ourselves, who are descended from him, would be a debasing of us, then much more to think so of God, the Father of spirits, must be a depreciating of him; and which by no means ought to be done, and argues great stupidity: if living rational creatures are not to be equalled to, and compared with, senseless statues, much less God, the former of men and angels.
I don’t know about you, but I am a child of promise not a child of law, who is cursed. Jesus fulfilled the Old Covenant, and thus it has been set aside. I offer these Bible passages as proof of what I say: “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” – Romans 6:14 “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”-Colossians 2:13-14 “But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.”–Galatians 3:23-25 I have many more. Consider also this. The 10 commandments cannot be eternal. For the 600 years between Abraham and Moses, there was only one command…circumcision. Prior to that, God commanded Noah to be fruitful and that anyone who killed a man should be himself killed. Commands changed with covenants. Under the covenant of Grace, we are held to the Law of Christ. Which is summed up as this: Love one another (See John 13:34-35, Romans 13:10, James 2:8) and to have faith in Him. While brevity is the soul of wit, a terse style is no guarantee of eternality. Moses did murder, as did David, who also commited adultery. Abraham lied to the Egyptians. Jacob defrauded both his father and brother. All of these men broke the 10 commandments and yet each of them are listed as saved. Moses even appeared to Christ in the Transfiguration. They were saved by faith in the promised and coming Savior, not by obedience to the law. The Law is a teacher, teaching us our need for Savior because we could not, by ourselves, obey the law. Isaiah, was under the old law, but spoke of only a new covenant as being eternal.
Do you really think I consider "the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device"?
I know that the Old Covenenat was fulfilled by Christ and that we are solely justified by faith in Him apart from the works of the Law (both cerimonial and moral). That, however, the commandments of God are thus to be ignored because we are under grace, I utterly reject as abhorrent. It's pure antinomianism. As the Methodist Adam Clarke said in his commentary on Galatians: "The Gospel proclaims liberty from the ceremonial law: but binds you still faster under the moral law. To be freed from the ceremonial law is the Gospel liberty; to pretend freedom from the moral law is Antinomianism." The Ten Commandments summarise the moral law which is of necessity eternal because God Himself is eternal. In the history of mankind it was never morally indifferent to murder, to cheat, to lie, to steal, to worship other gods, etc., whether you were Adam, Noah, David or Paul. Therefore breaking God's commandments is morally indifferent? That's antinomianism. In other words, heresy. Due to our corrupted nature after the Fall, we can never obey the moral law perfectly as it is required. We'll always fall short somewhere and that's why we can't be justified by it, that's why we need divine grace and Christ's perfect righteousness. But that doesn't mean that God's commandments are to be wilfully discarded and disobeyed: that's heresy of the worst kind. If we love the Lord, we'll keep His commandments. That's clear as day, Christ Himself taught it.
With all due respect, I heard these same admonishments of the crucifix from the fundamental Baptist ministers...........but these were also the same people that claimed God read the KJV Bible! Jeff
1) I am not a "fundamental Baptist" minister or layman. 2) I don't claim that God reads the KJV. Your post is immaterial to the argument, unless you wish to taint me with guilt by association which is a fallacy.
Great points OC. But here's how I see your arguments from my perspective. First aren't bread and wine corruptible? If I ignored all of them perhaps. But I don't. I don't cling to the 10 commndments. I cling to Christ. Only in him do I find salvation. He has retained some laws as part of the new covenant, but clearly not all. Your special preference to the 10 commandments is baffling and unscriptural imho. The commandments were written by the finger of God, the Levitical Laws were given by the Angel of the Lord at God's decree. Are they any less worthy of adherence? Is their source any different or ;ess eternal than God himself? You place special significance on the fact that the stone tablets upon which the 10 commandments were carved were placed in the Ark. But the whole of the Torah was placed in the Ark's side (Deuteronomy 31:26). You say God is very strict in His Prohibition not to make images and yet the Old Testament shows him specifically commanding the Israelites to cast gold Cherubim on the top the Ark. Interesting that you would use the words of an avowed Arminian, another group you've called heretics on this forum, in order to claim that I too am a heretic. How is pharisaical legalism any better than antinomianism? Forgive me, but I think there is more to the Christian life than finding heresies in every sentence and heretic under every rock. Perhaps here's the confusion. I never said they were morally indefferent...in fact I showed where Christ reinforced their necessity as part of the new covenant. What he did not mention was that making images of himself to memorialize his Gospel acts was illicit. You say that we shouldn't reverence gold or stone as if they were God yet you've given the stone tablets eternal magesty and eternal significance simply because the were touched by the finger of God, I choose to reverence the maker of those stones and if a visual aid assists me in keeping in mind my sinfulness and God's great gift to me. I am reminded of the bible verse my children and I read before their bedtime prayers last night: "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Perhaps you don't need visual reminders of God's saving work. Wonderful. In that case, of what need do you have of even a cross. But perhaps you can forgive my weakness. Many times I do. Just like I need to kneel when I make confession. Those reminders help point me to the God that made and then redeemed the world...and that I am but a poor, desperate sinner who has nothing, not even the scruples to keep the law. And I can only call upon Jesus for my salvation. For you, there may be no virtue in a crucifix. But for me, there is. And so I will continue to think on these things.
Sadly it isn't. I simply pointed out who agrees with your questionable condemnation of millions of people over several thousand years. Also, a point of clarification. I have never heard anyone claim their crucifix was the exact representation of Christ's body in any form, as with icons, and I see their use of it in the same way that God commanded Joshua to set up "12 stones of remembrance" after crossing the Jordan (Joshua 4). As painful as it was, the crucifixion was a part of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, and is worthy of remembrance.
The Eucharist is a sacrament ordained by Christ. The bread and the wine are sacramental symbols of Christ's body and blood, they're not a pictorial representation of His person. What is baffling to me is having to argue with an Anglican about this simple matter: I said that antinomianism is a heresy and I stand by it. Truth is what matters, not who says it.
1. I condemned the violation of the Second Commandment, not "millions of people over several thousands of years." 2. Even if Buddhists agreed with me on this it would still be immaterial. Guilt by association is a fallacy. If I produced a statue of an old woman and then claimed it's your great-grandmother, when in fact I have never laid eyes on her, what would you call it? A representation or a fiction? And it is remembered in faith, by the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments.