Very well said, Tom!

Not much I can add other than I would like to explore the idea that the law is a reflection of our love for sin rather than a reflection of God's character.

Both in the law and the punishment is reflected the hardness of our hearts rather than God's ideal or His character. It is like God saw a path to work though the ignorance and violence of sin and that path included violence because we were so violent that there was no other way to lead us without violating our free will.

It seems to me that, to God, freedom is a greater priority than sin. He allowed sin to play out because is was our choice, but refuses to stop it by violating our freedom. Therefore, it seems to me that, God is more concerned about protecting freedom than preventing sin.

I wonder if it is because love can only exist in freedom and if this freedom experiment fails then everything God has done to create creatures in His own image would also be a failure. Some how God doesn't want any more robots!

scott

There was no way to prevent sin permanently than by not preventing it temporarily. If God had taken actions to prevent sin temporarily, that would have involved bringing it to an end at a time when His actions would have been misinterpreted as agreeing with what the enemy was accusing Him of, which would have just made things worse. The only way for God to be seen as different than Satan was to let things play out, and even so God has been widely misunderstood, His attributes being mistaken for Satan's on a wide scale.

That is how I see it too, Tom!

Satan could break all the rules, but God only had one path that He could follow and that is to act according to His Righteousness. Freedom and love are not some arbitrary way God decided to act. This is not an act at all. Freedom and love are the essence of who God is and for Him to change would be to make Satan's accusations about Him true.

This earth is a demonstration of the reality of what is. Is love more powerful than hate? Is freedom more powerful than bondage? It doesn't seem to be the reality in the short term, but in the long run God's ways will be proven right and it isn't because He stacks the deck and forces it to be that way. It is because it is that way. We are a demonstrate that God is right and His ways are life!

scott

If He stacked the deck, it wouldn't take so long, but it would be contrary to His character.

This is interesting to think about in relation to Christ's coming. Many view the timing of Christ's coming as being set by God. Under this scenario, there's no satisfactory answer as to why Christ hasn't come it. There's no reason God should take this long to send Him, especially as Christ promised to come soon. However, if the deck is not stacked, then things will take as long as they take. There's really nothing God can do to shorten the time because He is dependent on beings with free will to take the truth He communicates and run with it.

I had about decided to let this topic slide...but seeing this post, Scott, I am compelled to respond.

You and Tom are straying from the truth. You may not see it, but by little and by little, truth can become falsehood. I see that happening here.

I _HIGHLY RECOMMEND_ that you learn another language, and begin reading the Bible "again for the first time," seeing things from perspectives you've never been exposed to before. In this case, I would like to say that, as you, I was brought up to view the whole Ten Commandments as a bunch of "dos and don'ts."

When I was studying in Spain, and learning a whole new set of verb conjugations (Spanish has some similarities to the Biblical languages), I chanced to read the Ten Commandments one day in Spanish. Our teachers had informed us that there are about five Bible versions in Spanish, and they were translated from the original languages by Spanish scholars well versed in the Greek and Hebrew. I mention this because there are quite a number of other Bibles, including Thai and Chinese, which were heavily dependent upon their English equivalents (e.g. NIV) during translation; whereas Spanish was not a second-hand translation.

Now, the Spanish Bible I was reading was one of the older versions, and still carried the now-obsolete future subjunctive verb tense. Future subjunctive basically means the verb is looking toward a future fulfillment. For example, "If I were rich, I would...." The "were" is an example of the subjunctive tense in English--but in English this only conveys wishful thinking. The future subjunctive in Spanish has more certainty in its tone.

Imagine my surprise, and wonderment, to see that each of the Ten Commandments were given in this Spanish verb tense! In other words, the command is NOT saying "You must not bow down to idols." It is saying instead, "You will not (in the future) bow down to idols." It is true that the "shall" in Old English carried with it a very similar meaning as what I read in Spanish. But the sheer repetition of having heard these commands in a very negative way while growing up had dulled my senses to the true beauty of them which God had intended. Reading the Bible in another language often removes this barrier of preconception.

I have never since looked upon these laws of God as a bunch of don'ts. They are, instead, promises to us that God will help us not to do those things which separate us from Him.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

Agreed.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

Hi GC,

Since you bolded my statement “Both in the law and the punishment is reflected the hardness of our hearts rather than God's ideal or His character.” I’m assuming that you don’t agree and therefore I must have rejected the Bible in order come to that conclusion.

Please let me explain. Paul says that the law is our schoolmaster to lead us to Christ. It is like a mirror that reflects our sin. The law is a transcript of God’s character, but remember that the angels before the fall didn’t even know there was a law. My point is that the law was written to expose sin. Paul puts it this way in Roman 3:



So the law makes us conscious of sin because it is the standard of righteousness. So when we look at the law we become convicted of our unrighteousness.

Note that the law is given in different forms to different people depending on their maturity. The angels were mature and didn’t know there was a law, but Israel, after 400 years of slavery, needed to be told how to handle their dung. So the law is expressed differently to different people depending on how it applies to their needs. The principles never change, but the expression changes according to the maturity level of those hearing it.

An example would be the fence you put around your yard to protect your 4 year old. The principle was to protect him so why isn’t the fence necessary when the child becomes an adult? The law for the child would be, “Don’t go outside the fence”, but the law for the adult child would be, “Take care of yourself and be safe.”

Therefore God gives us the law in the expression we need. The law, therefore, expresses our maturity level and not God’s.

I hope I didn’t muddy the water.

scott

GC, I know quite a few languages, and agree with your point that reading things in other languages can help open one's perspective (Scott knows Hebrew, btw). As you shared an example with me, I'll share one with you.

In Gen. where it says that the earth is cursed for your sake, in English it's not clear whether God is saying "the earth is cursed" or if He's saying "cursed by the earth!" whereas this ambiguity is cleared up in other languages.

I also agree with your point about the law.

Tom, I am tempted to say - Amen! However, you left out a very important aspect, an important truth. It was the Son of God who told Moses to stone the Sabbath-breaker to death. And, while here in the flesh Jesus did not undermine the law of Moses. When the Jews brought the adulteress to Him and asked what should be done about it, Jesus instructed them to obey the law of Moses.

"The law specified that in punishment by stoning, the witnesses in the case should be the first to cast a stone. Now rising, and fixing His eyes upon the plotting elders, Jesus said, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." And stooping down, He continued writing on the ground. He had not set aside the law given through Moses, nor infringed upon the authority of Rome. {DA 461.3, 4}

Tom, from what you've posted thus far it seems pretty clear you believe Jesus "permitted" sinning in the Law of Moses. Is this true, or have I misunderstood you?