Showing posts with label paul. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paul. Show all posts

Friday, January 6, 2012

The word Judaizing

Some people that believe in keeping aspects of Mosaic law object to the term "Judaizer" or "Judaizing" saying it a made up term, and that its only used by Law (Torah) breakers.

However, the term Judazing is used in the New Testament, in fact, by St Paul himself

But when I saw that they were not straight forward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, “If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews [Ioudaizein]?-Galatians 2:14

Ἀλλ' ὅτε εἶδον ὅτι οὐκ ὀρθοποδοῦσιν πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου, εἶπον, τῷ Πέτρῳ ἔμπροσθεν πὰντων, Εἰ σύ, Ἰουδαῖος ὑπὰρχων, ἐθνικῶς ζῇς καὶ οὐκ Ἰουδαϊκῶς, τί τά ἔθνη ἀναγκὰζεις Ἰουδαΐζειν;--Galatians 2:14 


As we can see, St Paul used the word with the meaning "live like a Jew."  Sabbath keeping is never pushed by Apostles in the New Testament, it was only obligatory until Christ's death, and was tolerated afterwards in the New Testament as part of the transition period for the Jews accustomed to keeping the 7th day sabbath.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Each Shall die for his own sin

Parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their parents; each will die for their own sin. -Deuteronomy 24:16
The idea that Christ died as if He commited our sin violates the Biblical teaching that each man be put to death for his OWN sins.  This verse, however, seems to only apply to adults, since young children in the Bible are put to death, or killed, because of their parents sins, as in the case of David's son, or the nations God commanded the Israelites to destroys.  Regardless, Christ could not have been put to death for the sins of others (at least justly!). Rather, Christ willingly laid down His own life for the sake of others, not that He should die as their substitute, but that by His righteous death, God would show mercy to mankind, thus allowing man forgiveness on the condition they repent of their sins.  After all, Christ did make several warning statements that certain sins would cause the soul to go to Hell forever, as we see in Matthew 5 with sexual sins, Matthew 6 with withholding forgiving your brother's sins and so on.

On another point, Deuteronomy 24:16 is a verse anti/counter-Missionary Jews use against Christians.  Their claim is legitimate, but only against baptistic and Calvinistic types of Christians that espouse this particular view of the atonement that says "Christ died in our place" or "He took the wrath of God in our place" and so on.  Rather, the Biblical Christ was a propitiation for the sins of the world, meaning His death provided MERCY for mankind. 

I have already written before that the idea of a penal substitution when logically followed out is a denial of Trinitarianism, or can be an affirmation of a sort of Arianism (since God cannot be forsaken by God), or some form of theology where Christ as a man and Christ as God are divorced (undoing the incarnation).

Calvinists try to prove a penaly substitution with verses like 2 Corinthians 5:21, or Isaiah 53 and so on.  When the fact is 2 Corinthians 5:21 by saying Christ "became sin for us" is an expression St Paul was using for a sin offering, and Isaiah 53 doesn't mean God treated Christ as if He had our sins, in fact Matthew 8:17 interprets this part of Isaiah as Jesus healing the sick and casting out demons:

When it was evening, they brought him many who were possessed by demons, and he drove out the spirits by a word and cured all the sick, to fulfill what had been said by Isaiah the prophet: “He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases.”--Matthew 8:16-17