(02-04-2025, 08:14 AM)Ali Imran Wrote: You're suggesting that the law involving the eye or the hand is now nullified. Does that mean you're free to sin with your eyes and hands?
Do tell.
The issue is law, not licence to sin; to talk about the latter is simply to confuse the issue. You seem to be more concerned with obeying the letter of the law than with understanding the spirit of the law of Christ. Despite knowing the laws of the Old Covenant have fallen into obsolescence, you continue working on your work-based salvation to earn your way to heaven. The reason you fail to see the urgency of the need of grace is because you operate with a totally different value system from that of the Biblical God.
Paul is dead right in declaring "the letter killeth" (2 Cor 3:6), both physically and spiritually. For if we keep cutting off body parts to stop sinning, we'll end up as dismembered torsos rolling down the street, and we still haven't dealt with the condition of our hearts. Without Christ we're also condemned to spiritual death. The law code of the O T seems harsh in light of our present societal standards. It's the cross of the N T that reveals the most violent and mysterious outpouring of the wrath of God that we find anywhere in the Bible.
Here an innocent Man does suffer after He willingly takes upon Himself, by imputation, the sins of the world. Without this act wrath there's no grace. But it's precisely through this act of wrath that grace is made available.
Any one standing next to God's law, lifts up their haughty head, and tell the world that they have been just as good as it requires is lying. Only Jesus can stand next to the law and it be a spitting image. It's not until the law is put before us that in its mirror, we see that we haven't become like God. at all. We've only imaged Satan.
This is because, as Paul expounds in Rom 7:12, the "law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good." The law is holy because the Giver of it is, and responding to it in complete obedience (if it's humanly possible) would have reckoned us all good. The problem is, "No one is good but God" (Mark 10:18) - as in, no one is holy but God.
When God says "love Me" (Matt 22:37), it isn't a request but a command of the highest order. It's God legislating glory, worship, and honor for Him alone, outlawing idolatry. When God says, "Love your neighbor," it isn't an arbitrary suggestion to which we've the right to ignore, but it's a law obligating us to love one another as God Himself does.
What happens when we don't obey? When God says, "Love Me," I stiffen my neck. When God says, "Love your neighbor," I take it upon myself to let grudge be my lord. In our natural state, Paul describes us as being "dead in trespasses and sins" with a mind that's hostile to God "that will not submit to God's law" and cannot for those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Eph 2:1-2; Rom 8:7-8).
Thinking ourselves to be wise, we become fools (1 Cor 1:18-27; 3:18; Rom 1:22). This is typical of what Scripture calls "the natural person," also known as the dead one (1 Cor 2:14; Eph 2:15; 4:8). The natural man doesn't accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they're folly to him, and he's not able to understand them because they're spiritually discerned (1 Cor 2:14). It isn't purely because of ignorance that people won't flee to God for forgiveness, but blindness. As the heart is, the mind is too, both darkened and incapable of functioning correctly or behaving righteously (Rom 1:21).
The complete deadness of the heart and mind is what makes obedience to God's moral law impossible. We're prone to look into God's law with
some strange self-confidence and an ego that exaggerates our own abilities, produced by the flesh. We've no power in and of ourselves to do what God has required of us, no matter how confident we're or orthodox we think. We must be alive before we can be made holy. To be made alive, one must be born again. Just as a dead body can't do anything, a dead nature can't be holy.
Jesus said of the Spirit, "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). So it's with everyone who receives the Spirit. God said through prophet Ezekiel, "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules (36:26-27). He does this through the miracle of regeneration, which is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, granting life to the dead sinner, giving them the ability to exercise faith and new inclinations toward God.