Pride

[entertainme]

[ QUOTE ]
Entertainme, X, or anyone,

Do certain churches teach that Christians don’t have to follow the 10 commandments? I've heard some Christians debating this point and I wondered if this is taught in specific denominations. The explanation to me was that the 10 commandments are part of the old Law, Christ is the new law and one needs only to accept Christ in their life. Basically they were saying that if a person needs the commandments he is not close to Christ; and if he is close to Christ then he certainly won’t need them. I thought it was kind of weird.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi Katy,

Just a note to let you know I saw this and plan to reply. I t will take some thought and I have a lot of worked stacked up so I don't know if it will be today.

[entertainme]

[ QUOTE ]
Entertainme, X, or anyone,

Do certain churches teach that Christians don’t have to follow the 10 commandments? I've heard some Christians debating this point and I wondered if this is taught in specific denominations. The explanation to me was that the 10 commandments are part of the old Law, Christ is the new law and one needs only to accept Christ in their life. Basically they were saying that if a person needs the commandments he is not close to Christ; and if he is close to Christ then he certainly won’t need them. I thought it was kind of weird.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi Katie,

You will surely regret getting me started on this. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

The idea that your friends were discussing is biblical and is discussed by Paul in the same section of Romans I quoted above.

However, Paul still says the "law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good." Jesus also says the law can be summarized in two simple ideas:

- You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

- You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

So, the law is still good and right, the question is how do we fulfill the law? As I posted above, there's not one of us that is capable of getting it right all the time, so the question becomes how do we deal with sin, (when the law is broken)?

In the old testament there was an inner room in the temple hidden behind a curtain called "the Holy of Holies", (this is where they kept the Ark of the Covenant.) The presence of God dwelt among his people in this room.

Once a year, on the Day of Atonement the High Priest was commanded to make sacrifices to cover the sins of the people. He then entered the Holy of Holies and sprinkled the blood that covered their sins on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant.

The High Priest was only allowed to enter this chamber once a year to atone for the sins of people. It's an "external" way to deal with sin, just as the law is outside of us. The covering of sins is temporary and lasts only a year and allows God to dwell among his people.

Now we come to Jesus, who is both man and God and chooses to die to reconcile us once and for all. He sheds his blood on the cross for forgiveness of sins and the curtain that hides the Holy of Holies in the temple rips in two, (Mark 15:38).

In Hebrews 9 and 10 the author explains that the earthly temple is a copy of the heavenly temple, and upon his death Jesus enters the real chamber in heaven and uses his blood to atone for the sins of the people.

So, under the old covenant we were separated from God and ours sins are covered.

Under the new covenant we have direct access to God and true forgiveness of sin through the sacrifice of Jesus.

Now we come to the idea of fulfilling the law under the new covenant. What is required of us to receive this forgiveness?

Romans 10:9: because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

We are told over and over that we are only required to believe. And if we make that choice to believe?

The promise is that the "Comforter", the Holy Spirit enters us at that moment. The curtain is torn, we are reconciled and can have a relationship with the God who knows us inside and out.

Hebrews 10:15-17

15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws on their hearts,
and write them on their minds,”

17 then he adds,

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

We finaly get to the heart of the issue. The law is now "written on their hearts". Hence your friends comments that we are no longer dependent on an external law, and are now instead dependent on an internal relationship with God in order to fulfill the law.

I hope I was able to explain the concept more clearly and didn't get to carried away.

The Poker Mom

[Sniper]

Entertainme,

So in summary, based on your religious beliefs: Is it your belief that it is important to strive to follow the laws?

I think you are saying, yes...

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
From a religious/theological perspective, doing or not doing those particular sins, pride included, has nothing to do with leading a successful life as far as society is concerned, it has to do with leading a successful life as far as God is concerned.

I'm definitely not qualified to make any kind of profound statement on these matters, but I think the distinction above needs to be made clear.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nicely done.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I was interested in this thread until the poker analogy.

[/ QUOTE ]


LOL, last time I checked this was a poker message board.

[/ QUOTE ]

It hurts more than it helps in this context. Nice OP otherwise, except that you didn't tell us about your problem with your girlfriend, which would seem the whole point of the post, or really stir up discussion with it. The poker metaphor too feels like you started up something interesting and then checked out early.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
Pride is a tricky one.


My feeling about most if not all the Seven Deadly Sins is a little bit of them in your character is good. If they're the seasoning on your character, if you like, rather than the main body of it. I can explain and justify each of them I think by example, if there's any of them you don't think this applies to.

But pride is a tricky one. I think a little pride in your achievements/appearance/talents/whatever is a very good thing. People who care to take (non-excessive) pride in their appearance or manners or care in work are to be congratulated. The problem comes when it becomes a central feature rather than another small aspect to your personality. The only time is becomes an actual good thing is when pride allows you to operate in cases or extremes/crisis. It's probably a major and important component in successful military tacticians, for example. But even then, it's probably a bad thing for the people suffering from it whilst being a good thing for their society.


Ultimately, when you start expressing this pride out loud, it starts to turn for the worse. And when it becomes arrogance/hubris/vanity, and/or you're relying on past glories or sycophants or a position where you are lording it over underlings, then you're pretty much damned, foolish and ultimately a negative in the universe.

[/ QUOTE ]

This reminds me of a person I was close to who thoroughly alienated me by being hyper-aggressive with his pride. He had some okay accomplishments, but nothing that notable. However, he could not stop talking about those things for even five minutes at a time, and he was very presumptuous that his kind of virtues were the only ones that could possibly matter or were even worth thinking about or acknowledging. (Had a touch of Sklansky, I guess.)

Eventually he became absolutely unbearable and a bit of a legend among our small group. He didn't realize how ridiculous it was to have his pride so greatly outpace his real accomplishments and perspective about them on the one hand, and his ability to get along with everyone on the other.

Many years later, his accomplishments started drifting at least a little closer to his ideas about them. First, the ups and downs of life that came his way steadied his catastrophically overblown imagination of how great he was and how much everyone should care. And, just moving forward against the current like one must do in life, he eventually did manage to accumulate some tangible successes. These things combined to rebalance his life and put it on a steadier course than it had ever been when his every waking moment seemed ultimately a panic-stricken grab at premature greatness.

But pride completely derailed him reality and his true humanity for most of his life. A lot of people are still very wary of him, and find it hard to believe he may have gotten any better. Now he's trying to rebuild, and I think he's having some success at it.

The funny thing is, he could have had a lot of this happiness and success from the beginning, instead of waiting so long because his ego tried to short-circuit the process. He wanted so desperately credit that he hadn't yet had any part of earning that he pushed it beyond his grasp. I'm glad he seems to have finally landed on his feet. But in many ways, though not poor, through his overabundant, unearned pride, he made himself an unnecessarily hard life.

[katyseagull]

[ QUOTE ]
Entertainme,

So in summary, based on your religious beliefs: Is it your belief that it is important to strive to follow the laws?

I think you are saying, yes...

[/ QUOTE ]

Sniper,

The first time I read entertainme's post, I thought the answer was no. It seemed to me she was saying that with the coming of Christ and direct access to God, people no longer needed the 10 commandments which was an external law.

On my second reading I decided I was wrong. By saying the "law is now written on their hearts" I take it to mean they (Christians ) do indeed need to strive to follow the commandments, every day of their life, as it is written into their hearts so long as they are believers in Christ.