Transcript
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We have reached
the more or less halfway point in the
book of Romans as we enter chapter 8.
So, it's fitting that the first word of
Romans chapter 8 is therefore
because therefore is a word that
indicates that what follows is a
conclusion of things previously said.
Because Paul has been using the Talmudic
style of debate that was popular among
rabbis, I mean complete with a straw
man.
Then the sentence and the religious
ruling that Paul makes in verse one is
meant to sum up at the least
what he said throughout chapter 7. But
from a higher view, it is actually a
ruling
of of
uh the extensive case that Paul has been
building
all throughout the opening of chapter 1.
for trusting Yeshua of Nazareth as
Israel's Messiah and then how this
solves the problem of sin and death.
So, I too will begin today's lesson with
a therefore.
I'm going to use this opportunity
to summarize some things we have learned
in order to continue building up your
general body of knowledge about various
aspects of our faith. The goal of Bible
study here at Seed of Abraham is not
about study and knowledge for its own
sake.
It's a search for divine truth as a
means to a spiritual and personal
maturity in the Lord
and an ever closer and more obedient
relationship with him.
Sometimes to achieve that it's necessary
that we look at our own history as the
body of Christ and kind of understand h
how we got here from there.
Now, while chapter 7 of Romans is
thought by many Bible commentators to be
the most theologically important chapter
in the Bible, which is a very
questionable p questionable perspective
from my viewpoint,
chapter 8 is thought by other
commentators to be the pinnacle of New
Testament narratives that portrays just
what it means to be a Christian.
Now, what I'd like you to take from this
is that Western Christianity finds
Romans chapters 7 and 8 to be both a
Bible within a Bible
and the primary source for doctrinal
belief for the church from the time of
the early church fathers right on up to
our current current era.
For those who have studied with seed of
Abraham Torah class for a few years,
learning what the Old Testament has to
say,
I suspect it's a little easier for you
to see
that there is danger in a mindset that
makes a mere two chapters
of the New Testament as essentially the
molten core of our faith.
two chapters that decides the most
important of Christian doctrines.
When studying the Bible, at any point in
either testament, one must look not only
at the meaning of individual words, but
also
one must must find a how they fit in a
in within a chapter.
We have to look at sentences. We have to
look at chapters. We have to look at
entire books.
Even a Bible book must be taken within
the larger context of the entire word of
God.
In other words, to arrive at a
well-rounded conclusion and a proper
doctrine, we must look at at scripture
from the near, the mid, and the far
view.
Now, some time ago, I told you
that many Christian Bible commentators
readily admit that the church, as we
have known it for centuries, and never
more so than within the last 200 years,
is not so much the church of Christ as
it is the church of Paul.
By no means am I saying that the modern
church believes in Paul rather than
Jesus as Lord and Savior.
However, the church has decided to rely
more [clears throat] on the words of but
one single highly venerated man, Paul
the Apostle to the Gentiles, for our
doctrines and theology than all the
other biblical writers combined.
But even more, church authorities have
decided to focus on words of one
particular book in the Bible more than
any other, the book of Romans.
And even beyond that,
Romans chapter 7 and 8 are regularly
regarded as the epitome
of doctrinal teaching above all else
written in the New Testament or Old.
Now, I'm speaking in broad generalities,
of course, since the church is not
monolithic in its thoughts and and
doctrines.
Thus, whatever else is written in the
Bible, it is often made to conform
to Paul's supposed thoughts of Romans
chapter 7 and 8. Now, I say supposed
thoughts because Paul has been miscast.
He's been poorly misunderstood over the
centuries.
less so interestingly
by Bible scholars
but more so by church government.
Now this leads me to a brief comment
about church structure in order to
perhaps help you gain some insight on
how it is traditionally operated.
See, the institutional church
within its plurality
of its mainstream denominations,
including Catholicism, by the way, is
usually organized into two basic
branches. The academic branch and the
governing branch.
The academic branch is those scholars
and Bible commentators whom the church
looks to for biblical knowledge on the
one hand, but on the other hand, they
are also the scholars who devise what's
called the apologetics
for accepted
church doctrine.
Right? That is the scholars who are
devoted to a particular denomination of
Christ of Christianity provide for both
Bible exposition and for a formal
rationale
as to why their denomination believes
the things it does.
However, this branch of church
organization is visible
only in books and commentaries as
reference sources.
It is the governing branch of the church
that Christians are most familiar with
because it's the visible branch.
It's what we see and what we hear when
we attend a worship service.
The governing branch is on on the local
level is the pastor and the ministerial
staff.
above him if he's part of a recognized
denomination
are usually a regional and then a
national board
that not only determines church rules
and doctrine but also enforces them.
However, their decisions on rules and
doctrines influence and control the
academic branch
far more than the academic branch
influences the governing branch.
From the governing branch's viewpoint,
the search for biblical truth was
concluded long ago
upon the establishment of their do
denomination.
It's over.
With their founding, a set of doctrines
were established
by the original founders that would
henceforth be considered as immutable
truth.
These doctrines are not meant to be
re-examined.
They are meant to be obeyed.
The job of the governing branch is not
to continue searching God's word to be
certain that their beliefs are accurate.
Their job is to enforce the status quo
and to in to emphasize the validity
and superior nature of their doctrines
upon their members.
From an institutional perspective,
it is imperative
that the research and the knowledge of
its scholars validates
what the governing branch of the
denomination already believes.
Now, as I've conducted my biblical
studies
and my research, I have found
that the Catholic Church seems
to allow their academic branch far more
freedom of thought and doctrinal
expression than pretty much any other
denomination I've run across.
It surprises a lot of people, but it's
true.
It can be quite striking
to read the works and conclusions of
some of the finest Catholic scholars
that regularly run completely counter
to Catholic Church doctrine
even openly challenging it.
However, it is also self-evident how
little influence the academic side has
on the governing side of the Catholic
Church.
And now I don't wish to communicate that
other denominations don't have their
mavericks as well.
But my point is this.
It is always dangerous
to begin a search for truth from the
consensus
church doctrine and then working
backwards from it try to establish it in
the Bible.
More times than not the doctrines will
prove out
and other times they just won't.
So the typical solution for this dilemma
is to either ignore those passages that
fly in the face of a denominational
doctrine and instead highlight those
passages that seem it's a little bit of
twisting around to uphold it.
Now since Paul is the primary writer
of the New Testament,
then indeed it is nearly always Paul's
statements that are used as the basis of
Christian denominational doctrines.
However, as anyone who has ever
carefully studied Paul knows, he can be
frustrating
because
on any particular subject, one doesn't
have to look very hard to find more than
one viewpoint from Paul.
Thus, a denominational church board has
to pick through those statements of Paul
and choose the ones they will rely on
the most and dismiss the others that
they consider as lesser importance.
So when we take two chapters out of one
book in the entire Bible
as the source of truth and the beliefs
that we all ought to hold, two chapters
out of hundreds of chapters in the Bible
as having the most weight
or even as a manual of corrections for
what the other parts of the Bible seem
to say.
We need to be equal parts cautious and
skeptical.
To be clear, I'm not a Paul skeptic by
no means,
but neither do I hold up Paul as the
highest biblical authority on spiritual
matters.
For a proper understanding of what Paul
says at any given time, it must be taken
in context.
Not only within the particular book we
find up, but within the overall context
of the several books that he wrote.
And not only within the several books
that he wrote, but within the context of
what our savior said
within the gospel accounts.
And not only that, but within the
context of what other writers have said
in all parts of the Bible,
as I have stated on more than one
occasion, to take Paul as the
preeeminent writer to rely on for
Christian doctrine is as wrong as taking
Luke or King David or John as
preeminent.
This is not Paul's fault.
It is gentile church authorities who've
placed him in that position.
It is critical that believers remain
balanced. But if we're going to lean
especially hard on anyone's words in
holy scripture, it must be the father's
first,
Christ second,
Moses's third.
with all other biblical writers and
characters falling in behind them.
But the other thing that needs to be
said at the halfway mark of our study of
Romans is this.
[clears throat] Because Paul is rightly
called the apostle to the Gentiles.
This is the main reason that the gentile
church has held him up above all other
writers of the Bible.
The thought is that Paul is like a
specialist.
He is the theology for Gentiles
specialist in the Bible.
So we need to listen to the specialist
first and foremost and give less
credence to the non-speists meaning all
other writers, all other Bible
characters.
Yet at the same time, because of this
designation, Paul has also come to be
perceived as more gentile than Jew with
his Jewishness very nearly disregarded.
Thus, his words are stripped of their
Jewish cultural and religious context,
and they're regularly misconstrued.
This is why we are crawling along so
deliberately through the book of Romans.
Just as we did through the book of Acts,
for the earliest readers of Paul's
letters, those to whom his letters were
addressed,
the context was understood.
You know why? They were living in it.
However, for the early church fathers
who were Gentiles, the Jewish cultural
context was mostly a mystery.
Some were even antagonistic
against it.
And over time, the Jewish component was
deemed to be irrelevant. It is this
combination of mindset and circumstance
that has led us and the church body to
some very dubious doctrinal conclusions
that are said to originate from the
words of Paul.
Hopefully our lessons in Acts now in
Romans have shown you that what Paul is
supposed to have said is often terribly
misunderstood
due to a lack of knowledge about Paul's
Jewishness
about Judaism in his time and thus his
intended meaning. And now as we take up
Romans chapter 8, I'm going to spend
more time
adding in the Jewish cultural backdrop
that I hope will aid and are taking
Paul's words as he meant for them to be
taken. So open up your Bibles now to
Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. If
you have a complete Jewish Bible, it's
page 14:10.
Romans chapter 8. We're going to read it
all.
[clears throat]
Therefore,
there is no longer any condemnation
awaiting those who are in union with the
Messiah Yeshua. Why?
Because the Torah of the Spirit, which
produces this life in union with Messiah
Yeshua, has set me free from the Torah
of sin and death.
For what the Torah could not do by
itself because it lacked the power to
make the old nature cooperate,
God did by sending his own son as a
human being with a nature like our own
sinful one, but without sin.
God did this in order to deal with sin.
And in so doing, he executed the
punishment against sin in human nature,
so that the just requirement of the
Torah might be fulfilled in us who do
not run our lives according to what our
old nature wants, but according to what
the spirit wants.
For those who identify with their old
nature set their minds on the things of
the old nature. But those who identify
with the spirit set their minds on the
things of the spirit.
Having one's mind controlled by the old
nature is death. But having one's mind
controlled by the spirit is life and
shalom.
For the mind controlled by the old
nature is hostile to God because it does
not submit itself to God's Torah.
Indeed, it cannot.
Those thus those who identify with their
old nature cannot please God.
But you you do not identify with your
old nature but with the spirit
provided the spirit of God is living
inside of you. For anyone who doesn't
have the spirit of the Messiah does not
belong to him.
However, if the Messiah is in you, then
on the one hand the body is dead because
of sin. But on the other hand, the
spirit is giving life because God
considers you righteous.
And if the spirit of the one who raised
Yeshua from the dead is living in you,
then the one who raised the Messiah
Yeshua from the dead will also give life
to your mortal bodies through the his
spirit living in you. So then, brothers,
we don't owe a thing to our old nature
that would require us to live according
to our old nature.
For if you live according to your old
nature, you will certainly die. But if
by the spirit you keep putting to death
the practices of the body, you will
live.
All who are led by God's spirit are
God's sons. For you did not receive a
spirit of slavery to bring you back
again into fear. On the contrary, you
received the spirit who makes us sons
and by whose power we cry out, "Aba!
The spirit himself bears witness with
our own spirits that we are children of
God. And if we are his children, then
we're hes
of God, joint hes with the Messiah,
provided
we are suffering with him in order also
to be glorified with him.
Now, I don't think the sufferings we're
going through now are even worth
comparing with the glory that will be
revealed to us in the future.
The creation waits eagerly for the sons
of God to be revealed. For the creation
was made subject to frustration,
not willingly, but because of the one
who subjected it.
But it was given a reliable hope that it
too would be set free from its bondage
to decay
and it would enjoy the freedom
accompanying the glory that God's
children will have. Now we know that
until now the whole creation has been
groaning as with the pains of
childbirth. And not only with it, but we
ourselves who have the first fruits of
the spirit grown inwardly as we continue
waiting eagerly to be made sons of God.
That is to have our whole bodies
redeemed and set free.
It was in this hope that we were saved.
But if we see what we hope for, it isn't
hope. I mean after all who ho hopes for
what he already sees but if we continue
hoping for something we don't see then
we still wait eagerly for it with
perseverance.
Similarly the spirit helps us in our
weakness
for we don't know how to pray the way we
should
but the spirit himself pleads on our
behalf with groanings too deep for
words. And the one who searches hearts
knows exactly what the spirit is
thinking
because his pleadings for God's people
accord with God's will.
Furthermore, we know that God causes
everything to work together for the good
of those who love God and are called in
accordance with his purpose. Because
those whom he knew in advance, he also
determined in advance, would be
conformed to the pattern of his son, so
that he might be the firstborn among
many brothers. And those whom he thus
determined in advance, he also called.
Those whom he called, he also caused to
be righteous. To those whom he caused
caused to be considered righteous, he
also glorified.
What then are we to say to these things?
If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare even his own son,
but gave him up on behalf of us all.
Is it possible that having given us his
son, he would not give us everything
else, too?
So, who will bring a charge against
God's chosen people? Certainly not God.
He's the one who causes them to be
considered righteous.
Who punishes them? Certainly not the
Messiah, Yeshua, who died and more than
that has been raised. He's at the right
hand of God and is actually pleading on
our behalf.
Who will separate us from the love of
the Messiah?
Trouble, hardship,
persecution,
hunger, poverty, danger,
war, as the Tanakh puts it.
For your sake, we are being put to death
all day long. We are considered sheep to
be slaughtered.
No, in all of these things, we are super
conquerors through the one who has loved
us. For I'm convinced that neither death
nor life, neither angels nor other nor
other heavenly rulers, neither what
exists nor what is coming, neither
powers above nor powers below, nor any
other thing create created thing will be
able to separate us from the love of God
which comes to us through the Messiah
Yeshua our Lord.
As I stated at the outset,
the first word of this chapter is
therefore.
Now, this means that what Paul is doing
is summing up, he's coming to a
conclusion about what he has previously
said. Now, remember that when Paul wrote
this letter, there were no chapters and
verses.
So it only appears as though there is a
break between the final verse of chapter
7 and the first verse of chapter 8.
Originally it was just one long letter.
The point being that we don't have to
debate
whether the therefore
is truly Paul drawing the conclusion
about what he said in chapter 7 and
before. It obviously is.
And what is Paul's conclusion is stated
in verse one is Paul's conclusion, well
the law is now a dead letter for
Christians. That what he says.
He says nothing of the kind. But you'd
think so
if you were to listen to most
denominations and their scholars.
Paul's words to open chapter 8 are very
specific and I want to give them to you
in three
English versions
so that you can see that there is no
issue of different translation
possibilities
in our complete Jewish Bible. Therefore,
there is no longer any condemnation
awaiting those who are in union with the
Messiah Yeshua. In the King James
version, there uh there is therefore now
no condemnation to them which are in
Christ Jesus who walk not in the flesh
but after the spirit. Romans 8 uh in in
the the NAS version. There is now
therefore no condemnation for those who
are in Christ Jesus. I mean, as you can
see, these words from various versions
all say essentially the same thing, and
they use the same key word,
condemnation.
That's the key word in that verse.
What Romans chapters 1-7 all add up to
according to Paul is everything he's had
to say to this point is
there is no condemnation
awaiting those who are believers in
Yeshua as their Lord and Savior.
What does condemnation mean? Well, in
modern times, to condemn mostly means to
judge someone
or to publicly censor them or or to
denounce some action
that someone has taken.
[clears throat] It's not at all what
condemn meant even a couple hundred
years ago.
In the Bible era, it meant only one
thing.
It meant to sentence to death.
So to use modern words, this verse says,
"Therefore,
there is no longer a death sentence
awaiting those who are in union with the
Messiah Yeshua." Well, what death
sentence is Paul speaking about? It's
the death sentence that all humans have
coming to us
due to our being related to Adam,
thus inheriting the consequences of
Adam's original sin and for us as
individuals who break God's divine laws.
And as Paul has carefully pointed out in
making his case during the previous
seven chapters, God's laws come in three
forms.
First, a direct commandment given one-
on-one from God to a specific person.
The example that Paul used was when God
told Adam not to eat a specific fruit
from a specific tree.
Second of all, the natural law which is
inherently present within all human
beings
regardless of race, culture, ethnicity,
nationality, doesn't matter.
Third, the law of Moses.
Now, I want to point out a couple of
things for us to consider.
If, as some Christians claim, the only
divine law that believers have to obey
is the law of love,
then why doesn't Paul mention that as a
fourth form of God's divine law?
If our only commandment is to love, then
why when we don't show love, isn't that
breaking God's divine laws?
And of all people that might overlook
mentioning that,
it would certainly not be Paul.
The other thing Christians often claim
is that the Holy Spirit directly tells
each person
the laws he or she should do and not do
and that is the sum total that any
particular individual has the obligation
to follow in their lives
or that the only only the things that
Jesus repeated
from the law of Moses are divine laws
for his followers. Do we hear any hint
of that? Have we heard any hint of that
from Paul? No.
For Paul, there's only three sources of
God's laws and instructions, not four,
five, or six.
And all three come directly from the Old
Testament,
the Tanakh.
These other so-called sources of laws
that are popular in the modern church
are no more than man-made doctrines.
So it is the death sentence of God that
believers no longer face as a result of
our union with Christ. Does this mean
believers don't die?
No. This is referring to eternal or
spiritual death that is the result of
sin.
So biblically and as it relates to any
of the three forms of divine law,
including the law of Moses, the only
aspect of those laws that changes due to
the advent of Messiah Yeshua is that the
breaking of those laws does not condemn
us.
Or using the word that the law of Moses
employs, and it means the same thing.
Believers are no longer subject to the
curse of the law.
The law itself is not done away with,
nor is the law itself a curse. Believers
can still break the law and sin, as Paul
lamented to end chapter 7.
It is only that the eternal death
penalty
due to us has been paid for, hallelujah,
by Messiah. and we don't have to suffer
it.
Now, verse two
can create some problems for us if we
don't recognize something important.
The problem is that [clears throat] Paul
uses different words and phrases for
essentially the same thing.
Why? Because within the Judaism in his
day, all these words and phrases were in
common use and people understood them.
Too often we try to nuance what are
essentially synonyms
so that we can show some differences
between those choices of words, but the
differences aren't actually there.
For instance, Paul says that the law of
the spirit, which produces life, has set
him free from the law of sin and death.
This is not a new kind of law he's
speaking about. It is simply a manner of
speaking. And our modern English is like
saying principle.
I mean what else? What but what else can
be confusing is the introduction of the
word spirit into this narrative. What
does he mean by spirit in this case? If
you were in a Jew, if you were a Jewish
day, you would probably understand his
reference.
I've told you of the doctrine of the two
ways or the doctrine of the two masters
that was common knowledge within Judaism
and how even Yeshua used this longheld
Jewish doctrine in his teaching, you
know, no man can serve two masters.
Throughout Romans, Paul constantly falls
back
on the doctrine of two masters in his
teaching as an essential element of the
effect
of the gospel on this world.
The essence, the writers of the Dead Sea
Scrolls held essentially the identical
doctrine.
But being the separatists that they
were, they gave it a slightly different
name. They preferred to call it the
doctrine of two spirits.
So they thought and they wrote of the
evil and good inclinations as the
spirits of evil and the spirits of good.
That's how they wrote about it. It's how
they thought about it. Thus, Paul was
merely using the essence vocabulary
when he introduces the word spirit in
verse two. But it is virtually
synonymous with the two masters
doctrine. And that's how Paul meant it.
Now, Paul says a mouthful in verse
three.
enough that theologians could write
entire essays just on pieces of it.
Now, first Paul says that what the law
could not do, God did.
This is definitely referring to the law
of Moses. And Paul is about to tell us
that there was something that the law
was not capable of.
So God accomplished it using other
means. Now, most often this is an aha
moment for Christian pastors and Bible
teachers. They see this as an admission
by Paul that the law of Moses was
defective. So God had to apply a patch.
Or perhaps it was an excuse for God to
just get rid of it for something else
that worked better.
All that's being said is that God did
something that the law was never created
to do.
The law of Moses was not designed ever
as some kind of a universal redemption
device
that solved all of mankind's problems
with sin and death.
It served a limited but a critical set
of purposes that will remain needed
until we have the new heavens and earth
that were promised will eventually come.
The thing that the Torah, the law was
never created to do was this. It could
not change human nature.
That's his point. It could not affect
the evil inclination that dominates what
Paul calls our old nature.
The law defines sin.
It characterizes God's nature. It
explains how to live a a right a
righteous life. It tells us what to do
to make peace with God when a law is
broken. But the law could not cause a
person to love God.
The law cannot cause a person to obey
God.
The law can only in steer a fear of God
in them due to the harsh consequences
for disobedience.
Yet in a certain very real sense,
the law was God being accommodating
towards his people.
Yes, I said accommodating.
He knew that his people needed a rather
detailed road map on how to live as his
redeemed people.
The natural law was very broad and it
left much for humans to determine for
ourselves and almost always to our
detriment.
But the moment he issued the law,
his people would need help
for when they did not follow God's road
map as they knew they should.
They would need to be rescued from God's
wrath. when they sinned.
So in a marvelous act of grace,
God instituted ritual animal sacrifice.
Why is that grace?
Because when one of his people broke a
law, instead of them facing the
spiritual death penalty, which is
permanent separation from God, the life
of an innocent creature, an animal could
be substituted.
That is grace.
See, that is the essence
of the purpose for the sacrificial
system. And it's important to remember
that the God principle behind that
system is exactly
what has saved us.
Yeshua's death was nothing
more nor less than substitutionary
sacrifice on our behalf.
In the second half of verse three, Paul
says something
that has caused enormous debates within
Christianity.
He says that the way God accomplished
doing this thing that the law of Moses
was never designed to do was by sending
his son as a human being with a nature
like our own sinful one.
Wow.
Notice that Yeshua was sent as a human
being. He was not an apparition
who only appeared to be human.
He was fully human. In fact, says Paul,
Yeshua had the same nature as all
humans, a sinful one.
That is another neverending doctrinal
battle within Christianity.
The idea that Yeshua had the same sinful
nature as all of us is not universally
accepted within the church.
In most English versions, the word
likeness
is present to modify the words about
Yeshua having sinful flesh. Here is an
example of other English verses of this
same verse, King James version. For what
the law could not do in that it was weak
through the flesh, God sending his own
son in the likeness of sinful flesh and
for sin condemn sin in the flesh. Now
the word likeness is indeed there in the
Greek.
But what does it indicate? Does it mean
that while Yeshua looked like he was
made of the same stuff as regular
humans, flesh, in fact, he wasn't an
actual human?
Was his physical pre presence merely an
illusion?
Was he like the Terminator?
Flesh stretched over a non-human frame.
If the word likeness
was not there, then it would be it would
unambiguously indicate that God sent his
son in typical human sinful flesh. But
the word is there.
So what's the answer? Well, I think the
most logical answer that fits within the
context of the chapter with what Paul
says elsewhere and within the context of
what we have read about Messiah Yeshua
in the Gospels, it's this.
Indeed, he came in sinful flesh. But as
we're going to find out later, he never
succumbed to it.
Not even once.
He had within him an evil inclination.
He could be tempted. You think Satan
thought he was wasting his time? He
didn't think he was wasting his time. He
knew.
He He could feel
what all the rest of us feel.
But he also had God's spirit in him. And
with the power of the spirit, he was
able to resist his evil inclination.
So Yeshua theoretically
could have lived to a ripe old age and
died as all humans do, but he never
sinned.
He never once allowed himself to be a
slave to the master of his evil
inclination.
Yet he could suffer.
He could feel pain.
He could feel cold and heat. He could
feel hungry. He could feel thirsty. He
had emotions
including fear and anxiety.
He could bleed. He could die. Listen to
Matthew 26:es
38 and 39. He said to them, he said to
them, this is Yeshua speaking, "My heart
is so filled with sadness I could die.
Remain here. Stay awake with me." And
going on a little farther, he fell on
his face, praying, "My father, if it's
possible, let this cup pass from me."
Yet, not what I want, but what you want.
Or in this even more dramatic version,
the same story in Luke 22
43 2-44, Father, if you are willing,
take this cup away from me still. Let
not my will but yours be done. And there
appeared to him an angel from heaven
giving him strength. And in great
anguish
he prayed more intensely so that the
sweat became like drops of blood falling
to the ground.
So I can only conclude that Paul added
the term likeness to make it clear that
the word had become flesh.
real human flesh.
John 1:1 in the beginning was the word
and the word was with God and the word
was God and the word became a human
being
and he lived with us and we saw his
shehna the sheha of the father's only
son full of grace and truth that is the
word that was with God from the
beginning remained himself
even when he became flesh and blood
Jewish flesh and blood
when he was brought into this world
through a human mother
as are all humans and he was given a
human Jewish name Yeshua.
And since it was the word of God, who
was the author of the Torah,
then what else could he do
but fulfill what Christians always say
is impossible?
He did the law and never once broke it.
Deuteronomy 30 11-14.
For this mitzvah, this commandment which
I am giving you today is not too hard
for you. It's not beyond your reach. It
isn't in the sky so that you need to ask
who will go up to the sky for us and
bring it down to us and make us hear it
so that we can obey it.
Likewise, it's not beyond the sea so
that you need to ask, well, who will
cross the sea for us and bring it to us
and make us hear it so we can obey it?
On the contrary, the word is very close
to you. It's in your mouth, even in your
heart. Therefore, you can do it.
So, since Yeshua had an evil
inclination,
then it means he had a free will.
He could have chosen to avoid the cross.
And clearly as he was in the garden of
Gachman,
Gethsemane,
he was battling his own will that wanted
to live and not die.
But
is good inclination again one as he
virtually defined the difference between
the good and the evil inclinations
between the evil master and the good
master when he said in Matthew 26:39 yet
not as I will but as you will
because the good inclination is doing
the father's will
all the evil inclinations doing our own
will.
The good news is that once arisen,
Christ no longer suffered with an evil
inclination.
And that is one of the things that we
can believers, we can look so forward
to.
When we arise from our rest upon our
resurrection, we will no longer have to
battle an evil inclination
is gone forever. Never again to afflict
us.
Because as Paul said, we have died in
Christ. That's what that means.
Through our baptism, we have identified
ourselves with Christ's death, burial,
and resurrection. Now, we've already
received
the likeness of his death and burial,
but now we await the end times and his
return
for the likeness of his resurrection.
Now, I want you to appreciate
why Paul spends all this time,
all this ink
speaking about the same two or three
principles that were already well known
and taken for granted within Judaism in
his day. Now, please hear me.
As much as Paul's teaching has crossed
the boundaries and of of time and space
to affect us in in the 21st century, he
was by no means thinking in terms of
speaking to Gentiles in the 3 millennium
AD.
He was writing this letter to the Roman
congregations. He was addressing matters
directly pertinent to them. He was using
terms they generally understood.
But at the same time, it's important to
understand that because these principles
that Paul quotes were wellestablished,
they were operating within first century
Judaism, then of course believers in
every age need to understand them within
that same Jewish context.
I think one of the better ways to help
bridge this this difficult gap
is to hear what the renowned
12th century Jewish age Ram Amanades
had to say about the limitations
of the Torah, the limitations of the
law.
In his work,
the guide for the perplexed,
he says that the law of Moses indeed has
no power over the human nature.
And so no power to affect change.
There's no power that can affect change
to the human nature. There is no power
that will ever come that can affect the
human nature. That's what he says.
See this belief was a core doctrine of
Judaism in Paul's day. So this is why
Paul is going to such depth and
essentially repeating himself a number
of times or better saying the same thing
a number of different ways to get this
difficult point across especially to his
fellow Jews. I mean the gentile
believers wouldn't have known much of
any if anything about this Jewish
doctrine.
He was refuting
this first century doctrine of doctrine
of Judaism that there is no way
to change our human nature and be rid of
the evil inclination.
Paul was explaining
that while
that may have been true at one time, it
is no longer.
Yeshua is able to do the impossible.
He can change human nature.
Listen to the Rambam.
What was there to prevent God from
causing the human inclination to
accomplish acts of obedience willed by
him to become a natural disposition
fixed in us?
God does not change at all the nature of
human individuals by means of miracles.
It is because of this that there are
commandments and prohibitions, rewards
and punishments. We do not say this
because we believe that the changing of
the human nature of any individual is
particularly difficult for him.
Rather, it is possible.
It is fully within his capacity.
But according to the foundations of the
law of the Torah, he has never w it, nor
shall he ever will it.
For if it were his will that the nature
of any human individual be changed
because of what he wills from that
individual, the sending of prophets and
all the g giving of the law would have
been useless.
I mean what an amazing admission
for mades. First that the human nature
is untouchable
by any earthly device including the law
of Moses.
And second, that if God decided to
change the nature of humans to get rid
of our evil inclination,
then the ram couldn't understand what
the role of the law would become.
If only he would have read what Paul had
to say here in Romans, he'd understand
it.
Again
in his letter to the Romans, Paul was
not establishing some distant ethereal
theoretical
systematic theology.
He was directly uh directly addressing
real issues of his time.
It was a firm and settled belief
within Judaism that God, although fully
capable, would never undertake the task
of changing the human nature.
>> We'll continue with chapter 8 next time.
For more teachings of real Bible study
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