dseusy wrote:I believe that God is so righteous and His commands are so high and many that it is a tremendous task to even gather them all, much less accomplish them- for any human.
The Bible says God's commands are not too high,
and we don't need to travel great distances to gather them:
“This commandment I am giving you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it too remote. It is not in heaven, as though one must say, 'Who will go up to heaven'” (NET)
“it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it?” (KJV)
'Look! I have set before you today life and prosperity” (NET)
“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life”
“What I am commanding you today is to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances. Then you will live”
The Bible says God's commands are not a heavy burden for us to obey:
“thou mayest do it.” (KJV)
“
you can do it.” (Deut 30 NET)
“His commandments are not grievous.” (KJV)
“His commandments do not weigh us down” (NET)
Grievous (Greek: barus) adj.
1. weighty
2. (figuratively) burdensome, grave
The Bible says that God accepts service that is logical and reasonable. It would not be logical and reasonable if it was impossible, and even further from logical and reasonable to beseech men to do it.
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
The Greek word for 'reasonable' in this passage is 'logikos' meaning rational/logical. If Paul was beseeching men to do something that would prove to be impossible, there would be nothing rational or logical about it. It would be the worst possible choice of words, with the single exception of saying “your possible service”.
Being impossible to please is not the same thing as being holy, righteous, and just. God does not need us to inflate His reasonable, non-grievous requirements, as if making them impossible would somehow be an improvement. They are already both perfect and doable.
God does not need us to do the impossible when He already made heaven and earth without our help. The problem God has with us is not that we fail to do the impossible, but the problem is that we refuse to do that which is possible with the ability we already have.
Even more fundamental than all of this, the simple fact that God commands us to obey His law is irrefutable proof of our ability to obey His law. God could not be sincere and command us to obey the law when He knew all along that we could not obey. Our ability to obey God's law is as certain as His sincerity in commanding us to obey it.
Romans 7
Romans 7 is describing a selfish person, not a loving person. An unconverted sinner, not a holy person. A convicted legalist, not a presently converted man. It shows the internal conflict of living in sin, how unnatural sin is, how contrary to our nature, how violently self-abusive to our own minds. It was not the present experience of Paul. Present tense is often used to make an impact on the mind of the hearer/reader, rather than indicating an actual present experience. The experience in Romans 7 is that of a man who is carnal (carnally motivated) and sold under sin (an inevitable result of carnal motives). Paul said of himself that he strove successfully to have a conscience void of offense – the total opposite of the depiction of legalistic failure in Romans 7.
When I said, “No one does evil when they are actually trying to do good” I did not mean the subordinate resolutions/goals/choices of the will but the ultimate end/intention/motive of the will (or heart). A person whose ultimate intention is to promote the highest well-being of God and His kingdom is truly benevolent or loving. If our ultimate intention is good then our subordinate resolutions/goals/choices will necessarily be good as well. It is a law of our nature. A good ultimate intention of the will is like a good tree and the subordinate choices of the will are like the fruit. The man in Romans 7 was making beneficial subordinate resolutions but without having the right heart. His resolutions were subordinate to his carnal motive, his self-pleasing ultimate intention. It is like trying to be a good person without really letting go of the selfish/carnal ultimate motive of the heart. Impossible.
I sin, probably every day in the flesh
I found that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't live out exactly what He commands.
Have you resisted to the point of blood-shed?
It is illogical and unbiblical to come to the conclusion that you are unable to obey God. The Bible says “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” So it is wrong to say “I couldn't” if you mean it literally, because the Bible says you were able – not unable as you said. This is why I think you may have added to God's requirements of you in your own mind.
Either you've been convinced by bad theology, that you're required to do the impossible, and are giving in to self-condemnation that is not from above, or you've been trying for the wrong reasons. If we try to obey God's law, but inwardly we have the wrong motive, then we will inevitably make resolution after resolution and continue to fail. That's the legalistic torture described in Romans 7. But I think you are just being too hard on yourself because you say you are sincere.
You provided John 14:21 to answer my question about obeying being connected to our ability... where does this verse state that it is lenient based on our ability... doesn't it state to keep?
I misunderstood your question. I thought you were asking where the Bible promises that the Spirit of Truth will come to us if we obey the Lord.
The Bible says that we are able to obey God. His commandment and our abilities are perfectly matched. He does not require any more than He has enabled us to do. (References above)
Also, “If there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.” (2Cor 8:12)
Where does the Bible state “We are only presently required to do whatever we are presently able to do.”?
The Bible says love fulfills the law. Love is by nature within our ability. Love is not an emotion, a series of thoughts, an outward action, outward conformity to a set of requirements. Love is the ultimate intention of the will to promote the highest well-being of God and His kingdom. It is good-will. Benevolence. It is the motive of the Lord when He gave His life for us.
The Bible affirms that it itself is not the sole source of all truth (Rom 1). The Bible affirms the self-evident knowledge of God's judgment and man's obligation which is universally available apart from the Bible. We know from the natural revelation of truth in creation that moral obligation is coextensive with ability. Obligation to obey law is a logical subset of moral obligation itself. Therefore obligation to obey law does not extend beyond ability. God's law is the highest law, and coextensive with moral obligation itself, and thus with our ability, as the Bible says.
Our conscience bears witness to the truth, and, according to Paul, our logical thinking sometimes excuses us whenever there is a logical excuse (Romans 2:15). Inability is obviously a logical excuse. Otherwise men would not call logic into question when this plain fact is stated. Paul said that people logical judgments sometimes excuse them and that people who don't even know the Bible are already a Bible unto themselves. Therefore the Bible is compatible with the self-evident universally acknowledged fact that inability is a logical excuse.
I've got a warped sense of righteousness and justice compared to God.
By living in willful sin we can distort our sense of righteousness and justice. But we can be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we are restored to where we can understand and approve of God's perfect will. Children naturally understand justice. And the Bible says even depraved sinners understand God's judgment (Rom 1).
The idea or meaning of justice is not something that is contingent upon who we are talking about, whether God, or angels, or men. It is only contingent upon the agreed meaning of the word itself. If we didn't have fixed meanings for words, they would be useless symbols and noise. When the Bible says that God is just, it would not say this if the meaning of 'just' suddenly became unknowable or indiscernible simply because it is being applied to God. If the fact that God is just conflicts with our beliefs, we cannot say that 'just' doesn't really mean 'just', as the dictionary defines it, when we are talking about Him. Unless we agree on and settle what something means beforehand, then it doesn't communicate anything at all. When the Bible says God is just and righteous, it means exactly that. Just and righteous do not mean 'unquestionable' and 'incomprehensible'. They mean what we already agree they mean. Otherwise we would translate it differently, or the translators would give up and make a note that says “the Hebrew/Greek is uncertain”.
It is not important which particular words we use in our communication, but we have to agree on what our words mean, otherwise we can have no communication. When the Bible says that God is just, we are expected to understand it because it is deliberately stated in a language that men could understand and translate.
So, knowing God is just, we can see that some theological systems are clearly false because they would require injustice on His part, which we must deny.
If God didn't require more than we are able to give, why did Jesus have to die?
Jesus Christ had to suffer and die so that God would be justified in pardoning sinners. The only way for God to be justified in pardoning us was by publicly upholding His law through an atoning sacrifice of immeasurable cost. It would not have been just to pardon us and then neglect to publicly uphold the law by offering no substitute for our punishment. But since God was inclined to pardon us, and had already pardoned multitudes, He displayed the suffering and death of His Son as a substitute for displaying us in hell like we deserve. This publicly declares His righteousness, His regard for his law, His commitment to justice.
If we had been mere victims of something unavoidable then God would have had no obligation to provide a substitute while pardoning us. If we were just moral cripples rather than criminals, victims rather than rebels, then God could have spared His Son the suffering.
Jesus did not submit to public ridicule, torture, and death because we were cripples or victims of some inflated impossible commandments. Jesus endured that suffering because we were God's willful enemies when we could have been obedient. He died for His enemies, not for victims.
You said: “The wording of the law is specifically suited to our present ability (all of your heart/soul/mind/strength , not more than all). There is no law or requirement to do more than we are able, so there is no need for slack when someone is doing all that they are able.”
There are so many other commands that state the requirement differently...
It does not matter that they are stated differently elsewhere. The Lord said all of the law hangs those commandments which are justly suited to our ability – justly requiring no more and no less than we are able.
It makes perfect sense even if the Bible hadn't spelled it out for us. Moral obligation is inherently and self-evidently coextensive with ability. This is universally acknowledged to be true. The “mouths of babes” affirm it and courts bow to it. Obligation presupposes some possible benefit or value. The idea of possible value presupposes some existing power or ability that could promote that value. So obligation itself presupposes an existing ability or power. Therefore there is not even such a thing as an obligation to do the impossible. The idea is inherently self-contradictory.
Numbers 15:22-28 “if you unintentionally fail to keep any of these commands the LORD gave Moses”
There is another similar passage in Leviticus 4 and 5 that others have brought up in this context.
These commandments were only for the nation of Israel and only until the changing of the law with the new priesthood of Christ. The temporary nature of these laws is connected to the fact that they were symbolic. But it is not a sound treatment of God's word to say that they symbolize God's requirements being forever impossible to keep (that is, without having omniscience or some kind of metaphysical perfection that would allow one to avoid mistakes).
There are many things in the Levitical law that required sacrifice even though they were not intentional moral choices:
“When there is a person who touches anything ceremonially unclean, whether the carcass of an unclean wild animal, or the carcass of an unclean domesticated animal, or the carcass of an unclean creeping thing, even if he did not realize it, but he himself has become unclean and is guilty; or when he touches human uncleanness with regard to anything by which he can become unclean, even if he did not realize it, but he himself has later come to know it and is guilty”
Clearly the person is not guilty in the sense that they are directly to blame for what has happened apart from their will. That which happened unintentionally is not actually their fault. Nevertheless, in the symbolic system of the Levitical law they were called guilty.
While there is a possibility of “falling” into ignorance through deliberate neglect, in which case there is true and deserved guilt, there is also symbolism in the law, not only in the sacrificial system, but also even in the “offenses” for which the symbolic sacrifices were required. Some of these symbolic offenses are very obvious:
“When a woman produces offspring and bears a male child, she will be unclean seven days, as she is unclean during the days of her infirmity … she will remain thirty-three days in blood of her purifying. She must not touch anything holy and she must not enter the sanctuary until the days of her purification are fulfilled … If she cannot afford a sheep, then she must take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and one for a sin offering, and the priest is to make atonement on her behalf”
There is obviously nothing inherently sinful, in the strict moral sense of sin, about postpartum bleeding. Even Jesus' birth caused His mother to have to offer this very sacrifice:
“Now when the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, Joseph and Mary brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (just as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male will be set apart to the Lord”), and to offer a sacrifice according to what is specified in the law of the Lord, a pair of doves or two young pigeons.”
Also, the Lord said that what goes into man does not truly defile him, but according to the Levitical law, you could be defiled by eating all kinds of things.
So there are things that were treated as sin in the Levitical law that are not truly morally sinful. Accidents, bodily uncleanness, dirty animals, dead things – these things are metaphors or symbols for sin, just as animal sacrifices symbolize the Lord's atonement. But these symbolic laws should not be taken to contradict the rest of the Bible which everywhere affirms our ability to obey God.
I believe that Christ fulfilled all law for us
The Lord fulfilled the law by obeying it, fulfilling the symbolism in it, and by suffering as a substitute for the punishment that God's law requires even of those who repent. None of these senses in which the Lord fulfilled the law remove our obligation to obey God's law. Nor do any of them remove God's obligation to visit tribulation and anguish on every soul of man who does evil and does not repent.
Moral obligation is not contingent upon the Lord's atonement. Therefore the necessity of repentance and the necessity of punishing the impenitent are not contingent upon the Lord's atonement. The justice of pardoning those who repent is contingent upon the atonement. But the need for punishing the disobedient is not. It remains. Christians will be judged according to their deeds. The offer of forgiveness does not remove the need to obey God's reasonable/rational/logical law.
Paul said he was “not without law to God, but under the law to Christ” (KJV)
Again, “I am not free from God’s law but under the law of Christ” (NET)
He also said, “Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
Law includes both precept and penalty. A precept without a penalty is advice, counsel, a suggestion, but not law. The penalty for rejecting the Law of Christ is much worse than that for rejecting the law of Moses. For example, Christ's law says to forgive others and the penalty for disobedience is that we ourselves would not be forgiven. That penalty is much worse than being stoned to death under the law of Moses. I would much rather be killed with rocks than not have my sins forgiven.
Sin that is not repented of is sin that will not be forgiven. Any sin not repented of will incur the penalty of the law. One violation of any law incurs the penalty for breaking that law. We have the opportunity to repent and seek mercy but we cannot be given an unending opportunity to repent.
