QUOTE(cloud0729 @ May 29 2007, 01:20 AM) [snapback]1698221[/snapback]
Ya I have quite a few questions, but I don't want you to answer them all in one post so i'll ask one question here and one question there to save you a long post
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According to the New Testament, man is totally incapable of keeping the law and the only way for salvation is through Jesus Christ, and we are all born into sin because of what Adam and Eve did (Original Sin), but in the Old Testament, Moses tells the people this:
Deut. 30:10-14
"If you will hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law; if you turn unto the Lord thy God with all your heart and with all your soul; for this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you neither is it too far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, "Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, and make us hear it, that we may do it?" Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say: "Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it that we may do it?" The word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it."
So why does the New Testament state that man is incapable of keeping the law?
This is a hard concept to explain because it implies a knowledge of various aspects of scripture that aren't contextually apparent in your question. The concepts are faith and righteousness as well as justification.
Isaiah 64:5-6 5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved?
6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.As we can see from the above passage, there is nothing we can do personally to become righteous before God. We can be good, we can do acts of charity we can obey the Law of Moses to the letter but before God, those things are like filthy rags. They are insignificant and worthless to him. The obedoence of a person is not what is intended but rather that that obedience be in that persons heart.
Thus when we read about justification or righteousness before God we are always presented with words like faith and trust or their equivalents.
Genesis 15:6Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.1 Samuel 26:23The LORD rewards every man for his righteousness and faithfulness. The LORD delivered you into my hands today, but I would not lay a hand on the LORD's anointed.This why we say that we are justified by faith. By faith we become righteous.
Ezekiel 33:13If I tell the righteous man that he will surely live, but then he trusts in his righteousness and does evil, none of the righteous things he has done will be remembered; he will die for the evil he has done.You see it is not our own righteousness that saves us but our trust in Gods righteousness. This is why the patriarchs of old were immortalized in the bible. The became righteous because of their trust in God. This what God looks for in all of us and looked for in the Israelites of old. It wasn't their Mosaic Law that saved them but their trust in God.
Mosaic Law came about because of this trust in God. It was the human foundation of this basic truth but it wasn't through the system imposed by mosaic law that people were saved. IT wasn't by obeying that law that they found righteousness in Gods eyes, it was because of their Faith/trust in God.
If a man obeyes the Mosaic law but has no trust in God then he is incapable of obtaining righteousness before God. Now, if we go see the verses you quoted we see tha exactly this point being made by Moses.
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... if thou turn unto the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul."
Deuteronomy 30:10-14 10If thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law, and if thou turn unto the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul.The Offer of Life or Death 11For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. 12It 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? 13Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? 14But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.a. For this commandment which I command you today: The covenant which God made with Israel the (Old Covenant) was not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. Israel could indeed keep this covenant. God was not expecting the impossible from Israel when He expected them to keep this covenant.
b. But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it: However, this is not intended to mean that the Mosaic Law could be perfectly kept, and that a person could be sufficiently obedient to the Mosaic Law to earn a righteous standing before God.
Remember that the law was only one aspect of the Old Covenant. There were also the aspects of sacrifice and the choice. God never expected Israel to perfectly obey the law and find righteousness through law-obedience. That is why He provided for the sacrifice - the punishment of a perfect, innocent victim in the place of the sinner. In the case of Mosaic Law we find that it is an animal that is to take that sin through sacrifice and thus the sinner is purified or made righteous in the eyes of God.
God did not expect an Israelite to trust in his obedience to the Law to save Him (though God wanted Israel to love His law). God expected an Israelite to trust in the atonement made by sacrifice to make him righteous, and to understand that this sacrifice pointed towards a perfect sacrifice God would one day make through the Messiah. In this, a godly Israelite, in the Old Covenant, trusted in the work of Jesus the Messiah to save him even before the time of Jesus.
When we refer to the Law it can mean the following things:
1. In the broadest sense the Law referred to the first five books of the Old Testament, which are know as the Pentateuch
2. What is called the “Moral Law”,which is contained primarily in the 10 Commandments
3. What is called the “Ceremonial Law, which is outlined in the laws of the Pentateuch which had to do with ordinances, ceremonies, and sacrifices under the Old Testament covenant
It is the “Moral Law” to which Christ is primarily referring here in this verse as that which He did not come to abolish but rather to fulfill, and which man is incapable of keeping. It is also the moral law to which Paul was referring when he said that "no man can keep the law". The actual ceremonies of the law have always been inconsequential to God.
Do you know of any man who has obeyed the law perfectly and is justified by God for having done so? I know of no man who has done this past or present. No man is capable of keeping the law perfectly, which is what God intended anyway. It shows that only through our faith and trust in him can we obtain righteousness and this applies to both the OT and the NT.
