Comment by names_are_hard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by names_are_hard | Hacker News Reader

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> The law of Moses in the Old Testament for the Jews was such that if you broke one law, you broke all, essentially making it impossible for anyone to achieve salvation by following the law or by working for it.

I know next to nothing about Christianity, but I know a few things about Judaism. And I've never encountered this idea in Judaism. Do you have a source for this? Is this actually a teaching of the Law of Moses, as you call it, or just something Christians think Jews believed?

Seems like a straw man.

> Enter New Testament: Jesus Christ of Nazareth, comes not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it, such that every man (being) receives the FREE gift of salvation, and eternal life.

Pardon my cynicism but this seems kind of ridiculous. God made a bunch of laws about how people should behave, presumably because there's right and wrong and the particular things God cares about matter, and then Jesus renegotiated the deal on behalf of everyone? So we can all do whatever we want, like rape, steal, homosexuality[0]... it's all cool. Jesus paid your debt, go sin.

[0] Intentionally grouping murder and gay sex together because the Old Testament calls these things bad behavior. If Jesus renegotiated the deal by arguing that some of these things are not really bad, so maybe some of the rules should be changed but others should be kept, I'd get that. But that's not the claim you're making.

>Do you have a source for this? Is this actually a teaching of the Law of Moses, as you call it, or just something Christians think Jews believed?

Well, If you are familiar with the book of James (a Jew) in the bible, he says this, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." The law is a single unit.

> God made a bunch of laws about how people should behave, presumably because there's right and wrong and the particular things God cares about matter

Sin precedes the law and not the other way round. The law was given because of transgression. Look at the law as a guardian, a schoolmaster, to protect, and to preserve for a time, till the Saviour should come. God did not intend to relate with man through the law because by the law, is the knowledge of sin.

>... it's all cool. Jesus paid your debt, go sin.

If anyone is living in sin and claims that he or she is living under grace, let me be the first to tell you that this person is not living under grace. How can he or she be when God’s Word clearly states that “sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14)? Based on the authority of God’s Word, a person who is under grace will not be dominated by or want to continue living in sin.

He Who Is Forgiven Much, Loves Much.

> Well, If you are familiar with the book of James (a Jew) in the bible, he says this, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." The law is a single unit.

The book of James is not part of Jewish canon and is not read by Jews. It's a Christian book. That James was a Jew is irrelevant, Jesus was also a Jew, does that mean the teachings of Jesus are Judaism? Woody Allen is Jewish too, but you can't quote his movies and call them Jewish teachings.

> Sin precedes the law and not the other way round. The law was given because of transgression. Look at the law as a guardian, a schoolmaster, to protect, and to preserve for a time, till the Saviour should come. God did not intend to relate with man through the law because by the law, is the knowledge of sin.

Ok, I can kind of understand this. It's a fundamentally different idea of the purpose of the rules and the nature of right and wrong. Seems foreign to me because I thought the law was to protect people from doing inherently bad things, and sin is just a fancy word for bad things. So I didn't understand how Jesus could make doing bad things suddenly ok. But this sounds like a more relativistic approach. Ok, I can get behind that I guess.

> If anyone is living in sin and claims that he or she is living under grace, let me be the first to tell you that this person is not living under grace. How can he or she be when God’s Word clearly states that “sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14)? Based on the authority of God’s Word, a person who is under grace will not be dominated by or want to continue living in sin.

I have no idea what this means, sounds like a lot of jargon that I'm sure makes sense to someone who is familiar with it but I don't get it.

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