What was spoken to Israel under the law about the keeping of the commandments as the way of life, even before the end of the first century has been applied to the church by most of Christendom. It is still a problem with everyone who attempts to make church doctrine from the Old Covenant documents, the Memoirs (erroneously called Gospels).
As an example, if someone unacquainted with the Scriptures, and basic doctrines of Christianity should ask, where can I find the church in the Bible? They would be directed to the New Testament. They would then find the place where it would say: The New Testament, and begin reading in the book of Matthew, four books short of the New Testament when the law of commandments were yet taught, and more than thirty-four years before the New Covenant actually existed. They would still be short of the birth of the present church which did not begin until approximately AD 46-47; some 10 years after the conversion of the apostle Paul (Acts 13:2, 46-47; 14:1, 27).
To carry the example to what could be a very realistic result, let us say the person began reading where it says “The New Testament.” He reads in Matthew until he came to the place (19:16-17) where it is said:
Now behold, one came and said to Him, “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.
But later when reading the letter to the Galatians (2:21), Paul says:
“I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.” Confused but determined, he continues on until he reads: “But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for “The just shall live by faith” (Gal. 3:11).
By now he is beginning to wonder if he misread something, and perhaps he remembers Rom. 3:20 where it was said: “Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”
As the confusion mounts, he goes back and again read the Lord’s words: “If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” But he remembered where the same one who said that no one could be justified by keeping the commandments also says, “But if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8, 9). In total confusion, the book is thrown aside as something that at least, doesn’t make sense, because the Lord and Paul do not even agree on how one is to be saved and they are left wondering if the Bible is even believable.
The whole imaginary episode above would have been averted if a proper separation had been made between the Old and New Covenant, the Lord's teaching of the Law and Paul's teaching of grace, and the Gospel of the Kingdom and the present Gospel of Grace. One of law and the kingdom, the other grace, which tragically for most of Christendom has been obliterated by the present division.
It will probably be said: that’s only a hypothetical scenario, and it is; however, it is constantly borne out in reality. As I listened to a liberal minister on television when speaking to millions said: “Jesus and Paul did not agree on some things, who should we believe?” He then answered his own question by saying that we should believe Jesus.
He had been confused and misled by the present improper division of the covenants. However, the real tragedy is that of believing Jesus and Paul contradicted each other. In his statement, he denied, in the presence of million’s, 14 books of the New Testament as being reliable and “given by inspiration of God,” and therefore being, “profitable for doctrine, for re proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16).
Not only did he discredit all of the epistles of Paul, but in fact was saying the Lord’s teaching the law and commandments was more important than the Pauline doctrine of justification through faith completely apart from the law.
In the last two centuries many books have been written about the difference between the gospel that Jesus preached and that of Paul. Many written to ridicule the Scriptures as being at least inconsistent. Whatever their conclusions, their basic problems are not derived from the differences between the teachings of Jesus or Paul, but the mixing of two completely different covenants in which there can be no harmony of what each demands.
Why would Paul be preaching the gospel of the kingdom that the Lord and the other apostles were yet teaching? It had already being rejected for the second time. For that very reason Paul was called to be the apostle to the Gentiles and launch the beginning of a new dispensation. His primary message was the gospel of salvation to the Gentiles apart from the gospel of the kingdom including salvation that the other apostles were yet preaching to the Jews.
What had the Gentiles to do with the Mosaic Law? The present assembly of Christ is not a nation. The law of commandments, and the statutes and judgments was for the governing of a nation; a theocracy, whereas, we in this dispensation are to be in subjection to the existing civil governments.
Let us put the whole issue in even plainer words; if indeed the Memoirs of the apostles are part of the New Covenant, then Jesus and Paul do contradict each other! Which immediately raises the question, who should we believe, or are any Scriptures believable?
Indisputably it can be seen that there is no contradiction between the Lord Jesus and Paul. Each spoke that which applied under the covenant, and in the dispensation in which they ministered. But the critical truth to be seen here is, with the present division, confusion cannot, and will not be avoided. And that also applies to those who claim to know where the New Covenant begins, but act otherwise.
Paul’s whole life’s work was hampered by the Jewish legalists who demanded that his converts be circumcised and keep the law. Everywhere he went they followed and in his last days we read his melancholy words to Timothy: “This you know, that all those in Asia have turned away from me (2 Tim. 1:15). Yet, in spite of it all, we seem to have no concern whatever for what has and is being done with the present mixture. To be silent we are continuing the identical work of those who opposed Paul by using the very same instruments of confusion designed by them; the mixing of law and grace with the present division of the Old and New Covenant.
Those under the Law who trusted God and tried to be obedient and keep the commandments were preserved and saved not because they did so, but because they trusted God, and when sin was committed offered the prescribed sacrifice which covered (atoned for) their sins, until payment was made on the cross.
Abraham lived before the Old Covenant existed. For that reason, he is cited as an example of justification through faith apart from the Law (Rom. 3:19-23; 4:1-6). Paul shows that God’s intentions from the beginning was, and had to be, justification through faith because of the impossibility of anyone keeping the commandments or being righteousness before God.
In the prvious post I quoted from Paul in Gal. 4:4-5 an Heb. 9 as to where the New Covnant began and for the conveniene of th reader I will again include those passages.
With the present arrangement, the Old Covenant ends with the book of Malachi, and the New Testament begins with the book of Matthew. The correct place for the beginning of the New Covenant is the Book of Acts. According to the Scriptures, the New Covenant could not begin until the sins committed under the Old Covenant were paid for. Consequently, it could not begin until the Lord’s death. Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews said of Christ:
…He is the Mediator of the new covenant by means of death, for the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance (Heb. 9:15).
Here it is plainly stated that there could be no New Covenant, until the sins committed under the OC were paid for which was at the cross. Furthermore, the New Covenant is likened to a last will and testament where its provisions could only be realized by the testator’s (Christ’s) death.
For where there is a testament, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is in force after men are dead, since it has no power at all while the testator lives (Heb. 9:16-17).
The apostle Paul also said:
When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons (Gal. 4:4-5).
What Paul said to the Galatians (1:8) about anyone being accursed was only ratifying what the Lord accomplished. He had through His death brought the Law to its completion insofar as the payment for sin is concerned. He said to the Galatians:
But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ therefore a minister of sin? Certainly not (Gal. 2:17)!
Paul’s claim is that anyone who preaches salvation through keeping the Law is denying what Christ accomplished on the cross. In which case he himself would be found lying, and even worse, Christ would be found to be a minister of sin (Gal. 2:17) by denying what He himself had said in Matt. 26:28 about His blood being shed for the remission of sins. Paul in agreement said: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13).
The necessity for establishing a theology based on, and according to the different covenants and dispensations can be clearly seen. Without that distinction, we have the present confusion. We are concerned with directives that has to do with where each of us will spend eternity.
Similar confusion is found in millions of Bibles that have the Lord’s words printed in red. That certainly suggests to most readers that the Lord’s teaching is more important than Paul’s. And since the Lord was a minister of the law, then the logical conclusion is that the law is more important than what the Holy Spirit says through Paul’s New Testament epistles, or for that matter any Scriptures under the New Covenant.
Are the Lord’s words more to be trusted or more important than those of the Holy Spirit through whom Paul and the other apostles spoke and wrote? Or do the words of the Lord contradict the Holy Spirit? Did the Lord himself ever write anything? Did not the apostles and evangelists write what the Lord said after He had gone back to heaven? The Lord said:
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you (Jo. 14:26).
It was said to Paul at the time of his conversion:
The God of our fathers has chosen you that you should know His will, and seen the Just One, and hear the voice or His mouth. For you will be His witness to all men of what you have seen and heard (Acts 22:14-15).
We are so awed by the Person and majesty of our Lord that there is a normal human tendency to give His words greater respect than Paul’s, even though Paul was lead by the Holy Spirit when he wrote his epistles. Paul said to the Corinthians: “the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord” (1 Cor. 14:37). Concerning his knowledge in Christ: “I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:12).
It is a fact that most of the church’s doctrine from the beginning has come about by using the Memoirs to formulate their conclusions. It is especially true in the Sermon on the Mount, from where much of the teaching of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God of all men is taught.
When listening to the church chanels on TV has anyone noticed that almost all use the Lord's teaching to make up their sermons?
If as the Amillennialists claim, the Lord’s teaching was the beginning of the New Covenant, and fulfilled (ended) the law by keeping it, then all we have to do is imitate Him. And since He taught the keeping of the commandments as a way to enter life, salvation is attainable through keeping the Law apart from the cross.
That is the reason some of those “higher critics” deny any need of a Savior and scoff at those who believe in the teaching of salvation through the Lord’s blood. They are no different then those in Paul’s day of whom he said were: “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7).
When considering the mistake and the issuing results, it would be difficult, if not altogether impossible, to deliberately design and place in Scripture a vehicle that would wreck more havoc, and cause more confusion and dissension in the understanding of Holy Writ than the present division of the Old and New Covenants.
As a standing testimony of that truth, we only have to read Paul’s letters begging the churches to trust the only one who could deliver them from the curse of the law, because He alone came: “to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:5).
May the Lord bless
pilgrim
