Expert: Sal - 9/21/2008

Question
Thanks sal for you answer
but my promblem does not lie with the you or the people that attend the cathloic church the promblem i have is that the cathloic church teaches a system that is not complety right according to the word of God.
Yes sdas have a intersting spin on the bible and yes the sdas say the sabb was created by God  Genesis chapter 2 verse 2 and 3.
But i think you are getting covernet and the commandents mixed up the covernet that was done awary at the cross was the temple and its covernet not the ten commandents.As mattaw 27 verse 51 says and the veil of the temple was torn in 2 from top to bottom means that the sac of the animals and the priests were not needed anymore because Christ had taken the place of the lamb been slain daily
Mal 3 verse 6 says i change not so why would God make a bunch of rules and then change his mind when he says in this verse i change not also hebrews 4 4 says And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.
According the the old and new testment saterday still stands
So if the sabb is not binding any more then the whole of the ten commandemts are not binding so i can steal murder commit adultery and bear false witness and still go to heaven as the commandments are not binding any more no this is not the case how can one commandment be done awary with and the others still stand.According to paul 1 cor 7 19 he says what matters is to keep the commandmets of God the verse that you refer to romans 14 5 to 6 is not talking about satt and sunday it is talking about not makeing others do what you think they should do eg making people worship on a day everyone needs to make his own mind up.
1 john 5 2 3 says by this we know that we love the childern of God when we love God and observe his commandments
For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome.
Jesus is our example he kept saterday as the sabb should we not follow him not what men have changed.
Luke 4 verse 16 says and he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up and as was his custom he entered the syangogue on the sabbath and stood up to read his custom he went every week nowhere will you find that the saterday has been changed to sunday in the bible as i have proven to you by the word of God and i have shown even the leaders in the cathloic church have stated this.
Thanks sal for your commets and God bless you
Robbie

Answer
Dear Robbie:

You ask many interesting questions. I can’t give them all the proper time to fully answer them so please ask again if I don’t answer them all.

“Jesus himself kept the Sabbath.” It is a Biblical truth that we are to be like our Lord. “If a man wishes to come after me, he must deny his very self, take up his cross and begin to follow in my footsteps” (Matthew 16:24). “The way we can be sure we are in union with him is for the man who claims to abide in him to conduct himself just as he did” (1 John 2:5-6). Does this mean that we are to keep all our Lord’s customs? St. Paul gives us a clear answer, “But when the designated time had come, God sent forth his Son born of a woman, BORN UNDER THE LAW, to deliver from the law those who were subjected to it, so that we might receive our status as adopted sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). Jesus was born under the law so he kept the law in order to free us from the law’s requirements. “If you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Galatians 5:18). “…you are under grace, not under the law” (Romans 6:14). “Now we have been released from the law-for we have died to what bound us-and we serve in the new spirit, not the antiquated letter” (Romans 7:6). “There is no condemnation now for those who are in Christ Jesus. The law of the spirit, the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, has freed you from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2). The Bible is clear that once we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior we are no longer under the law, but under grace. St. Paul further tells us that the Mosaic Law was our schoolmaster teaching us about Christ. “But now that faith is here, we are no longer in the schoolmaster’s charge” (Galatians 3:25). Since we are not under the law we do not have to keep the 613 laws of the Old Covenant. Jesus did because he was “born under the law”. In fact, keeping the 7th day Sabbath may actually be a denial of the work of Christ who freed us from the “law of sin and death”. Jesus as a good Jew attended the synagogue (Luke 4:16), observed Hanukkah (John 10:22), obeyed the ritual laws (Matthew 8:4), went to Jerusalem for all Jewish festivals (Luke 2:41), supported the temple monetarily (Matthew 17:27), observed Passover (Matthew 26:17-18), he must have had a sukkah booth each year, killed a Passover lamb each year, and wore tassels on his garments. He told others to do whatever the religious leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees, told them to do (Matthew 23:2-3), to offer animal sacrifices (Mark 1:44; Luke 5:14), and to keep all 613 laws of the Old Covenant (Matthew 5:17-19). Why don’t Sabbatarians follow Jesus’ example on these other things not just pick out the 7th day Sabbath? It is hypocritical of the SDA church to require its adherence to keep the 7th day Sabbath because it was Jesus’ custom, but not to require them to keep the other things that were equally his custom. So we must conclude in the face of the Biblical evidence that this argument for Christians keeping the 7th day Sabbath in the New Covenant are invalid.

We seem to agree that Romans 14:5 teaches that one should not force one to keep any particular day. It is up to the individual. Yet else where you state that the Sabbath still stands implying that you consider it necessary in the New Covenant. Paul did not think so. How could Paul leave Sabbath keeping up to the individual if he knew it was a sin to break the Sabbath in the New Covenant? He did not leave other sins up to the individual to decide if it were a sin. Can you imagine Paul saying that it is up to the believer’s conscience to determine if murder is a sin? Paul allows for the individual to decide what day he will worship on because Sabbath keeping is not a sin in the New Covenant. This also explains why Sabbath breaking never appears in any of Paul’s lists of sins.

The “commandments” of 1 John 5:2-3 are the New Covenant commands of Jesus not the Old Covenant commands. This is seen very clearly in the original Greek language. John always uses “entole” for Jesus’ commands and “nomos” for the Old Covenant commands. In 1 John 5:2-3 the word is “entole”.

Just like in John, 1 Corinthians 7:19 is speaking of the New Covenant commands of God not the Ten Commandments or the other Old Covenant commands.

No, we may not murder etc even though the Ten Commandments are obsolete in the New Covenant. Christians are called to a higher moral standard than that which is contained in the Ten Commandments. According to the Ten Commandments one must not murder, but according to the Law of Love we may not even be angry with another (Matthew 5:21-23). Christians are told that we may not murder. “Any one who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15). Further, all the Ten Commandments are restated as valid for Christians with the notable exception of the Sabbath command. The nine moral commands of the Ten Commandments are mentioned at least five times in the New Testament as binding on Christians. The first commandment is restated as necessary for Christians an astounding 54 times. This is in contrast to the Sabbath command that is restated as necessary for Christians zero times! Why zero if it is still valid?

God Bless You,
Sal