You still blur the distinction between the commands of God and the traditions of men, I see.
We're also all still waiting for you to provide a passage in the NT that overrides or changes the Sabbath.
Who were the ones doing the judging? Certainly not the Greeks.
Not true. The Greeks and Romans considered Sabbath-keeping a sign of laziness, for example, and we know that while some admired the God of the Jews, most despised the Jews for maintaining their own traditions and refusing to "swap" gods with everyone else.
Moreover, the context of Colossians does not primarily deal with the issue of Judaizing, but living in a pagan world.
And you still continue to interpret the letters of Sha'ul apart from the actions of Sha'ul. He kept the whole Torah, and again, it was considered a given that the Jewish believers would. Now, if the Jewish believers are still observing the Sabbath and worshipping on that day, why would we think that Sha'ul was encouraging the Gentiles to worship and rest on Sunday instead? Wouldn't this be putting up a middle wall of separation between the Jewish and Gentile Christians? Wouldn't telling Gentiles that they shouldn't keep the Feastdays (when we see him plainly telling the Corinthians to keep the Passover) put up that same wall?
Men need their Feastdays, and it would be extremely cruel to forbid the Gentile believers from participating in either the pagan holidays or in the Appoitned Times of the Lord with their Jewish brothers.
Was Sha'ul an "everyman"? To an extent, but there is no evidence that he only kept Torah when around Jews, and violated it freely when in the company of the Gentiles. If this interpretation is correct, then he is the greatest of hypocrites, and should not be in the Bible! On the contrary, he remained a Pharisee, keeping the Torah according to the strict standards of that sect, to the end of his days.
So what then does he mean when he said, "as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law." "Without law" is actually a mistranslation: The Greek word is anomos, "lawless," which in every other instance in which it is used has the connotation of "wicked" or "sinful." So, are we saying that Sha'ul sinned in order to win the wicked? "What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" (Rom. 6:15-16)
What then did he mean? He meant that he entered into the experience of the wicked, went where they went, used their language and idiom, in order to reach them. We see the example of this in Acts 17:16ff, where he starts out by complimenting the Athenians on their piety and quotes a Greek poet (v. 28) in order to open a dialogue with them. A modern example I like to point to is of a young man whose ministry I knew of who dresses as a goth, has piercings and tatoos, and goes into goth clubs, entering into their experience so that he can tell them about Jesus Christ.
With that in mind, let's look at the other side of the equation: Being "under the law" to Sha'ul did not mean obeying the Torah in faith. It was a phrase he coined for those who were under the condemnation and judgment of the Law (cf. Gal. 3). The reason we are not under the Law is because Yeshua, who lived under the Law perfectly, took the curses (judgments) of the Law upon Himself, becoming sin and a curse for us when He hung upon the Cross (2 Co. 5:21, Gal. 3:13). Therefore, we are no longer under the condemnation of the Law, but covered under the Grace, the unmerited favor and gift, provided by God in the Person of Yeshua HaMashiach.
But does that mean that we should no longer keep the Torah? Sha'ul certainly didn't think that the logical conclusion:
For not the hearers of the Torah are just before God, but the doers of the Torah shall be justified. (Rom. 2:13)Pay special attention to Rom. 7:12, 14, and 22, since they tell us exactly what his attitude towards the Torah is: Therefore the Torah is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. . . For we know that the Torah is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. . . For I delight in the Torah of God according to the inward man. Clearly, he did not consider the Torah, properly interpreted and followed, to be a burden, or fleshly, or wrong.Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the Torah, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? And will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the Torah, judge you who, even with your written code and circumcision, are a transgressor of the Torah? (Rom. 2:26-27)
Do we then make void the Torah through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish (i.e., uphold) the Torah. (Rom. 3:1)
Therefore the Torah is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. (Rom. 7:12)
For we know that the Torah is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. (Ro 7:14)
For I delight in the Torah of God according to the inward man. (Rom. 7:22)
For Christ is the end (telos, goal) of the Torah for righteousness to everyone who believes. (Rom. 10:4)
Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters. (1 Co. 7:19)
Therefore the Torah was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. (Gal. 3:24)
But we know that the Torah is good if one uses it lawfully . . . (1 Ti. 1:8)
All Scripture (including the Torah) is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Ti. 3:16-17)
The problem was never with Torah, but withourselves: it is Spiritual--that is, of the Spirit--while we are carnal, and even though our most inward parts on which God has written His Torah by His Spirit (Jer. 31:31ff) delight in it, our carnal natures still rebell against it.
When he says that he became "as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law," Sha'ul is not talking about keeping the Torah in and of itself, but in keeping it according to the strictest interpretations of the Pharisees, who not trusting the grace of God, constantly put up "fences" of regulations around the Torah's actual commands so as to not accidentally violate it--but in doing so, all too often violated the Spirit and even the actual words of the Torah. He did not, however, see such legalisms as necessary, and indeed generally discouraged it.
In this, he was very much following the example of Yeshua. We see on a couple of occassions that the Pharisees leveled charges of breaking "the traditions of the elders" against Yeshua's disciples, but not against the Master Himself (cf. Mat. 12:21ff and 15:1ff). What does this tell us? That Yeshua kept the stricter traditions, but did not teach them to His disciples as being manditory--and indeed, defended His disciples' right not to be judged based on an extra-Torahic tradition!
The issue in both Yeshua's confrontations with the Pharisees and Sha'ul's own contentions for the Gentiles was not, I believe, over Torah itself--which still defines what is sin and what is not (Rom. 7:7), but over whether Gentiles should be forced to become Jewish (circumcise) and then to keep not only the Torah, but all the legal code of the Jews (the "Oral Torah") as well!
But this is key: If Sha'ul delighted in the Torah in his inward parts--his "true self"--does it not stand to reason that he expected his Roman audience to have the same attitude by the same Spirit? Of course. And if he delighted in the whole Torah, even those parts which are difficult (like not committing adultery in our hearts, per the Sermon on the Mount's interpretation of "Do not commit adultery"), how much more did he take delight in those commands which are truly a blessing in this life, like the Feasts.
Your whole attitude, TC, is rather warped. What Christian needs a command from God to love and observe Christmas? How much less then do those of us who keep the days that God has actually commanded us to see them as a burden! On the contrary, they are a delight! Every aspect of the Feasts, even elements that are merely "human traditions" by those who rejected Yeshua as the Messiah, nevertheless point to the Messiah.
Tell me if I'm remembering this incorrectly, but didn't you once tell me that you celebrated Passover regularly with a non-Messianic Jewish friend? Was this a burden to you? Was it an onerous duty? Or did you legitimately enjoy yourself and could you not see how many of the traditional elements (especially the afikomen) pointed directly to Yeshua?
I love the Feasts. They are a pleasure, and an edification to me and to many others here. Even if I believed that the Apostles had "released" me from observing them (and in a sense they did), I would still love them, for they are a gift from God into which the entire story of salvation is written. I believe that the Church has impovershed itself by not observing them, and suborning and adapting pagan Roman holidays instead.
If you don't feel the same way, fine. That's between you and God. Nobody here--least of all myself--is telling you that you must keep the Feasts to be a good Christian or any such nonsense. But don't ride in here on your high horse, throwing around charges of heresy, projecting your own judgmentalism, and telling us that we shouldn't even discuss what the days that God Himself appointed in the Bible.
I will say it again: Even John Calvin admitted that the Sabbath was still relevant and should be kept; the question between you and me therefore is whether it has moved. So then, provide a place in the NT that says unequivocably that the Sabbath is now on the first day of the week, or admit that "the seventh day is the Sabbath of YHVH thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work . . . For in six days YHVH made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is , and rested the seventh day: wherefore YHVH blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it" (Exo. 20:10-11).
And if you cannot, if indeed there is no Biblical evidence that the Sabbath was moved or annuled, if indeed all you have is a poor argument from silence ("Well, they didn't mention keeping the Sabbath often enough . . ."), then be man enough to admit it, admit that you are following a tradition of Man in observing Sunday, and stop being such a hypocrite as to condemn those of us who are keeping traditions which are not in direct conflict with the commands of God.
I'm sorry, but I do not.
There is no command anywhere in the Bible for the church, Jews and gentiles together, to keep the ceremonial Mosaic law. To place such a requirement or suggestion on believers, particularly gentile believers, in the new covenant is a tradition of men. It's no different from the the rabbis who added to the law of the tithe by neglecting their own parents.
This is something that you cannot deal with in your analysis. There is neither explicit nor implicit notion of feast day keeping or kosher keeping among the gentile believers.
Unlike the matter of the change of sabbath where we have explicit NT examples of the church gathering for worship on the first day of the week, which you deny has any significance, e.g., Acts 20:7, we have not even one shred of kosher keeping or feast day keeping within the church. Not even a suggestion that such observances are to be kept voluntarily.
Not true. The Greeks and Romans considered Sabbath-keeping a sign of laziness,
Even if this were true, which no one is admitting, why would we think that this is the issue in Colossians when it is neither mentioned nor suggested in any of the language, yet on the other hand we have numerous warnings by Paul to the church regarding the judaizers and their desire to place the gentiles under the ceremonial law of Moses. And language Paul uses here fit with Judaism, not pagan Rome or Greece (see below).
Clearly you are inventing history to match your theology in order to understand the text. While a multitude of Scriptures exist regarding the judaizing tendencies by a sect within of the early church, nowhere does Paul take the church to task for these things which you suggest.
It is clear from Galatians and elsewhere that Paul was much more concerned with the mixing of law and the gospel than he was about whether or not gentile believers were considered lazy by the Romans.
"And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross." (Col. 2:13,14)
As Gill puts it:
God's book of remembrance of the sins of men, out of which they are blotted when pardoned; others, the book of conscience, which bears witness to every debt, to every violation and transgression of the law, which may be said to be blotted out, when pacified with an application of the blood and righteousness of Christ; rather with others it signifies the ceremonial law, which lay in divers ordinances and commands, and is what, the apostle afterwards speaks of more clearly and particularly; and may be called so, because submission to it was an acknowledgment both of the faith and guilt of sin; every washing was saying, that a man was polluted and unclean; and every sacrifice was signing a man's own guilt and condemnation, and testifying that he deserved to die as the creature did, which was offered in sacrifice: or rather the whole law of Moses is intended, which was the handwriting of God, and obliged to obedience to it, and to punishment in case of disobedience; and this the Jews call (bwx) (rjv) , "the writing of the debt", and is the very phrase the Syriac version uses here:Paul used the very phrase that the Jews used to specify their obligation to the Mosaic code to make it clear what the believers in Christ were freed from, not just gentiles, but both Jews and gentiles together.
I think the fundamental difference here your sect and the majority of Christianity is that you see Christianity merely as a sect of Judaism, that all of the ordinances peculiar to Israel in the land are still appropriate for the church of both Jews and gentiles. The difficulties with this view are numerous and insurmountable. E.g., you have to invent a new set of traditions for observing feast days in the same fashion as the apostate Jews did. While you whine about the explicit command authorizing the change of weekly sabbath from the last day to the first day, you cannot produce a single verse to authorized the keeping of ersatz new moons and feast days in the absence of a priesthood and temple. It is truly a double standard that I thought you might have picked up on by now.
Only by ignoring Scripture and inserting the traditions of the apostate rabbis in certain cases are you able to make the system hang together. Like the secret rapture theory of your dispensational friends, it is quite clear that no one on their own and come to these conclusions.
The common view has been that the church is the culmination of all that God had promised to father Abraham. Abraham's righteousness was counted to him while yet uncircumcised (Rom. 4:10). It is not Israel after the flesh, and we are not merely a sect of Judaism following modified traditions like the ancient Pharisees or modern Orthodox Jews.
Hebrews testifies loudly and often to the temporary and incomplete nature of the ceremonial law. It was a shadow, and Christ is the Substance. To embrace the shadow while the Substance stands in your midst is a denial of the new covenant.
"For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect." (Heb. 10:1)
"Year by year", new moon after new moon, festival after festival.
We are a new creation, the new Israel of God. We are a true spiritual commonwealth built on the simplicity of the gospel, and the simple gospel ordinances of baptism (not circumcision) and the Lord's Supper (not Passover).
"But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, 'If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews?' " (Gal. 2:14)
Note how Paul equates this judaizing tendency even in Peter to be crooked, perverse and contrary to the "truth of the gospel". Now, are we to believe that Peter was really a judaizer at heart? Probably not. But Paul views even the slightest tendency in the direction of "law keeping" as an emblem of one's righteousness as a fundamental denial of the gospel.