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To: agrace
Can you clarify something for me?

First, I believe that the actual day of worship is irrelevant. Christ's death and resurrection paid our tab in full, placing us above the law and certainly above tradition. Works are simply a reflection of our acceptance of Christ as our Lord and Savior.

My argument angle is that if the actual day of worship carried any importance, there would be some very obvious method of maintaining accuracy of such observance. God is well aware of our inability to do anything right, including the remedial task of counting days over a period of thousands of years.

Ephesians 2: 8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordainedb that we should walk in them.

Strict observance of a particular day, like the Sabboth that may or may not be Saturday, is an act of man. It doesn't buy the keys to the Kingdom.

147 posted on 02/28/2011 12:08:35 PM PST by GingisK
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To: GingisK

Thanks much for the clarification. So, what you’re saying is, if God had intended us to observe a specific day - ie the 7th - He would have made it perfectly clear throughout time what day that 7th one actually is. In other words, we can disregard His commands to rest on the 7th day because we lack irrefutable means of preserving the calendar.

I see it a bit differently. Man has always corrupted and destroyed that which God first made perfect, so why is the burden on God to maintain the calendar when man’s non-observance of His days is what potentially screwed it up in the first place? The way I see it is this - in this day and age, the 7th day is Saturday. We work with what we have available to us. God said rest; we rest. Isn’t it better to honor Him to the best of our scriptural ability rather than throw out the scripture all together?

You said, God is aware of our inability to do anything right. In that case, why did He say this?

Deu 30:10 If 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.
11 For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off.
12 It 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?
13 Neither 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?
14 But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.

You said also that Christ’s death places us above the law and certainly above tradition. Tradition - Jesus and Paul both spoke against the Pharisaical way in which the Talmud had added so many restrictions to the plain letter of the Torah. No argument there from me.

By above the law I assume you mean that we are no longer “under” the law. I will assume further that you equate “under the law” with “observing the law” and the argument against it is that observance of the *whole* law must then be required for salvation. I would submit that observance of the law has never saved a single person throughout history, but that all have always come by grace through faith. Then we obey because we love Him, which is certainly scriptural.

What commandments, then, do we keep if we love Him? It’s actually quite interesting when you think about it, because most believers already keep most of Torah that applies to them (that 613 total hardly applies to everyone). They just pick and choose with a few. Food for thought.


168 posted on 02/28/2011 1:10:52 PM PST by agrace
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