Thanks for your response, E-S. Hope you are well.
Fortunately, I came to Christ through prayer and weeping tears of repentance (the old-fashioned way :-)) rather than through a system. I thank God for that because I had no religious baggage to shed.
Which brings me to ask how He accepted me apart from keeping the law. And I’m a little uneasy asking this because I see you’ve been asked it before and never answered: Do you perform animal sacrifice? Or are you without sin and have no need of the law of animal sacrifice?
How do you square your position of being under the old law with:
Heb 10:7 Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.
Heb 10:8 Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law;
Heb 10:9 Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.
Heb 10:10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
To be sure, I try with all my might to obey the 10 commandments and try to live by them. I am a sinner who tries desperately not to sin because He has justified me, because I belong to Him, and because I love Him.
You’re quoting the Book of Romans, which, in my humble opinion, is the Book ON Grace. Praise be to God. I thank God daily it’s there! So what do you make of what follows your quote? How do you understand it?
Rom 2:14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
Rom 2:15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
Rom 2:16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.
Rom 2:17 Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God,
Rom 2:18 And knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law;
Rom 2:19 And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness,
Rom 2:20 An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.
Rom 2:21 Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?
Rom 2:22 Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?
Rom 2:23 Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God?
Rom 2:24 For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.
Rom 2:25 For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision.
Rom 2:26 Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?
Rom 2:27 And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfil the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law?
Rom 2:28 For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:
Rom 2:29 But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
Rom 3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
Rom 3:21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
Rom 3:22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
Rom 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Rom 3:24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
Rom 3:25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
Rom 3:26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Rom 3:27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.
Rom 3:28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
Rom 3:29 Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also:
Rom 3:30 Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.
Rom 3:31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
Best Regards,
SC
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>> “Which brings me to ask how He accepted me apart from keeping the law” <<
He didn’t.
If you are his, he wrote Torah on your heart, and you are keeping his commandments.
If his commandments are anathema to you, then you are not his, since this is shown by Jeremiah to be the key to being grafted into the covenant.
Yehova’s word has no conflicts, nor contradictions.
That which meshes with all of his word is his truth.
If you find Hebrews 10 to be in conflict with Romans 2, more reading is in order.
Romans 2:26 is the key to that chapter.
Hebrews 10 is mostly about the animal sacrifice, which Yehova ended in the year 68, when he sent the Roman generals to demolish the no longer needed temple.
In Matthew ch 7 Yeshua addresses those that would be without his laws, as Paul does in 2Thessalonians 2:7 where he addresses that desire to be without the law as “the Mystery of Iniquity” (confusion of lawlessness)
If his law is written on our hearts, we seek to do his will, rather than seeking excuses for living apart therefrom.
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