There is a difference between spirituality and religion.
Spirituality is a system built up inside every individual that fills their life with meaning and expands their consciousness. The common spiritual texts, including the new testament are a good tool to build up this spirituality, inside each particular individual, that works for a large number of people. It has been selected by the group consciousness as a particularly good tool, good aid in helping people this way. It is not the only tool, and for a particular individual might not even be the best one, but it is a good one that has stood the test of time.
The religion on the other hand usually refers to the outside structure that is often built on top of a spiritual tradition/text. It includes structural elements like the network of churches, some additional practices, political movements, attempts to control population, hierarchy systems between priests, reputation etc. It is this additional structure that much more often gets corrupted by the natural human corruptive forces, just like governments, corporations or large open source frameworks do. When people get power, they sometimes corrupt, and they do it with whatever the underlying structure was.
Religion fundamentally gives you a set of rules that you must follow to achieve acceptance, or the ultimate goal of a particular "religion", usually getting to their definition of "heaven", after life on earth.
The law of Moses in the Old Testament for the Jews was such that if you broke one law, you broke all, essentially making it impossible for anyone to achieve salvation by following the law or by working for it.
The Gentiles (non Jews) who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it
Enter New Testament: Jesus Christ of Nazareth, comes not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it, such that every man (being) receives the FREE gift of salvation, and eternal life.
Now this life bears good fruit in all that believe.
Free, conditioned on believing it -- if you get called and pulled in the first place, which isn't true for most. They just get preached the Gospel, so people can say "hah, now it's your fault for not believing it".
Image you owe someone else money. An anonymous stranger pays your debt. Why would you have to acknowledge that, for that someone else to receive said payment?
God in the form of Jesus paid your debts you have with God, but unless you believe that, God won't recognize that, will still kill you at best, torture you forever at worst, depending on who you ask. You can call that love or salvation, but I won't.
You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
Look, If your debt was paid, and no one told you that the debt was paid, or you had no knowledge of it, would your conscience be free of that debt? No.
The Gospel is preached to bring man to the knowledge that they are free, and live freely therein.
> The law of Moses in the Old Testament for the Jews was such that if you broke one law, you broke all, essentially making it impossible for anyone to achieve salvation by following the law or by working for it.
I know next to nothing about Christianity, but I know a few things about Judaism. And I've never encountered this idea in Judaism. Do you have a source for this? Is this actually a teaching of the Law of Moses, as you call it, or just something Christians think Jews believed?
Seems like a straw man.
> Enter New Testament: Jesus Christ of Nazareth, comes not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it, such that every man (being) receives the FREE gift of salvation, and eternal life.
Pardon my cynicism but this seems kind of ridiculous. God made a bunch of laws about how people should behave, presumably because there's right and wrong and the particular things God cares about matter, and then Jesus renegotiated the deal on behalf of everyone? So we can all do whatever we want, like rape, steal, homosexuality[0]... it's all cool. Jesus paid your debt, go sin.
[0] Intentionally grouping murder and gay sex together because the Old Testament calls these things bad behavior. If Jesus renegotiated the deal by arguing that some of these things are not really bad, so maybe some of the rules should be changed but others should be kept, I'd get that. But that's not the claim you're making.
>Do you have a source for this? Is this actually a teaching of the Law of Moses, as you call it, or just something Christians think Jews believed?
Well, If you are familiar with the book of James (a Jew) in the bible, he says this, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." The law is a single unit.
> God made a bunch of laws about how people should behave, presumably because there's right and wrong and the particular things God cares about matter
Sin precedes the law and not the other way round. The law was given because of transgression. Look at the law as a guardian, a schoolmaster, to protect, and to preserve for a time, till the Saviour should come. God did not intend to relate with man through the law because by the law, is the knowledge of sin.
>... it's all cool. Jesus paid your debt, go sin.
If anyone is living in sin and claims that he or she is living under grace, let me be the first to tell you that this person is not living under grace. How can he or she be when God’s Word clearly states that “sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14)? Based on the authority of God’s Word, a person who is under grace will not be dominated by or want to continue living in sin.
> Well, If you are familiar with the book of James (a Jew) in the bible, he says this, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." The law is a single unit.
The book of James is not part of Jewish canon and is not read by Jews. It's a Christian book. That James was a Jew is irrelevant, Jesus was also a Jew, does that mean the teachings of Jesus are Judaism? Woody Allen is Jewish too, but you can't quote his movies and call them Jewish teachings.
> Sin precedes the law and not the other way round. The law was given because of transgression. Look at the law as a guardian, a schoolmaster, to protect, and to preserve for a time, till the Saviour should come. God did not intend to relate with man through the law because by the law, is the knowledge of sin.
Ok, I can kind of understand this. It's a fundamentally different idea of the purpose of the rules and the nature of right and wrong. Seems foreign to me because I thought the law was to protect people from doing inherently bad things, and sin is just a fancy word for bad things. So I didn't understand how Jesus could make doing bad things suddenly ok. But this sounds like a more relativistic approach. Ok, I can get behind that I guess.
> If anyone is living in sin and claims that he or she is living under grace, let me be the first to tell you that this person is not living under grace. How can he or she be when God’s Word clearly states that “sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14)? Based on the authority of God’s Word, a person who is under grace will not be dominated by or want to continue living in sin.
I have no idea what this means, sounds like a lot of jargon that I'm sure makes sense to someone who is familiar with it but I don't get it.
> Enter New Testament: Jesus Christ of Nazareth, comes not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it, such that every man (being) receives the FREE gift of salvation, and eternal life.
The obvious question is: why? Why was it ever necessary, if God is omnipotent? Why was it so late, so that people living earlier had no chance? And so on.
The Gnostics, Marcions and so on came up with another interesting idea: there were two Gods, one from the Old Testament, and another from the New Testament. The former was the creator but wasn't really caring for his creation. The latter was the God of Love and he sent his son in order to save mankind - Jesus was a kind of ransom paid to the former. This theory has slightly more sense than the one presented in mainstream Christianity.
> The obvious question is: why? Why was it ever necessary, if God is omnipotent?
To answer this, God is a just God. If the penalty of sin is death, then surely someone had to die to pay the price. God could have just swept all mankind's sins under the rag, and acted like nothing ever happened. But such would not be considered integrity or righteousness on God's part.
Also if by one man (Adam), sin came into the world, and all men were considered sinners, then justly, by one man (Jesus Christ)'s death and resurrection, the price was fully paid, all men (mankind) can now freely claim the gift of righteousness.
>Why was it so late, so that people living earlier had no chance?
Well just like you stated, God is omnipotent, and not limited by time and space. It's never late or early in God's eyes. We would not explicitly say they had no chance, then or now, goes back to God being Just.
True, although I do think that in the Old Testament, this relationship was based on works, and on what you did to fulfil and not break the law. In the New Testament, this relationship is based on Grace, the free gift of God.
But Abrahams righteousness was accounted to him by faith and not by works. The entire premise of the book of Hebrews is centered around the idea that Gods covenant with man has always been by grace. In the Old Testament looking forward to the promised Messiah from Genesis and in the New Testament looking at and back to the manifested and risen Christ.
True, great point! thanks. Also key to note, Abraham was, before the law was given. Paul in the book of Romans, does explain that by considering Abraham the father of the Faith or Forefather, the point is missed when we forget that Abraham was justified by faith and not by works.
