5:21 “You have heard that it was said to an older generation, ‘Do not murder,’ and ‘whoever murders will be subjected to judgment.’ 5:22 But I say to you…”
William Barclay thinks that Jesus ‘Jesus quotes the Law, only to contradict it, and to substitute a teaching of his own. He claimed the right to point out the inadequacies of the most sacred writings in the world, and to correct them out of his own wisdom.’…
According to the Calvin’s classic formulation, God’s law has a threefold use (Institutes, II.vii.6-12).
These are helpfully summarised in the Reformation Study Bible:
Scripture shows that God intends His law to function in three ways, which Calvin crystallized in classic form for the church’s benefit as the law’s threefold use.
Its first function is to be a mirror reflecting to us both the perfect righteousness of God and our own sinfulness and shortcomings.…
‘With God all things are possible’ (Matthew 19:26). ‘Nothing is impossible with God’ (Luke 1:37)
So why doesn’t God simply forgive sinners, without need of any atonement? Why can’t he just let bygones be bygones?
After all, he can do anything, can’t he?
Well, setting aside the obviously absurd (God cannot create a two-sided triangle), we note with Puritan Thomas Brooks that there are three things that God cannot do:- he cannot die; he cannot lie; and he cannot deny himself.…
The Talmud records the saying of one of the rabbis that ‘Moses gave Israel 613 commandments, David reduced them to 10 Psa 15, Micah to three, (Mic 6:8) Isaiah to 2, (Isa 56:1) but Habakkuk 2:4 to one: the righteous shall live by his faith.’…
Many members of the Galatian church, and many professing Christians since, have supposed that sinners are saved by their own best efforts, by keeping the law of Moses as promulgated in the Sinai covenant.
As Paul insists in Galatians 3 and 4, this is a fatal error, because it undermines the gospel of God’s free grace.
David Murray shows how the Sinai covenant is, in face, ‘a revelation of Jesus and his gracious salvation.’ Like this:-
Legalism is a distortion of obedience. It is guilty of:-
In the New Testament, legalism is found in two main forms:-
But it cannot save us – only the gospel can do that
…
It is often assumed that because love is the greatest thing, it is the only thing.
A married man falls for a woman who is not his wife. “I love her,” he pleads. “And she loves me. I’ve never felt the same way about anyone else before. We were made for each other.”
The same appeal may be used by a homosexual couple: “We love one another. Why would anyone wish to deny us full expression of that love?”…
Paul describes, in vv15-24, a high level of emotional turmoil. But who is the “I” of this passage? Is it Paul himself, or someone else? And is the state he describe that of a believer, or an unbeliever; a regenerate, or an unregenerate person?
It is true, as Moo says, that what Paul says about the law still amounts to much the same thing, whatever conclusion one arrives at: ‘One can preach this paragraph, in its basic intention, without even making a definite identification of the ‘ego’.’ …
According to Paul’s letter to the Romans, God’s law
See James Edwards: Romans (UBCS)…
