I've noticed this pattern coming up frequently when people want to justify keeping Old Testament rules.
Jesus and the father are one. Therefore Jesus and the father are the same in every respect. Moreover Jesus and yhwh are the same in every respect. yhwh is the speaker in The Book of Leviticus, therefore every commandment in The Book of Leviticus is given by Jesus, when Jesus says keep my Commandments he's referring to the Book of Leviticus.
I believe that Jesus is God, and I believe that Jesus and the father are one.
But saying that Jesus and yhwh are identical, the same in every respect, creates problems in my opinion.
One example is the opening of Psalm 110, where
yhwh is speaking to the Messiah.
Hello Dan_473,
I tell you that, if you attempt to keep the works of the law, it will keep you out of the kingdom of heaven. We are saved by trusting in Christ as the One who provided salvation for us, completely and fully and not by anything that we could do, nor is there anything that need to be added.
The "works" that God wants us to keep is not referring to the Levitical laws, for no one will be saved by observing the law. Here are the works that God desires:
"Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.' "
"Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.
And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us."
Also, while it is true that Jesus and the Father are one God, they are also individual personalities of that one God. A good example of this would be when Jesus was Baptized and came up out of the water, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove lit upon Him and the voice of the Father out of heaven said, "this is My Son whom I love, listen to Him." In addition, in Revelation we have the Father sitting on the throne and the Lamb/Jesus coming and taking the scroll out of the Father's right hand. These demonstrate the individual persons which make up God.
But going back to the Levitical Law, if you attempt to keep those things, then you have to keep all of them perfectly every day for the rest of your life. However, you have already failed at that, which means that when you broke even one part of the Law, you are guilty of breaking the whole thing.
Jesus, as a human being, kept the Law perfectly and did so on every believers behalf. He also paid the penalty for sin, not for His own, but for ours. He also took upon Himself God's wrath that we deserve, which is why believers are not appointed to suffer God's coming wrath. Therefore, when a person receives Christ they are credited with Christ's righteousness, His fulfillment of the Law and satisfied God's wrath in every believers place. We are like Christ's running around which God sees as perfect because of our faith in Christ.
No believer will enter into the kingdom of God by keeping the Sabbath, abstaining from foods, trying to keep the ten commandments, etc., etc.