do you believe it's OK for me to hate my neighbor as long as i don't envy his stuff or his wife, steal from him, lie about him, sleep with his wife, murder him, worship him or work in his yard on saturdays?
No. You've indeed broken the commandments, committing murder, if you hate your neighbor (
1 John 3:15; Matthew 5:21-22). We can't be partial with Yah's law obeying one commandment but not another.
Love Yah = obey the first 4 commandments (first 5 if you think about it)
Love Neighbor as Self = obey the last 6 commandments
If we love Yah we will want to do the first set, including the Sabbath. If we love our neighbor we will want to do the last set.
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I'm not sure we fully realize this, but The 10 commandments were the very nature of Christ written down on stone tablets. The entire bible is about Christ. It's why they were given on the very same day as when His own Spirit was given: Pentecost (shavuot).
The problem was, you can't put stone tablets on the inside of a person. But it's Christ's very character and nature that was written down.
Christ said, "
Moses wrote about me. If you don't believe what Moses wrote, how can you believe what I say?"(
John 5:46)
Christ is in the image of the invisible God. In the beginning they said, let us make man in our image and "likeness". The image was the body (which is why every prophetic vision of Christ, even as early as Daniel, has described him as "one like the son of man"; one who looks like a man). The likeness, is His character/nature/Spirit, which was lost during Adam's fall in the garden before any of us were born.
So humanity was never in the likeness of Yah, though in his image. We didn't have Christ's character. His Spirit was first given on tablets at Mt. Sinai; tablets of
sapphire stone from Yah's throne that
descended from heaven. Christ was then broken because of Israel's sin and then Moses
himself was commanded to carve out
new stone tablets from the earth like the first which Yah would write on.
Christ said, "
I am from above. you are from below" (
John 8:23)
Those tablets then go directly into the mercy seat, the earthly throne of Yah.
The Word; The Law; The Torah made flesh descended from heaven and was broken because of sin. Next, The Word; The Law; The Torah is written on flesh from the earth to create Yah earthly throne.
We can not separate the commandments of Yah from the love of Yah given through the Holy Spirit of his Son because they ARE what make up his unique character/spirit. This is why His spirit moves us to be careful to keep his decrees and commandments; it makes us WANT to do them. It would never compel us away from doing one of them because that would be compelling us away from part of himself. Christ isn't confused or schizophrenic.
The 10 commandments ARE Christ's personality if you will.
This is why I feel it's not carnality to want to obey the commandments or to encourage other believers to also but actually a consequence of listening to Christ's Spirit as he writes them on our hearts. And then that same Spirit that compels obedience teaches exactly how.
Meanwhile any thought as to why the commandments
shouldn't be obeyed, especially thought laced with derision and malice and slander and labeling/name calling and other forms of hatred directed at a person one disagrees with,
are actually carnality/flesh operating
against the new nature - Christ's Spirit - now inside a believer.
Galatians 5:19-21
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery, idolatry and sorcery; hatred, discord, jealousy, and rage; rivalries, divisions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Christ never disobeyed/sinned and He honored the Sabbath because it's his very character written down on stone, then on paper, and now in our heart. And that character is the same yesterday, and forever no matter which believer He's inside.
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