I did not say anything to suggest that it was a blank you get to fill in whenever a command becomes inconvenient, but rather there are legitimate or illegitimate reasons for not following a particular law and a law being inconvenient is an illegitimate reason. Sacrifices can only be done at the Temple according to God's command, so the Temple being destroyed is a legitimate reason for not following laws in regard to Temple practice. Judaism exists before the 1st Temple, after its destruction, and after the destruction of the 2nd Temple, so there was nothing that was invented after its destruction. Whether the 3rd Temple should have been built by now is another issue and Judaism teaches that a generation that fails to build it is like the one who saw its destruction, but the fact remains that laws in regard to Temple practice can't be legitimately followed without the Temple.“When you enter the land” is a condition God wrote. It is not a blank you get to fill in whenever a command becomes inconvenient.
That is exactly how it works. Orthodox Jews pray at least three times a day for the Temple to be rebuilt in order to resume offerings the reason why offerings have not been resumed is not for a lack of desire but because there is no Temple.Deuteronomy 17:18 is a law for the king. A man who is not the king is not breaking that command. That is not how the altar works.
I did not say it was a rewrite of the contract. We get to keep the laws that we can. There are laws that women get to keep whenever they give birth or have a period that they do not get to keep at other times, but this is not a contract rewrite.1 Kings 8 is mercy in exile, not a rewrite of the contract.
I didn't say that. We get to follow laws in regard to Temple practice only when there is a Temple in which to practice them. Jesus did not sin or come under the curse of the law because he did not obey the laws in regard to giving birth or having a period because he was not obligated to obey those laws. It is only when someone can obey a law and they choose not to that they come under the curse. In Deuteronomy 11:26-32, the difference between being under God's blessing or His curse is based on whether they chose to serve God or to chase after other gods.You are arguing that missing commands stop counting if you can no longer do them.
No, we can study each law to determine whether or not it can legitimately be obeyed, which is Torah. The New Covenant still involves following the Torah (Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 36:26-27)), so it has the same issue.You keep what fits. You excuse what doesn’t. That is not Torah. That is why the new covenant is not “do the parts you can.”
Someone who is not the king has an inability to obey the command for the king to write a copy of the Torah, but that does not mean that they are in violation of the law.Yes, there is a difference between a man who hates a command and a man who cannot reach the altar. That difference is about his motive. It does not change the contract. The law still requires the house, the priesthood, and the blood. Your inability does not delete those lines. It leaves you short of them.
I didn't claim to be. It would certainly be better of I I were able to more fully obey the Law of God, but I am not sinning by not obeying laws that I can't obey.So you are not in a third category called “faithful Torah-keeping minus temple.” You are a man under a whole law who cannot do the part that deals with sin. Calling that “legitimate” does not put a sacrifice on the altar. It just explains why you skipped it.
I did not claim to have a checklist of parts that still fit. The Mosaic Covenant always pointed to Christ.God did not institute a checklist. You are the one left with a checklist: the parts that still fit. That is the problem. The old covenant has no covering without the place He chose. The new covenant does. That is the difference that actually matters.
The Bible uses "Torah" specifically to refer to God's way. In Deuteronomy 30, it forms the basis for the New Covenant by prophesying about a time when the Israelites would return from exile, God would circumcise their hearts, and they would return to obedience to the Torah, which is what Jeremiah 31:33 and Ezekiel 36:26-27 are in regard to, so the New Covenant is all about returning to the Torah.Jeremiah 31 does not say the new covenant is Sinai with a second coat of paint.
The New Covenant involves God putting the Torah in our minds and writing it on our hearts, so while it is true that it is not like the Mosaic Covenant, the differences are in regard to being based on better promises and to having a superior mediator not in regard to following the Torah. Likewise, the Mosaic Covenant becoming obsolete does not mean that the New Covenant does not involve God putting the Torah in our minds and writing it on our hearts.It says the new covenant is not like the one He made when He brought them out of Egypt. Then it says He will write His law on the heart and forgive their iniquity. Hebrews 8 quotes that and says the first covenant is obsolete. Same God. New terms. That is the point of calling it new.
God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, so everything that the Mosaic Covenant teaches us about Him is eternal and cumulatively valid. New covenants do not nullify the promises of covenants that have already been ratified, so God's covenants are eternal and cumulatively valid. The Mosaic Covenant is eternal (Exodus 31:16, Leviticus 24:8), so the only way that it can be made obsolete by the New Covenant is if it is cumulative with it. One thing can only make another thing obsolete to the extent that it is cumulative with it, so a computer makes a typewriter obsolete but does not make a plow obsolete, which means that if the New Covenant were not cumulative with the Mosaic Covenant, then it could not make it obsolete. So the New Covenant still involves following the Torah (Hebrews 8:10) plus it is cumulatively based on better promises and has a superior mediator (Hebrews 8:6). The fault that God found with the Mosaic Covenant was not with His righteousness or laws for how to embody His righteousness, but rather the fault thatHe found was with the people for not continuing in their covenant (Hebrews 8:7-9), so the solution to the problem was not to do away with the Torah but to do away with what was hindering us from obeying it (Romans 8:3-4, Ezekiel 36:26-27, Jeremiah 31:33). The reason why Jesus established the New Covenant was not so that we could reject everyone that he taught and continue to have the same lawlessness that causes the New Covenant to be needed in the first place.
I didn't claim that.“God is the same yesterday, today, and forever” does not mean the Mosaic administration never changes. If it did, Jeremiah would be lying. The God who spoke at Sinai is the God who promised a different covenant.
The whole point of God's Word being made flesh is to lead us to embody it, so we can't follow him instead of his example of embodying it. Christ embodied the character traits of God through his works by setting a sinless example for us to follow of how to walk in obedience to the Torah, so we can't follow him instead of his example.Jesus was born under the law and kept it. That is how He could redeem people who were under it. Following Him is not copying a temple system you cannot enter. It is belonging to the Son, who is the radiance of God’s glory, not a second Moses. His example is holiness. It is not your permission slip to keep Sabbath and diet and then call that the new covenant.
While it would be better if we could more fully follow Christ's example there are nevertheless aspects of the example that he set for his followers to follow that we can't currently follow. There is of course difference between someone who legitimate desires to follow those aspects and would if they could but can't legitimately do so and someone who could legitimately follow those aspects but chooses not to.You still have the same hole. If “following His example” means walking in all the Torah He walked in, you need the altar too. You don’t have one. So you are not following the whole example. You are following the pieces you can reach and using Jeremiah to baptize the rest.
The Torah being written on our hearts by the Spirit does not involve doing something other than following the Torah.The new covenant is a new mediator, new blood, and the law written on the heart by the Spirit. It is not dragging Sinai across the line one command at a time and calling it Christ.