Originally posted by Ben Gash
“law itself which introduces sin” Not so.
What I’m referring to here is:
"What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? God forbid. But I do not know sin, but by the law; for I had not known concupiscence, if the law did not say: Thou shalt not covet. But sin taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. And I lived some time without the law. But when the commandment came, sin revived, And I died. And the commandment that was ordained to life, the same was found to be unto death to me. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, seduced me, and by it killed me. " [Romans 7:7-11]
As Romans says “without the law, I did not know what sin was”.
That’s right, as mentioned above. But read the rest of Romans. He goes on to say that so long as the law lives in him, so also does sin, and thus he is truly dead. But through Christ it is not the law that lives in him, but grace, which banishes sin eternally and completely. Once again, he “does not know what sin is,” but this is a good thing.
It is true that the Christian relationship with God is a far more personal relationship than the Jewish relationship
I agree. However, I meant to be referring to: that thew Jewish relationship is defined by the law, and the Christian relationship is defined by grace.
I agree that Judaising is a bad thing, and it really upsets me when I see Christians not eating pork, or observing Shabbat, or other things in this vein.
Is it any less upsetting then, when you see a Christian believing that we are under, through God, the 10 Commandments; or that it is through the Mosaic Law which we are saved from sin, which is alive in us?
However, we must also strive to avoid sin. How are we to do this without guidance from the law?
Is there no guidance for you in Christian scripture, rather than Jewish?
And is there truly guidance for you in the law? You’ve, in this very post, allready rejected some aspects of it. Do you mean, then, that you’re going to pick and choose which parts suit you?
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with getting some guidance from the Mosaic Law; just as there’s nothing wrong with getting some guidance from the Upanishads, the Enneads, or Lieh-Tzu.
What is wrong (all from the Christian POV of course) is to believe that the Mosaic Law (or the Upanishads, Enneads, or anything else) are God’s commandments to us; that we are under the Mosaic Law through God. This simply is contrary to the Christian conception.
Surely, find wisdom in these sources. But don’t turn to them to understand your relationship with God; if you’re a Christian.
With respect to that, we find that it is not the Christian conception to “avoid sin”, but rather to realize that it does not exist. You can find ample elaborations on this in the life of Jesus; both on a shallow level concerning his association with the sinfull elements of life (up to and including the devil himself), and on a deep level concerning his not-avoidance of incarnation and crucifiction. You can find more examples and a complete theoretical position on this in Paul’s writings, as allready mentioned.
However, with the new covenant and the closer relationship with God we realise that it is the spirit of the law that is more important than following it to the letter.
No we don’t. We realize that the law is dead. This is expressed in no uncertain terms in my original reference: “you also are become dead to the law” [Rom 7:4]. And I provided links with plenty of discussion by theologians on this point.
Jesus clarified this situation best when he said that the most important commandments were “Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbour as yourself. Through these commandments all others are met.”
Only, these aren’t “the most important commandments”, these aren’t any of the commandments at all. And this is following Jesus himself going through the 10 commandments and explaining how they are inadequate.
Don’t forget, “The wages of sin are death” is a New Testament quote.
Yes, it’s Romans 6:23 and it leads into Paul’s discussion of how the law gives birth to sin, and thus why, through grace and Christ, we are dead to both; thus, dead to death is reborn eternally. In other words, you have to read, say, Romans 5 and 7 if you want to understand what he’s saying in Romans 6. 
Ok, ok… other than BlackJack’s posts? 
