UriYosef wrote:
I see the word "love" only in your first citation.
Yes - this is the bottom line response to the Professor's antinomian view of Christianty, because it affirms that the way we show God our love is by keeping His commands.

UriYosef wrote:
BTW, it is my understanding that those "commands" are not the 613 in the Torah, which invalidates the idea of showing one's love to the Creator.
At the risk of drawing your (collective) ire and ridicule, I am going to think out loud a little bit here, because you ask a very hard question - a question that Christian theologians have struggled with for 2000 years.  So I'll see if I can give you my take on it.

First of all, I assume you're not including the laws pertaining to the Temple and the korbanot, since you have said it is not possible to follow those laws at this time. More to the point, haven't you yourself said that Gentiles are not obligated to keep Jewish law?  If so, I would think you'd agree with Peter's conclusions in Acts 15:19. 

So that leaves an interesting question concerning the legal obligations of Jews who are followers of Jesus. On one hand, passages like 1 Corinthians 7:18 imply that a Jew ought to continue to observe Jewish law.  But on the other hand, the Temple is gone, and Christian scripture teaches that the physical and spiritual "dividing wall of hostility" (Ephesians 2:14) has been destroyed, and that the command that covers the entire law (Matthew 22:40) is love - to love God and to love each other.

Hmm... but then I guess that brings us back to square one: what does it mean to love God, under Christian theology?  How do we show our love for God if not by keeping the 613 mitzvot?  I think the essence of sin is selfishness, self-centeredness, a failure to put our own carnal needs before God and others'.  So maybe the essence of love is to do the opposite - to give God and others equal or greater consideration to ourselves (Romans 13:9, Galatians 5:14, James 2:8), to the point of being willing to lay down one's own life (John 15:13), not only as it pertains to the 613 mitzvot, but in every moment of our lives.  After all, the 613 mitzvot are only scratching the surface, in terms of showing us the many ways in which we can choose to put God and others first.

UriYosef wrote:
Mark, You boast about all the years that you've spent on these forums and claim how much you have learnt, yet you still spout this gibberish?  What Christian scripture says is completely the opposite of what the Hebrew Bible teaches.
Oh... does it come across as boasting?  I apologize for that.  I don't mean it as boasting.  I don't think that my time here makes me better or worse than anyone else.

In any case, I guess I chose my words poorly when I said that no one can keep the law perfectly.  You're quite right in saying that scripture teaches us differently.  Thank you for the correction.  It just goes to show how much trouble people cause when they paraphrase (or "translate") scripture.  What I should have said is:
For there is no righteous man on earth who does good and sins not. (Ecclesiastes 7:20)
After all, if it was not within our capability to keep the law, how could God be angry with anyone?

Thank you Uri.
Mark



Note: Forum rules require me to make the following disclaimer.

This post is not Jewish teaching, rather it is Mark's personal opinion as a non-Jew.