Clete; our understanding is obviously different on this issue.
The baseball bat thing has to do with my sense of morality against pedophiles.
Precisely what I meant by an intuitive understanding of justice.
Plenty of lost people have this same sense of morality.
That's why I quoted the verse I did. Even the lost understand morality and justice. Justice pleases the righteous and rightly frightens the evil doer.
It has to do with the society we are raised in.
In a cannibalistic society, for example; the late; sicko sodomite; psychopath: serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer; would have been viewed; not as a monster of a nightmare on society, but as a legendary warrior of a hunter who was a hog - who did not share his spoils with the tribe.
Nope!
Pop culture would have you believe such fairy tails but that's all they are.
I'm not suggesting that people cannot sear their conscience. They obviously can and society certianly has its influence but every baby born has an awareness of God and people have an intuitive understanding of justice. Even the most hardened, murderous drug lord gets angry with you when you flirt with his woman and every liberal mind full of mush that resides in a California University and pleads with you to question all authority is the first to call the police when someone who questioned the rules against vandalism runs a key down the side of their Prius.
Same thing with the baseball bat; it is the moraility I was raised under.
You understand that this truth is not mutually exclusive to the idea that people inuitively understand morality.
It just so happens a large part of the society I was born into still holds that as "right."
No, it isn't mere luck. If it were just random luck there would be societies that think rape is fine and that kids ought to have their first sexual experience at two and every other random injustice you can imagine.
Don't misunderstand. I know that there are very unjust societies in the world. Even one's where rape and pillaging is common place. But even in those societies, people know that it isn't right. There are places in the world where whichever ruthless jerk with the biggest gun and most ammunition is in charge and makes whatever rules suits his fancy. He may make a rule that says that he gets to have sex with any woman he wants whenever he wants. But have someone come in and try to have sex with whichever woman he considers to be his own woman and you'll find out that he knows that his rule is unjust.
The fact is that God set in motion only "one nation under God" in all of history, and it is not, never was, nor never will be this nevertheless great land of ours.
Agreed - but irrelevant.
The whole Old Testament was written to, for and about Israel. In it we learn that it is wrong to steal. You're surely not suggesting that because the Bible was written to Israel that its okay to steal if you're a Gentile, are you?
Besides that, the Dispensation of Human Government was instituted with Noah, long before Israel was on the seen. The death penalty was one of the very first things God instituted when Noah landed the Ark.
That nation of God's was in the Middle East. That nation will one day again be in the Middle East.
To throw that out as a Mid-Acts Dispy just because we take issue with some segment of the lost behaving like one should expect the lost to behave, breaks with the Mid-Acts distinction that God is not right now claiming real estate.
Plain and simple.
This has nothing to do with Mid-Acts Dispensationalism. Dispensationalism in general perhaps but as I said, the Dispensation that authorized human government came long before Abraham.
The question really boils down to whether you think that God was just for demanding the death penalty for those caught in homosexuality. Only an unbeliever would think He was unjust and if you, as a believer, think He was just then on what basis would it be just for any government to allow them not only to live but to be members in good standing of the society?
That is the Amillennial notion that the Body is to remoralize the world so that the Lord can return.
Chuck Colson's would be marriage of church and state nonsense all over again.
Nothing I believe or advocate has anything to do with any of this. I don't even know what you're talking about. Chuck Colson?
The Apostle Paul does deal with every moral and or societal issue.
When one thinks in principles, not in concrete; here it is in this verse here ideas.
Take addiction (or ANY compulsion, and or compulsion made habit "by reason of use") for example.
Romans 6 is "the treatment."
Romans 6:12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. 6:13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. 6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. 6:15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.
I don't disagree that Paul talked a lot about the principles of right and wrong. My point was merely that he was writing about religeous issues not about criminal justice.
Why, Clete; does the Apostle of the Gentiles raise the point that "sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace"?
This has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Grace does not negate criminal justice. Criminal justice has nothing to do with where you spend eternity.
The saved murderer should still be executed and will still spend eternity with God after his execution. Criminal justice has to do with creating and maintaining a civil society. It has the effect of teaching the society, as a whole (believers and unbelievers alike), what is right and what is wrong. Right and wrong is not a matter of opinion. The righteous society is so because it's laws are just and the broken, despotic society is so because it's laws are unjust. This is universally true - there are no exceptions.
What you and Enyart have failed to understand is why putting the ten commandments in schools was doomed to fail to begin with.
Neither Bob nor I advocate putting the Ten Commandments in schools.
The Law proved what it was meant to - it's "thou shalt not" having been meant to show man that man cannot but do the opposite.
This is so from the perspective of a person's relationship with God but again, that has very little, if anything, to do with what a nation's criminal code should be.
If this is what you believe then do you believe that any law passed by a nation is fine and well and good for that nation?
Is there no unjust law that a nation could enact for itself? Our country has declared it legal to murder babies so long as they reside in their mother's womb. Is that law just or unjust? Is it right or wrong to murder unborn babies and on what basis do you justify your answer if not "Thou shalt not murder."?
You and Enyart want lost people to behave like the Scripture declares only saved people are empowered to - or else - with triple exclamation points.
What?
No we don't! We just want for people not to commit capital crimes!
Are we wrong to want people not to murder their neighbor?
Are we wrong to want people not to take their neighbor's wife?
Are we wrong to want people not to steal, or to assault their neighbor?
Are we wrong to want a civil society that enacts and enforces justice?
That righteous killing of the sodomite under the Law was the issue of one more endless example of God's proving through the Law that no matter what standard God puts before man; together with serious threat not only included, but carried out; is bound to fail because - the Law is weak through the flesh.
Then you are an anarchist?
Is that what you are really suggesting?
That is the logical conclusion to what you're saying!
You are conflating religious issues with social ones. Not that there is no overlap but not the sort you are suggesting.
Think about this. Was it wrong to murder before God gave man the authority to execute murderers? Did God give man the authority to execute murderers before He gave the Law to Moses? Yes, He did. Why? Did it have anything to do with salvation?
The result, my saved; sealed; fellow Mid-Acts approach to Scripture brother in the Lord?
(God knows you and Enyart have been maligned enough by some of our so-called own in their absolute nonsense in their ignorance)
The result the Law had intended?
Romans 3:19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. 3:21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 3:22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 3:24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 3:25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 3:26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. 3:27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. 3:28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. 3:29 Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also:
That is Paul's point as to the lawful use of the Law in 1 Timothy 1.
The Law proves the sinner a sinner.
In need being "found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:" Philippians 3:9.
There is much more to MAD than simply "we're not Israel" exclamation point, and I suspect you know this to one extent or another.
I suspect you know us MADs would do well to explore the "much more" of the Mystery; in contrast to the endless "we're not Israel" bashing so many of us on TOL waste our time on in post after post after post as if it is the Mid-Acts clock itself that is stopped on some sort of a "that is all there is..."
Respectfully, bro...
Eph. 4:16
Well, again - this has nothing at all to do with Mid-Acts Dispensationalism and it isn't about our relationship with God. It's about what is just, its about right and wrong. It's about wanting a civil society that has laws that deal with criminals justly. A thief ought to be made to repay what he stole, not locked in a cage and fed three hot meals and provided free cable television for months on end. Murderers ought to be executed. And in general, it ought to be done unto the criminal as he sought to do unto his victim. That's justice biblical style and it was God's idea and so long as the Dispensation of Human Government persists, we who call ourselves God's children ought to advocate justice.
Resting in Him,
Clete
P.S. Sorry about the length of this post. Don't feel obligated to respond to every point. I appreciate the iron sharpening iron exchange between otherwise like-minded believers. God bless!
