You like the idea of a baseball bat because you intuitively understand justice.
Proverbs 21:15 When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.
And as for what Paul did or didn't say about specific issues, one must keep in mind that his writings are not about social issues or about criminal justice and so one shouldn't expect a great deal of discussion on those issues.
That isn't to say that he was completely silent on such things however (some of which you already alluded too)...
Resting in Him,
Clete
Clete; our understanding is obviously different on this issue.
The baseball bat thing has to do with my sense of morality against pedophiles.
Plenty of lost people have this same sense of morality.
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.
Same thing with the baseball bat; it is the moraility I was raised under.
It just so happens a large part of the society I was born into still holds that as "right."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"?
What you and Enyart have failed to understand is why putting the ten commandments in schools was doomed to fail to begin with.
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.
To what end?
Romans 5:20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: 5:21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans 7:5 For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. 7:7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. 7:8 But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. 7:9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. 7:10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. 7:11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. 7:12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. 7:13 Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.
Romans 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 8:4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. 8:5 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
You and Enyart want lost people to behave like the Scripture declares only saved people are empowered to - or else - with triple exclamation points.
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.
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
