A verse some use to say Jesus was not without sin

I came across an actual heretic (who is eager to teach his heresies) named Roy Potter. He usually just talks about politics, but he often gives lectures on biblical subject matter, and he is a pure blood drinker. He says he's a former Mormon, but he doesn't have the bad doctrine out of his system to any degree.

He was saying Jesus sinned during his life, and he cited Matthew 19:16-17.

16 And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? 17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

There's a similar passage in Mark 10:17-18.

This article does a good job of explaining the passage.

Basically, Jesus is assuming the questioner thinks of Him only as a teacher and not God Himself, the Second Person of the Trinity. He wants him to see that no man is good, but all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

As for Jesus being without sin (though tempted like all human beings), Jesus came to fulfill what the first Adam failed to fulfill, following God's command/law which was elaborated on Sinai. The article lists several verses where Jesus is said to be without sin (but the heretic conveniently doesn't recognize the Bible to be without error).

Hebrews 4:15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

2 Corinthians 5:21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

1 Peter 2:21 For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:
22 Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:

1 Peter 1:19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:

1 John 3:5 And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin.

Right after I hit 'send' to post this to the blog I am going to pray for this heretic. He has a particular vibe of hell about him. Banal, resigned, tired vibe of hell.

The confusion about God's law written on our hearts

In the Bible it is said that all people have God's law written on our heart. I.e. *all* - not just the born again.

Rom 15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another...

Yet it also says that once born again, or regenerated, the Spirit writes God's law on our heart:

16 This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;

If you search for an answer to this confusion you find that theologians are all over the board on it. Calvin answered it directly though. He said 'law' as Hebrews is using the word refers to grace and is meant in contrast to the Covenant of Works, or the law of works. He didn't go far enough in his explanation though.

The phrase needed to understand the difference is Law of Christ.

This question goes to the heart of the deep, foundational subject of law and gospel. The book to get understanding of it is that mysterious book titled the Marrow of Modern Divinity by Edward Fisher.

Yes, we are born with God's law written on our heart. This is so we have no excuse. We can't claim ignorance for our rebellion. But that law is a curse because we can't fulfill it, but once we are regenerated by the word and the Spirit that law (call it the Ten Commandments for shorthand) becomes the law of Christ. It's no longer a curse to us because Christ fulfilled it and paid the price of death in our place for the penalty of not fulfilling it. And the heart in us that it's written on is our new heart God gives us (which is probably why there is a double writing because there are two hearts involved, our old heart which gets replaced by our new heart).

Now we have an inclination to follow the law because it's of the nature of our new heart to follow the law. The law is not external rules but intrinsic attributes of our new heart. And the law is obviously no longer a curse or a threat.

Grand metaphor for the three races (fear God alone, it is the beginning of wisdom)

The metaphor is the grand piano.

Grand pianos aren't necessary for survival. They are a product of high civilization.

White people build the grand piano and compose the music that is played on it. I.e., white people are the civilization builders.

Asian people learn to play the grand piano and the music that's been composed for it. I.e., Asians can sustain civilization once it's been given to them by white people, but they can't build it.

Black people look at the grand piano and cut off one of its legs to start a fire. I.e., black people can neither build nor sustain civilization but can only destroy it.

This is because white people carry the knowledge and inspiration of God within them more than the yellow or black peoples or any mixture of the three.

(This is speaking of large groups in a large generality. Individuals within each group can have more or less of the knowledge and inspiration of God within them making them capable and equal with whites in general. Yet in large groups this is not the case.)

Start simple, stay focused, be practical, yet don't shy from big goals

Sometimes I try to do too much. Or, sometimes also, I think about doing too much.

There's only so much we can do in this human condition. (Now I'm sounding like Michael Horton's book on how everything regarding religion should be 'ordinary.' I'm not going there...)

I just need to be awake and chill. Listen to some Mozart symphonies.

All lives of spiritual attainment fizzle at the end, don't they? No? Yes? Some do, some don't?

One thing bothers me lately... I've read the Bible cover-to-cover eight times and right now I couldn't tell you what the subject matter of the Book of Titus is.

I could find out quickly, but you would think I'd know. Maybe I know at some deep level. I mean, maybe it's 'there', for when I need it. There in deep memory.

Maybe I should be reading the Book of Titus right now. [Reading Titus...] OK, it's one of the church letters. Paul is writing to Titus who is in Crete, and he's telling him what to say to the people in Crete who profess the faith (I assume) and are setting up churches and so on. (On a complete reading of the Bible by the time you get to Titus you admittedly are kind of racing to the finish line. You can overlook little single-mention words like 'Crete.')

Titus 1:2 caught my attention. Since salvation by Jesus, from before the foundation of the world, involves our hope in heaven, the verse is explained.

Well, we still have to build our spiritual body and do battle with the forces of evil that are in the world, in our fallen nature, and in the Devil himself.

I'm going to find and listen to a lesser-known Mozart symphony...maybe the G minor...

Rule of life vs. being desultory

"If a Christian desires to practice true godliness faithfully and attain his real purpose in life, he should use the means referred to in a disciplined way. It is necessary for him to observe a good, established, firm, and regular rule of life. He must not live carelessly and haphazardly but follow this standard (Gal. 6:16). God's blessings are promised only to those who order their lives well (Ps. 50:23)." - Willem Teellinck, The Path of True Godliness

A regular rule of life. This is something implied in Jesus' teaching and throughout the Bible but not directly stated and outlined.

We already have a regular rule of life...by default. Coffee, for instance, would be a part of many people's regular rule of life. I'm not putting it down, just using it as an example that can be related to. A favorite television program might be a part of someone's regular rule of life. Appointment TV, as they say. Something you remember to watch at a specific time of your day. Even brushing our teeth in the morning is a part of a regular rule of life.

So we know what a rule of life is.

Really, though, regarding a rule of life and the need for one has much to do with doing battle with desultory behavior. Reading projects that never get finished. Health projects that die quick deaths. If there isn't a strong worldly/flesh motive (food, sex, money, distraction) we engage in desultory behavior regarding it.

Desultory: lacking a plan, purpose, or enthusiasm; (of conversation or speech) going constantly from one subject to another in a halfhearted way; unfocused; occurring randomly or occasionally.

We don't have to be robots; but being moderately non-desultory would be a step in the right direction.

"It is necessary [...] to observe a good, established, firm, and regular rule of life."

So many - if not most - people do do that. It just doesn't involved prayer, or watchfulness, or biblical meditation, or loving our enemy, etc.

It involves coffee, and brushing our teeth, and getting our vehicle fueled up so we don't get stranded on our way to work.

A very balanced folk trilogy

If you get interest in Puritan style meditation then you will find endless pithy subject matter in Thomas Watson's Body of Practical Divinity. It is a golden book. It is one of a trilogy of Christian folk classics. The other two being John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress; and Thomas Boston's Human Nature in its Fourfold State.

A very balanced trilogy.

Of course Watson's book is usually published in three volumes: A Body of Divinity, The Ten Commandments, and The Lord's Prayer.

All three (or five) books are available in excellent eBook editions at Monergism Books for free.

My advice is to just read straight through them (unless you're using them for subject matter to meditate upon), and trust that God enables such works to lodge in our memory. The Watson book in particular can seem like such an endless stream of myriad golden sayings that we wonder if any of it can catch in our memory, but I think, and I've experienced, that what we read stays with us more than we suspect at the time of reading.

Again, these are folk type classics. They are simple 'golden books.' Books you have on a plain, short bookshelf next to your Bible. Matthew Henry's Commentary - despite its length - would be another one.

I would add Homer and Plutarch to provide bracing contrast...or, if not so much contrast a sort of worldly yet appropriate seasoning to bring the collection to a biblically perfect 7.

What holds us back and tabernacles

We often know what we are to do as a Christian, but it's a matter of energy (to do it), and valuation (for the goal).

As stated this is once we get over the obstacle of ignorance. Ignorance, weakness, valuation.

We could sit at the feet of Jesus Himself and learn at the most practical level the ways of a soldier of Christ, and then later not value what we learned, or be too weak to enact it.

1. It takes effort and valuation to not only read but to absorb and meditate upon the word of God.

2. It takes knowledge, effort and valuation to be in a state of presence where it's possible to love God and His commandments more than resentment and the ways of acting the world wants to see us manifest in any given moment or event.

3. It takes knowledge, effort, and valuation to love our enemy and our neighbor when it's most difficult to love them.

4. It takes effort and valuation to pray.

5. It takes effort and valuation to get over worldly shame and embarrassment to evangelize.

Those are five things a soldier of Christ, actively (consciously) on the spiritual battlefield, would be doing. It is how one truly is 'in covenant.' Making one's way to Zion. God's Kingdom.

The birds of the air have nests, and animals have their lairs, but a human being has nowhere to rest himself; yet if one can see them, God provides tabernacles, with inner courts designed for contemplation, while one is on the pilgrimage. Not a temple set on a plot of actual ground, but a tabernacle, like being in a cosmos that provides you cover and protection (though not from the friction of the world, your fallen nature, and the Devil, which you need, to overcome). These are above time, above geography phenomena. Psalm 84 for the usual types demanding biblical reference for such 'wacky' notions. Part of the protection of a tabernacle is from people like that though. They can't get anywhere near such a thing...

Something about Law and Gospel theology has missed

Here.

The General Law

I'm a Christian of what I call the hard truth, low church variety. John Bunyan, A. W. Pink, maybe a little Spurgeon thrown in, would be names that I would identify with. That means I'm a Bible believing, real biblical doctrine accepting Christian. Reformed (Reformation era) doctrine. Five Solas, Doctrines of Grace, classical Covenant - Federal - Theology, without the infant baptism because regeneration is the main thing and it is effected by the word and the Spirit, not by man and ritual. Etc. A necessary preface.

Since about 1990 after I became a Christian (important point) I have also been involved with something called 'the Work.' Or, Fourth Way. It's basically a very sophisticated language of inner, spiritual development. It's not for everybody. Many cults appropriate bits and pieces of it (just as cults appropriate the Bible). Really, though, the Work is not something you do in a group (which is the necessary setting of most if not all cults), but it's something you do in the traffic of your everyday life. That's what 'fourth way' means. It is not the way of the monk (in a monastery), or a yogi (in a...wherever yogis and their students gather) or an ascetic (who leaves the traffic of everyday life to live in a cave or on top of a mountain or something). Fourth Way means working on yourself emotionally, intellectually, and physically at the same time, in your average daily life. I won't go into that aspect more than that because you would really have to read about it on your own with your own motivation, from a book such as the Fourth Way by Ouspensky, or his smaller book the Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (evolution in this title having nothing to do with the garbage science known as the theory of macro evolution which Ouspensky as a mathematician and thinker was an early debunker of). OK, now...

One final note on the above: the Work, or Fourth Way is a language. It is not biblical language. The two really should not be mixed. Having said that it's been called esoteric Christianity. That is not Gnosticism by another name. If you have discernment to separate wheat from chaff (only the Bible is pure wheat) it fits doctrines of grace Calvinism and progressive sanctification hand-in-glove. One warning: like any hardcore teaching and practice that involves provoking degrees of awakening it will put you in the environment of demons. That's enough to scare most all people off. So be it. You need the self-motivation and you need the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18).

(We're surrounded by demons, people, and when you provoke and extend your limits of consciousness, real will, and understanding you will attract attention. It's inevitable. If you don't want that or need that stay away from Work practices. You'll still be surrounded by demons though. So get the armor of God in the least...)

Now to my little note...

There is a mysterious little doctrine (I'll call it that) in Fourth Way teaching called the General Law. People in the Fourth Way have as little understanding of the General Law as most Christians have of Law and Gospel.

The General Law is seen as a force that is big and suffocating (blanketing, drowning you in it) that is negative and gives friction if you don't conform to it. A person doing the Work is taught to use it for it's valuable friction because that is how you create necessary heat to develop. Won't go into it more than that.

In biblical teaching there is the Law and the Gospel. God's law is perfect. It is not a negative thing that is a problem for us. Our fallen nature is a problem for us, not God's perfect law. Yet after the Fall of Adam God's law has been used by fallen man and fallen angels in a twisted, distorted, turned-upside-down, perverted form and way. We feel it at the social level among our fellow human beings with shaming and accusation and finger wagging; we feel it at the government level with the penal code and positive laws (criminal/civil laws), regulations, etc., coercing us, threatening us, taking our freedom, menacing us (sometimes necessarily so because of our fallen, sin nature); and we feel it at the false religion level where fallen angels administer religions designed to tyrannize and to draw people away from God towards idolatry.

It's this twisted, distorted, turned-upside-down, perverted form of God's law that is what the term the General Law means.

A person who understands the Work language and practices does battle with this General Law via self-remembering and non-identifying (among other things), terms with very exact meaning, well-defined in Work sources.

A Christian, on the other hand, who has no interest in any extra-biblical language or practice still has to do battle with the General Law as defined above. A truly regenerate Christian who truly fears God and doesn't fear the world will be confronted by the General Law.

So how does a Christian do battle with this General Law? By doing what Jesus tells us to do. The direct teaching of Jesus in the Gospels (and ALL the words of the Bible are Jesus talking to us, I'm only directing you to where Jesus specifically gives instruction on how to do battle with the General Law).

To make it very concise, you are to 'be awake' and 'love your enemy.' There is obviously a lot contained in those two practices. Or it can be put:

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Interactions with the General Law usually involve interactions with other human beings or groups of humans that result in feeling (or indulging) *resentment* (or also sometimes just one or another form of depression, but resentment to varying degree is usually present).

The opposite of resentment is *gratitude.* Jesus' words about love your neighbor or enemy could be put this way: have gratitude over resentment for everything all the time. This is the turn the other cheek and give your cloak as well if your coat is taken from you teaching. This is what that means. Jesus isn't saying let people kill you or let them cause you to freeze to death.

And to love God (in the moment, especially difficult moments when we are up against the General Law and feeling resentment) requires us to be awake in the moment. Very difficult to do. Yet it's part of our progressive sanctification to practice such things if we are Christians. We aren't born with such ability.

Jesus is telling us this is how you deal with the General Law, or God's Law as it is being used in a twisted, distorted, turned-upside-down way to coerce us, take our freedom from us, make us conform to worldly standards, keep us asleep in life, force us to worship idols, put us under a general tyranny...world tyranny ultimately if fallen man and fallen angels have their way.

As Christians we are free from the law as a curse. Jesus followed the law to a 't' for us and then paid the penalty of death for us on the cross. That aspect of the law we are free from, yet it is the perverted use of the law that we are confronted with in this fallen world (until glory) that we have to do wise and successful battle with. Jesus as our Commander tells us how to do this. The Work language in the sources mentioned above goes into the practice to great detail, but it's not for everybody for the reasons mentioned. Yet the fight is real and necessary for all Christians nevertheless. A regenerated Christian can't avoid the fight with the world, the flesh (our fallen nature), and the Devil.