Open debate: What does Jesus teach?

[Aractus]

Okay, so I'd like to open this topic for debate with all Christians on the forum. Hopefully we can have a serious, polite discussion on this topic.

Now this is what I've been thinking about, let me give you some passages from the Gospels:

• "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a tittle, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
  - Matt 5:17-20
  
  

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• "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
  - Matt 5:43-48
  
  

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• And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
  
  But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
  - Luke 10:25-37
  
  

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• One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”
  - Mark 2:23-28
  
  

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• Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
  
  “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
  
  “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.
  
  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
  
  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.
  
  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
  
  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.
  - Matt 23:1-36
  
  

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• But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.
  - Luke 11:42
  
  

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• But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
  - Matt 22:34-40

Now let me run through this quickly - although most translations of Matt 15 read "dot or iota" that is an unacceptable translation and most Christians do not know the meaning of "iota or tittle". A tittle is a tiny marks that makes up Hebrew letters kind of like serifs, but much smaller, and iota is the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet. He is talking about the written Hebrew scriptures accepted by then-contemporary Palestinian Jews.

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'" - Who is Jesus quoting? ...

"You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord" - Leviticus 19:18

Let me first say that this is the only time God gives the command in the Old Testament is Leviticus 19. Jesus quotes Leviticus 19 in Matthew 22/Mark 12. But where does Leviticus 19 or for that matter any of the Old Testament say "hate your enemy"? It doesn't, and that's because Jesus in Matthew 5 is quoting the Pharisees and teachers of the law. And that's the same story with his teachings of the Sabbath. So when Jesus says:

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!"

He isn't saying that the Pharisees are picking and choosing the OT law, what he's actually saying is that they've distorted it by destroying the original meaning. He's accusing them of re-defining "neighbour" to mean what they want, to re-define "work" when it comes to the Sabbath to mean what they want, etc etc hence "straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel". They've lost the intent of the Law by applying it beyond the scope of what God in the OT instructs.

This shouldn't be news to seasoned Christians because what I've just said well accepted text-book theology. But then this happens ...

Acts 15:1-5: But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.”

Now this is where it all changes - at the Jerusalem Council. The Christians who want to follow the Law of Moses are now labelled in Acts as "the party of the Pharisees". But as I've just shown you this is wrong - Jesus didn't dislike the Pharisees for following the Law of Moses, in fact he spends the whole of the Gospels going around telling people they must follow it, what he didn't like what the additional requirements and draconian definitions that the Pharisees had applied to them, straining out a gnat as he so rightly puts it.

What Paul and the other early Christian leaders do at the Jerusalem Council is do exactly what Jesus hated the Pharisees for doing - he wanted people to go back to the Law as written in the scriptures, not as applied by the Pharisees. He doesn't tell people to break the Sabbath - he tells them "read the scriptures and see that I'm doing what David did that was lawful by the law before we had these draconian conditions applied by the Pharisees".

This of course breaks apart Christian/New Testament theology at the core because it's based on this "New Covenant" paid for by the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus paid for the sins of the world, let's say we agree upon that, and by sin we mean under the OT Law, the Law of Moses, the Law that as Jesus puts it "shall never pass away".

Now one thing many Christians don't know, and I know this because I used to be one and I've had this discussion many times, is that the OT law does not allow a sacrifice to be given for intentional sin. So abandoning the Law of Moses is an intentional way of saying "I'm committed to living a life of sin" not "I'm committed to living as sin-free as possible". Paul was wrong about it - and it's not surprising since he never knew Jesus and when he speaks in Acts 15 he's not speaking as a direct disciple of Jesus. Now if we instead had Peter or John or one of the disciples say "this is what Jesus wanted" it would be credible, but Paul has only been taught about Jesus, he was not a disciple of Jesus so he doesn't know first-hand what Jesus taught.

When Peter stands up we listen - he's a disciple. But he never says it's what Jesus taught, no. Instead he says "Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will." He gives his reasoning and it isn't based on what his mentor taught him while he was alive. So he is adding to or altering what Jesus taught, exactly what Jesus hated the Pharisees for.

So in summary: Jesus taught to keep the whole of the OT law, he never taught any different.