Quote:
Originally Posted by testallthings
A TRANSITIONAL PERIOD
Therefore if you are offering your gift at the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you (Mat. 5:23, RcV)
Footnote 23.2 says, “In decreeing the new law of the kingdom, the King referred here to the gift and altar of the old dispensation because during the period of His ministry on earth, a transitional period, the ritual law of the old dispensation had not yet come to an end.
(In the four Gospels, before His death and resurrection, in matters regarding the outward circumstances, the Lord treated His disciples as Jews according to the old law, whereas in matters concerning spirit and life, He considered them believers, constituents of the church, according to the New Testament economy.)”
Now, wait a minute. Weren't we told in footnote 3:1.2 that “John the Baptist's preaching was the initiation of God's New Testament economy...that the old way of worshipping God according to the Old Testament had been repudiated and that a new way was about to be brought in...further that nothing old was left and that something new was going to be built up.”
Now we are told that there was actually a transitional period, and that “the ritual law of the old dispensation had not yet come to an end.” Well, then way condemn the apostles for still going to the temple for worshipping God, why condemn Paul for keeping a Nazirete vow, why condemn James for writing his epistles to the twelve tribes in dispersion, etc. If we admit a transitional period, it seems that it was not ended by the death and resurrection of Christ, but that it continued trough the Acts of the Apostles until the end in chapter 28. |
Let me quote from the RcV, footnote 1.3 on James 1. "The tribes of Israel. This indicates that this Epistle was written to the Jewish Christians, who had the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory (2:1) and were justified by faith (2:24), regenerated by the word of truth (v. 18), and indwelt by the Spirit of God (4:5), and who were members of the church (5:14), awaiting the Lord's coming back (5:7-8). However, for the writer to call these believers in Christ "the twelve tribes," as God's chosen people were called in His Old Testament economy, might indicate that he lacked a clear view concerning the distinction between Christians and Jews, between God's New Testament economy and the Old Testament dispensation. Perhaps he did not see that in the New Testament God had delivered and separated the Jewish believers in Christ from the Jewish people, who were then considered by God a perverse generation (Acts 2:40). In His New Testament economy, God does not consider the Jewish believers to be Jews set apart for Judaism but Christians set apart for the church. As members of the church of God, they should be as distinct and separate from the Jews as they are from the Gentiles (1 Cor. 10:32). Yet James, a pillar of the church, in his Epistle to the Christian brothers still called them "the twelve tribes."
If we compare the two footnotes, Mat.5:23 and James 1:1, we see how W.L. "excused" the Lord Jesus but was ready to "accuse" James for doing the same things! Talk about double standards! Of course the Lord Jesus can never be wrong, and so His apostles when moved by the same Lord to speak through the Holy Spirit to churches or single believers. James writes around A.D. 50 (according to the RcV), earlier than Paul, Peter and John. Maybe Matthew was the only possible N.T. scripture available at that time. It is unbelievable that someone will go so far to doubt an apostle of Jesus Christ to justify his own peculiar point of view.
Again I say, if there was a transitional period it probably didn't end with the death and resurrection of Christ, but it went on until there was a chance for the nation of Israel to repent.