Apologia for the Law Pt 1 with Roger Hadad - JL222

Q&A:

Before we start, I want to say that full disclosure is that I consider you a friend and we attend the same congregation.  I also wanted to say up front that we’re going to talk about a book You wrote called “Apologia for thee Law and the Sabbath”. And in that book you often refer to Christ as the Master.  One advantage of this is that we avoid turning off one group or another by referring to Him as either Jesus or Yeshua, so if it’s alright I’ll try to refer to Him during our interview in a similar way, either as the Master or as simply Christ.

You begin that book by stating that the book is not for someone who has already made up their mind that the law has been done away with.  I guess we could say the same thing to our listeners, that if they’ve already up their mind on this topic this interview is not for them. Why do you say that and how would you describe the mindset of the listener who is well suited to hear our discussion today?

 

You use an analogy of 3 TV sets for sale to describe the acceptable doctrine of Christianity today.  Share that analog with us to help set the table, so to speak, for our talk today.

 

I don’t want to spend a lot of time on your testimony in this discussion in order to save time for all the arguments from your book, but you talk about how your faith journey included a time spent with what you call other’s centered legalism.  Since legalism is often a knee-jerk reaction or description to what we’re going to talk about today, define for us others-centered legalism as you experienced it and how it differs from the inner cultivation of the spirit.

 

You start out by asking a question, can we sin without the law, and to make your point you enlist a stop sign analogy.  So what is the answer to this question and explain it to us using that stop sign analogy.

 

There are many scriptures that challenge us “not to sin” or to be righteous, and yet as Christians we believe Christ’s sacrifice was needed.  How do we rectify these two seemingly incongruous ideas?

 

Your chapter titled “dead to the law” starts out with a quote from Peter where he states that Paul’s writings are hard to understand, to which I think we can all say “Amen”.  This a big deal since 2/3 of the NT was written by Paul, and many Christian doctrines are based wholly or at least in part on his writings. So let’s address this concept of being dead to the law and what seem to be contradictions in Paul’s writings.  You make the point that when there are apparent contradictions with Paul or anywhere in scripture we need to look beyond the superficial meaning.  So let me ask you the question, did Christ cancel or nullify the law, and how does the Sermon on the Mount help answer this question?

 

You state that the law is not an obstacle for salvation but its indispensable platform.  What do you mean by that?

 

Another twist on this same argument is that Christ gave us a new law and it’s called love.  Is this true?

 

Let’s talk about he concept of a bond servant as described in both the OT and in the NT most notably in an often ignored short book called Philemon.  What can this tell us about our relationship to the law?

 

So the concept of a bond servant can help us better understand our relationship to the law, but you say that the concept of a school master can help us understand the reverse, the relationship of the law to us.  Talk to us about this.

 

Now with the concepts of bondservant and schoolmaster as a background, how can we better understand what Paul means when he talks about the law of liberty?