PT-1 "Intro to Matthew 5:17

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/2/2020 9:10 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                        Focus:  PT-1 “Intro to Matt. 5:17

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 5:17

 

            Message of the verse:  “17 “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”

 

            In his commentary John MacArthur entitles the 22^nd chapter of his commentary “Christ and the Law—Part 1 The Preeminence of Scripture.”  Part two will come when we look at verse 18 which will be a while before we get to that verse.

 

            I suppose that one of the questions that all new believers have, and for that matter all believers have is what does the Law have to do with them?  I hope that as we study these two verses together that we will get some answers to that question.

 

            As I look over the first part of this introduction from MacArthur’s commentary I find that after reading it that what is going on in our country in the year 2020 has a lot to do with what he wrote about in 1979 and so because of this I want to take the time to quote a great deal of his commentary over the next couple of days.  I do not want to put too much in each Spiritual Diary because some of it, at least to me, is very heavy to understand.

 

            “In a recent book titled The Interaction of Law and Religion (Nashville:  Abingdon, 1974), Harold J. Berman, professor of law at Harvard University, has developed a significant thesis.  He notes that Western culture has had a massive loss of confidence in law and in religion.  One of the most important causes of this double loss of confidence is the radical separation that has been made between the two.  Berman concludes that you cannot have workable rules for behavior without religion, because only religion provides an absolute base on which morality and law can be based.  The author fears that Western society is doomed to relativism in law because of the loss of an absolute.  When men break away from the idea of an authoritative religion, and even from the concept of God, they break away from the possibility of absolute truth.  Their only remaining resource is existential relativism, a slippery, unstable, and ever-changing base on which no authoritative system of law or morals can be built.  Religionless law can never command authority.

 

            “In that book Professor Berman notes that ‘Thomas Franck of New York University [has observed that law] in contrast to religion ‘has become undisguisedly a pragmatic human process.  It is made by men and it lays no claim to divine origin or eternal validity.’’ (pg. 27).  Berman says that this observation

 

‘leads Professor Franck to the view that a judge, in reaching a decision, is not propounding a truth but is rather experimenting in the solution of a problem, and if his decision is reversed by a higher court or if it is subsequently overruled, that does not mean it was wrong but only that it was, or because in the course of time, unsatisfactory.  Having broken away from religion, Franck states, law is now characterized by ‘existential relativism.’  Indeed it is now generally recognized ‘that no judicial decision is every ‘final,’ that the law both follows the event (is not eternal or certain) and is made by man (is not divine or True).’ (pp. 27-28)

 

            Professor Berman goes on to ask, ‘If law is merely and experiment, and if judicial decisions are only hunches, why should individuals or groups of people observe those legal rules or commands that do not conform to their own interests?’ (pg. 28).

 

            “He is right.  Rules without absolutes are rules without authority, except the authority of force and coercion.  When God is abandoned, truth is abandoned; and when truth is abandoned, the basis for morals and law is abandoned.  A consistent, coherent legal system cannot be built on philosophical humanism, on the principle that right and wrong fluctuate according to man’s ideas and feelings.

 

            “In an article in Esquire magazine titled ‘The Reasonable Right,’ Peter Steinfels asks, ‘How can moral principles be grounded and social institutions ultimately legitimized in the absence of a religiously based culture?’ (13 February 1979).  The obvious answer is that they cannot be.”

 

            Lord willing we will continue to look at this introduction from John MacArthur’s commentary in our next SD.

 

            I will close with something that I read online that made sense to me as I believe it is true when someone stated “Christianity can survive without America, but America cannot survive without Christianity.”

 

7/2/2020 9:48 AM