Patty,

             Is it possible that those Pharisees actually thought that they were really keeping the commandments?

When faced with the prospect that they weren’t keeping the commandments, they got pretty upset.

 

Matthew 5:27 ¶ Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

 

Many of us Christians today, think exactly the same way.

We actually believe that we are keeping the commandments.

To the Pharisee, the prospect of thinking that they were not keeping the commandments was too horrifying to accept.

For them, the commandments were their roadmap to salvation.

They believed that if they kept them, they would be saved.

So if they were to consider that they might not be keeping the commandments, they would have to honestly admit damnation.

 

For many of us Christians, we fear the same thing.

Though a number of us, like the Pharisees, think that keeping the commandments, is required for salvation, most don’t believe that.

However, some of us believe that if we don’t continue to keep the commandments, then we will lose our salvation.

That is a grim prospect, since Hebrews 6:4-6 shows us that if we were to lose it, it would be impossible to get it back.

Some of us who don’t believe that, do believe that if we don’t continue to keep the commandments, that we will not go in the blessed hope (rapture).

Some of us who don’t believe that, do believe that if we don’t continue to keep the commandments, that it means that we don’t love Jesus.

So, whichever of the groups that we may find ourselves in, it’s still too horrifying to accept that we may not be keeping those commandments after all.

Well maybe we can convince ourselves that our sins are only “venial sins”, and not “mortal sins”, like the church of Rome teaches.

Or maybe we can convince ourselves that we no longer sin, that we only make errors now.

 

Actually, no one likes to hear & find out that we are not “really” keeping the commandments at all, especially when we thought that we had been.

Much more so, if we then think that this means we “lose our salvation”, “are left behind for the tribulation”, or that “we have never loved Jesus in the first place”.

I can see where we could be tempted to then blow our testimony, by flying off the handle at, or bopping in the nose, the one who showed us we weren’t.

Cain reacted strongly to the realization, the Pharisees reacted strongly, and so do we at times.

 

                          Gino