Having spent the past seven months reading the entire Old Testament from an Orthodox Jewish Study Bible, I have gained much insight into the religious philosophy that the Lord Jesus regularly confronted: When men add their traditions to God's Word, they will always take away from that Word at the same time. In other words, legalism is not about a higher standard, but a lower one, more easily attained.
I was amazed at how Rabbinic Tradition white-washes sin, as these two footnotes regarding David's sin with Bathsheba, recorded in 2 Samuel 11, reveal:
'11:4. Technically, Bath-sheba could be considered an unmarried woman, for, as the Talmud (Shabbos 56b) states, David's troops always gave their wives conditional divorces, lest a soldier be missing in action leaving his wife unable to remarry . . .' [_The Tanach, The Stone Edition_, Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications, p. 746.]
'11:11. By your life in this world and by your soul's life in the World to Come. Thus, Uriah swore that he would not obey David's command, making him liable to the death penalty for his insubordination and disrespect of the King.' [_Ibid_., p. 747.]
These rabbis confirm the paradoxical truth that once we come to believe that we must come to God on the basis of our own deeds, we will always end up committing worse sins than the person who comes to God based solely on the work of Christ, and we will never experience the broken heart.
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After serving Grace Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, Louisiana, Bob was honorably retired on Sunday, September 27, 2015, and given the title "Pastor Emeritus." This was forty years to the day after he became their pastor.
He now works for the Presbytery of the Gulf South as...
