Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God?
To boast of the law while breaking the law dishonors God, and to claim honor through the law while breaking it is hypocrisy. The rebuke falls on those in God's service who claim to know His will and to be guides of the blind, lights in darkness, instructors and teachers of the commandments, yet do not teach and govern themselves. It exposes the minister of the gospel and professed follower of Christ who teaches another but does not teach himself, who instructs others but does not govern himself. The specific charge is preaching that a man should not steal while stealing, preaching against adultery while committing adultery, and abhorring idols and condemning idolatry while committing sacrilege and acting sacrilegiously.
The same boast belonged to the Jewish priests and teachers who extolled their own piety and condemned Greeks and Romans as sinners. They perverted God's law while boasting of it, and the most zealous advocates of the law were themselves transgressors who dishonored God by breaking it. When the wise men came, the professed worshipers showed them no sympathy, yet those non-idolatrous strangers stood higher in God's sight than the boasters. In contrast, Christ fulfilled every letter of God's law, observing even the precepts and ceremonies of the Mosaic institutions, while bringing transformation and making all things new.
Such lawbreaking dishonors God and causes His name to be blasphemed among the Gentiles and among those who see the hypocrisy. The warning therefore is against measuring and judging others while failing to examine one's own conduct and to take heed to self. It condemns hasty temper, impatience, oppression, criticism, and exclusion of brethren. It condemns judging character and measuring ministering brethren when the heart cannot be read, and claiming to be holier while violating love.
The same principle reaches the married man and minister who gives to another woman attentions and familiar liberties that belong only to his wife. This includes unbecoming familiarities, impure thoughts and affections fixed on another woman while having a lawful wife, even to being thrown off balance while preaching with her before him. Familiar liberties between a married minister and a professed Christian woman, persisted in despite warning, are an abomination in the sight of a holy God and sin against God. Such conduct wounds and injures His precious cause, burdens His work, and keeps Him from working through and blessing the efforts of the preacher.
The call to all living amid the perils of the last days is to be careful how they measure a brother. They are to be doers and not hearers only, and to seek inward religion where praise is of God and not of men.
To boast of the law while breaking the law dishonors God, and to claim honor through the law while breaking it is hypocrisy. The rebuke falls on those in God's service who claim to know His will and to be guides of the blind, lights in darkness, instructors and teachers of the commandments, yet do not teach and govern themselves. It exposes the minister of the gospel and professed follower of Christ who teaches another but does not teach himself, who instructs others but does not govern himself. The specific charge is preaching that a man should not steal while stealing, preaching against adultery while committing adultery, and abhorring idols and condemning idolatry while committing sacrilege and acting sacrilegiously.
The same boast belonged to the Jewish priests and teachers who extolled their own piety and condemned Greeks and Romans as sinners. They perverted God's law while boasting of it, and the most zealous advocates of the law were themselves transgressors who dishonored God by breaking it. When the wise men came, the professed worshipers showed them no sympathy, yet those non-idolatrous strangers stood higher in God's sight than the boasters. In contrast, Christ fulfilled every letter of God's law, observing even the precepts and ceremonies of the Mosaic institutions, while bringing transformation and making all things new.
Such lawbreaking dishonors God and causes His name to be blasphemed among the Gentiles and among those who see the hypocrisy. The warning therefore is against measuring and judging others while failing to examine one's own conduct and to take heed to self. It condemns hasty temper, impatience, oppression, criticism, and exclusion of brethren. It condemns judging character and measuring ministering brethren when the heart cannot be read, and claiming to be holier while violating love.
The same principle reaches the married man and minister who gives to another woman attentions and familiar liberties that belong only to his wife. This includes unbecoming familiarities, impure thoughts and affections fixed on another woman while having a lawful wife, even to being thrown off balance while preaching with her before him. Familiar liberties between a married minister and a professed Christian woman, persisted in despite warning, are an abomination in the sight of a holy God and sin against God. Such conduct wounds and injures His precious cause, burdens His work, and keeps Him from working through and blessing the efforts of the preacher.
The call to all living amid the perils of the last days is to be careful how they measure a brother. They are to be doers and not hearers only, and to seek inward religion where praise is of God and not of men.