Sorry about the outburst of anger. My grandmother started studying with the JW's in 1943. Thank God my father was 12 and had attended the baptist church and when my grandmother started draging him to the KH he did not buy it. My grandfather, an agnostic, said "he doesn't have to go if he doesn't want to". Thank God for my grandfather. My uncle (5 years younger than my dad, he didn't stand a chance) and his family are in "the truth" :-(
I grew up being told that my family and I would not live through the big "A" and would die forever. And we did not pray to the same god............
I, for some reason, have spent the last 2 years studing the WTS and it's beliefs. What a bunch of bull. I can't understand how my uncle and his family can't see how wrong this is. But it's all they have ever known. At some point don't we all have to take responsibility for our own relationship with God?
True my uncle has been taught all his life that Romans 6:7 is talking about human death, but he can read....he just doesn't......I mean, he must not.
I guess I just don't understand mind control and brain washing......
I just keep thinking the WTS's teaching is so off base I just know I can MAKE them understand.....
I am very frustrated.......
Thanks for the kind words
John 5:28,29
by stapler99 19 Replies latest watchtower bible
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bob1999
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A Paduan
People talk of cognitive disonance like it's some sort of sublime self-pantemime effect - but it's like a full blown neuropathic disease in these cases
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free2beme
I had a Christian use this scripture to prove Hell to me once, or twice.
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lovelylil
bob,
you make some good points. It is just easier for some to have others interpret things for them so that they, unlike you, do not have to do all the reasearch themselves.
There are also some who have believed something most of thier life and it is very hard for them to admit that they were gullable enough to believe it when it was so obviously not true. My hubby was like this and took a while to see the light - so to speak.
I am so glad that you can read the scriptures in their context and understand their proper meaning. Most of the bible is very easy to understand if you just read it. you don't have to be superior in intelligence or belong to some exclusive group. The bible was written for all of mankind. Your not being decieved like others is truly a blessing. It means no organization will capture you as a slave. God bless you and keep up the good work.
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Narkissos
bob,
Don't kick me but I do think that the death in v. 7 is literal. The problem is to define (1) the actual scope of the statement (how does death "free" or "clear" one from sin -- the Greek verb being the central Pauline term, dikaioô, "to justify") and (2) the function of this generic legal statement about death in the contextual argument (note the introducing conjunction gar, "for, because").
The point being, the "sacrament of death-and-resurrection" which baptism represents in the Pauline interpretation is efficient because it connects the believer with the actual death and resurrection of Christ. Normally only death could free a man from sin (although perhaps not of judgement); but through baptism the believer anticipates his/her own death and already receives a new life from beyond death (that of the resurrected Christ).
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bob1999
Narkissos,
How can one be first justified
"-- the Greek verb being the central Pauline term, dikaioô, ("to justify")"
and then have need to face judgement?
"Normally only death could free a man from sin (although perhaps not of judgement); "
If death clears man of the responsibility of sin then there is no need for grace.
We are only justified by the grace of God, made possible by the sacrifice of Christ, poured out by God according to our faith.
The Witnesses claim that death "pays" for sin. So when the bible says, "the wages of sin is death" they read that to mean the wages of sin is physical death and all will be resurrected to the 1000 year second chance to be judged only after.
But "the wages of sin" is, in fact, the second death. The WTS mis-interpretation of what the wages of sin really is, is the underpinning of a house of cards. If a JW could only see this one point the tower would fall.
Narkissos, how was that? I took my boots off first.
Peace -
bob1999
If the wages of sin is physical death then why, after being forgiven of our sins, would we still die?
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Leolaia
Narkissos.....Interestingly, EP Sanders suggested the translation "righteoused from sin" to capture the sense of the Greek.
bob1999....No one here is saying that "death clears man of the responsibility of sin". The point of the text is that death frees a man from sin, just like death releases a slave from his debt to his master. This is the prevailing metaphor in the passage...Paul contrasts "slavery to sin" (Romans 6:6, 16, 17, 20), which leads to death (v. 16), with "slavery to God/ righteousness" (v. 16, 18, 19, 22), which leads to life (v. 4, 22). Note the preposition apo in v. 7 which indicates "separation from," death justifies the legal debt a person had as a slave to sin (cf. v. 16: "Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey") and effects a separation of the person from sin. In other words, a dead man is no longer obligated to commit sin. That is the point. Although a dead man does not commit further sin, he is still accountable to God for his former sins. That Paul construes "made righteous from" (dedikaiótai apo) sin as a legal freeing from sin (= justified from sin's point-of-view) rather than atonement of the deeds one commits under sin (= justified from God's point-of-view) is made clear in v. 20-22:
"When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness (eleutheroi eté té dikaiósuné). What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin (eleutheróthentes apo tés harmatias) and have become slaves to God" (Romans 6:20-22).
Here eleutheróthentes apo tés harmatias "freed from sin" is used to mean the same thing as dedikaiótai apo tés harmatias "made innocent/acquitted from sin" in v. 7. The main point in the latter passage is that a Christian can make himself or herself a "slave to God" in this life and does not need to literally die to be freed from obligation to sin. Through the act of baptism a Christian becomes united in Christ's death, conferring his literal death to oneself to kill one's "old self", so that from sin's point-of-view "we have died to sin (apethanomen te hamartia)" (v. 2-5). This is part of Paul's overall inauguriated eschatology in which the benefits of the resurrection and the kingdom can be experienced in this life through Christ, and reveals the assymetry between slavery to sin and slavery to God. For sin only brings death while faithfulness to God brings life. Paul takes up this theme throughout the epistle in which a believer is not only freed from sin but also justified (= declared innocent/righteous) from the deeds one commited because of sin, hence the promise of eternal reward. In contrast, those who died while yet slaves to sin are only freed from sin and not from the consequences of the deeds they committed....they must still be judged righteous or unrighteous.
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bob1999
OK, got it.
Freed from the grip of sin not from the consequences of sin (the second death). Baptizim frees us from both.
Romans 8:1
Thanks for the explanation. -
Narkissos
Thanks bob
Note that the same kind of argument (reference to the legal consequences of literal death to illustrate the spiritual/religious consequences of sacramental/symbolic "death-with-Christ") recurs in 7:1ff, this time as to the relationship between man and law (instead of man and sin in 6:7):
Do you not know, brothers and sisters--for I am speaking to those who know the law--that the law is binding on a person only during that person's lifetime? Thus a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law (katèrgètai [reminiscent of erga, works, just as dikaioô in 6:7 is reminiscent of "justification"] apo tou nomou ) concerning the husband. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law (eleuthera estin apo tou nomou), and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.
Whether the scope of dedikaiôtai apo tès hamartias in 6:7 is to be limited to the slavery relationship between man and sin (as Leolaia holds if I understood her correctly), or can extend to guilt and punishment (as the choice of dikaioô might suggest -- I am not entirely convinced by the argument which limits the sense of dikaioô apo to an "acquittal of the debt causing the slavery," because Paul apparently doesn't refer to such a "cause" upstream of sin), the WT is wrong in making the legal argument of Paul a theological one. If guilt and punishment are in view it is within the realm of human justice (death puts an end to human judgement and punishment), not necessarily in the realm of divine justice (on which Paul generally shares the assumptions of apocalyptical thought as Leolaia pointed out). But a common problem imo in Pauline thought is that he often raises questions which reach deeper than his answers (e.g. 3:5-8; 6:1).
In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.