Rebuttal to Sam Shamoun's Article "Did Paul Slander the Law?"

 

Shamoun's article could be found here http://www.answeringislam.net/Shamoun/q_paul_slanders_law.htm 

Shamoun attempts to respond to some comments made by me in this article http://muslim-responses.com/Obeying_the_Law/Obeying_the_Law 

Unfortunately, Shamoun only appeals to the teachings of Paul in order to justify his arguments. We can never see Jesus teaching these things that Christians practice today. 

 

Shamoun stresses on the need to live perfectly for God by quoting verses such as Deut. 18:13. However, Shamoun erroneously assumes that the only way to do so is by believing that Jesus died for us. 

However, we see that Job (Job 2:3) and Noah (Genesis 6:9) were blameless in the sight of the lord and they never believed in any sacrifice of Jesus. Imagine Noah being blameless in the sight of the lord even though he got drunk and lied in nakedness (Genesis 9:20-25). Shamoun will quote Hebrews to show that the sacrifice of Jesus even went back to the people in the past. But too bad for Shamoun, he can't prove that from the Old Testament. 

Shamoun says...

Yet God, in his infinite love and mercy, sent Christ to do for us what we could not do for ourselves, namely, live a sinless life in perfect obedience to the Law and to take the punishment we deserve for failing to carry out God's commands.

 

Shamoun is saying that we need to live sinless but that's impossible and that Jesus did that for us. Shamoun forgets that God loves repentant sinners...

 

Luke 15:10

In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

 

As a matter of fact, they are even better than sinless people...

 

Luke 15:7

I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

 

If there is more rejoice in heaven for a repentant sinner than over a 99 sinless people, why does Shamoun find it necessary to live sinless?

God purposely created us weak and knew that we are going to sin. That is why he gave us the option to repent in order to come back to His grace and receive eternal life (Ezekiel 18:21-23). This is something that is in our control. God won't purposely create us weak and then demand perfection that is impossible for us to attain. No, perfection for God is to follow His Law. The very Law itself states that we are expected to sin and that afterwards we should repent. So when we do so, we are actually following the Law perfectly at the end of the day.

Paul's teachings hold no authority unless backed up by Jesus. This is something that Shamoun can't do.

At the end of the day, its all weak logic (stating that we need Jesus to die for us) and new false teachings by Paul that won't convince a truth seeker.

 

Feel free to contact me at b_zawadi@hotmail.com