If a NC person does not wear a crucifix out of fear of breaking the commandment against idolatry (which was OK while under the Law) then that person is not perfected in love.
Hank, I believe it is helpful to make a distinction between the moral law of God, the civil law of God, and the judicial law of God. Both the civil and judicial law is contained in what we commonly refer to as
the Law -- the Mosaic Law. The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are the two books of the Old Testament that go into this in detail. The moral law of God is a bit different. It existed
before the Mosaic Law. We see the first glimpse of the moral law of God in Genesis 2:
Genesis 2:16 16 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
God presented Adam with a choice between right and wrong. If he chose right he would have remained in the Garden and enjoyed unbroken fellowship with God. If choose wrong the consequence would be death. In essence that is what the moral law of God is -- the knowledge of right and wrong. Every human being is born with this knowledge (Romans 1:19).
The Decalogue (10 Commandments) is the codified moral law of God. It also existed
before the civil and judicial law. Both the civil and judicial aspects of the Law are no longer in operation; the civil law because covenant Israel no longer exists and the ceremonial law because it has been fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. However, the moral law of God has always existed and still exists today. It is important to note that obeying the moral law of God does not impart righteousness. The knowledge of right and wrong is not sufficient for salvation. However, God still hates evil as much today as he did in the Old Testament. The first five commandments in the Decalogue are concerned with our vertical relationship with God and the last five commandments are concerned with our horizontal relationship with each other. Because I know how certain BB members like to hang on every word and pick them apart, let me state again that obeying the commandments in the Decalogue does not make one righteous. Every human being is a wretched sinner that can only be saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
So, why this long explanation? God hates idolatry (2nd commandment violation) as much today as he did when the tablets of stone were given to Moses. I like the way the late Dr. R.C. Sproul explained this:
"Let me give you a personal example. Several years ago, I was speaking in Rye, N.Y., at a conference on the holiness of God. After one of the sessions, the sponsors of the conference invited me to someone’s house afterward for prayer and refreshments. When I arrived at the house, there were about twenty-five people in the parlor praying to their dead relatives. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I said, “Wait a minute. What is this? We’re not allowed to do this. Don’t you know that God prohibits this, and that it’s an abomination in His sight and it pollutes the whole land and provokes His judgment?” And what was their immediate response? “That’s the Old Testament.” I said, “Yes, but what has changed to make a practice that God regarded as a capital offense during one economy of redemptive history now something He delights in?” And they didn’t have a whole lot to say because from the New Testament it is evident that God is as against idolatry now as He was then.
Of course, as we read Scripture, we see that there are some parts of the law that no longer apply to new covenant believers, at least not in the same way that they did to old covenant believers. We make a distinction between moral laws, civil laws, and ceremonial laws such as the dietary laws and physical circumcision. That’s helpful because there’s a certain sense in which practicing some of the laws from the Old Testament as Christians would actually be blasphemy. Paul stresses in Galatians, for example, that if we were to require circumcision, we would be sinning. Now, the distinction between moral, civil, and ceremonial laws is helpful, but for the old covenant Jew, it was somewhat artificial. That’s because it was a matter of the utmost moral consequences whether they kept the ceremonial laws. It was a moral issue for Daniel and his friends not to eat as the Babylonians did (Dan. 1). But the distinction between the moral, civil, and ceremonial laws means that there’s a bedrock body of righteous laws that God gives to His covenant people that have abiding significance and relevance before and after the coming of Christ.
During the period of Reformed scholasticism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Reformed theologians said that God legislates to Israel and to the new covenant church on two distinct bases: on the basis of divine natural law and on the basis of divine purpose. In this case, the theologians did not mean the
lex naturalis, the law that is revealed in nature and in the conscience. By “natural law,” they meant those laws that are rooted and grounded in God’s own character. For God to abrogate these laws would be to do violence to His own person. For example, if God in the old covenant said, “You shall have no other gods before Me,” but now He says, “It’s OK for you to have other gods and to be involved in idolatry,” God would be doing violence to His own holy character. Statutes legislated on the basis of this natural law will be enforced at all times.
On the other hand, there is legislation made on the basis of the divine purpose in redemption, such as the dietary laws, that when their purpose is fulfilled, God can abrogate without doing violence to His own character. I think that’s a helpful distinction. It doesn’t answer every question, but it helps us discern which laws continue so that we can know what is pleasing to God."
, and she keep trying to reach for something on her tray. I recognized it was her rosary beads she was reaching for and I thought a second, put my beliefs aside - which is actually required of me by oath, and figured why not, and gave her the beads. She grabbed them and hugged them to her chest. Upon refection of what I did, I'd say regardless of that "images/idols are scripturally prohibited" I don't think God frowned on my gesture as sin to give her some comfort as per her belief.
