Gettin' Stoned -- Is Stoning for Today?

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Gettin' Stoned

[I feel like I'm back in high school. Seems like there were always people gettin' stoned back then.]

Seriously, even though the stoning topic seems to have ranged far afield of what this discussion is about (since, to my knowledge, Bill Gothard doesn't advocate stoning) it seems that the underlying issue forms the crux of this entire discussion.

Should adulterers and murderers be stoned to death today? How do we decide?

I hope no one takes this personally, but I've not been impressed with the argument that Jesus overthrew stoning (haha..."overthrew stoning"...get it?) when he rescued the woman caught in adultery. If you read the passage carefully, Jesus was really pointing out injustice. The woman was caught in adultery, right? Doesn't it take *two* to commit adultery? Where was the man? Why did her accusers allow him to escape? Were they concerned with justice? Were they following the OT Law? How could they claim to be doing so, when in fact they were in sin because they were *violating* the very Law they claimed to be upholding?

So how do we decided whether God wants us to stone people today and, if so, for what reasons?

It comes back to what you think about the place of the Mosaic Law in your life today. And that is the crux of this entire discussion.

Some people divide the Law into three categories: ceremonial, civil, and moral. The assumption then is that Christ fulfilled and set aside the ceremonial law; the civil law was binding only on the nation of Israel during a certain portion of its history; the moral law is still binding on us today. I'll freely admit that this was my position until very recently. However, this position raises some questions: where does the Bible give us these categories of the Law? Where does it teach us how to decide in which category a particular law falls? It seems that everyone would come up with a different list. How do you know which list is right? (I used to say, "Well, mine is obviously the right one."<g>) This position would say that the laws regarding stoning fall under the civil law.

Then there are those who divide the Law into two categories: ceremonial and moral. Only the sacrificial system and its rituals have passed away, they say. Our nation is coming under judgment because we aren't enacting the moral law---if we were a righteous nation, we *would* be stoning people today.

There is even a somewhat radical fringe in Theonomy that says that, since the Bible does not categorize the Law, neither should we---and it is all binding today. Someday the temple will be restored and we will once again offer sacrifices and the Church will finally be completely obedient. (I'm not making this up.) They claim the sacrifices under the New Covenant will be memorial in nature, not redemptive. This group, of course, also supports stoning, for every reason mentioned under Mosaic Law.

Then there is the position that the entire Mosaic Law---which God never intended for us to carve up into categories of our own invention---was nailed on the cross with Jesus Christ, that we are completely free not only from the penalty of the Law, but from the Law itself. Others here can argue this position much better than I can.

So, is this simply an exercise in theological discussion? No. The issue is far more than whether or not Cherie's friend should have been stoned to death. It's all about how we live our lives...it's about our freedom and liberty in Christ...it's about what His death really, really means...

And unless we settle this issue, a lot of the discussion here is simply a matter of spinning wheels and dealing with surface issues of what BG teaches, rather than the core presuppositions that undergird his entire system.

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