What exactly are you trying to say by stipulating the Mosaic Law? Are you trying to say that anything short of obedience to the Mosaic laws of the Mosaic covenant, even now is sin?
It is by the Mosaic Law that we have knowledge of what sin is (Romans 3:20) because sin is what is contrary to God's character traits it was given in order to teach us how to embody His character traits.
In what way does it teach us how to know and be known by God? I am not necessarily saying it
doesn't but I don't know precisely what you mean.
The Hebrew word "yada" refers to intimate relationships/knowledge gained through experience, such as with Genesis 4:1 where Adam knew (yada) Eve, she conceived, and gave brith to Cain. God's way is the way to know and be known by God and Jesus through experiencing being a doer of His character traits, which is the narrow way to eternal life (John 17:3). For example, in Genesis 18:19, Good knew (yada) Abraham that he would teach his children and those of his household to walk in His way by being doers of righteousness and justice that the Lord might bring to him all that He has promised, and in 1 Kings 2:1-3, God taught how to walk in His way through the Mosaic Law.
It wasn't that they were not doers of the Law of Moses---they had never been given the Law of Moses. They were not in a covenant relationship with God because he had not made a covenant with them. And if this new covenant that includes the Gentile's through faith now requires them to be doers of the Law of Moses, the "through faith" is meaningless. It is again a covenant of works like the Mosaic covenant.
Gentiles no longer being strangers to the covenants of promises involves coming under them. There is a reality that is true about the way to embody God's character traits that was true before God made any covenants with man, that has been revealed through God's covenants, and that is true regardless of which covenant someone is under. God's righteousness is eternal, so if someone has the goal of knowing God through embodying His righteousness, then they will consider any instructions that God has given for how to do that to be eternal and cumulatively valid.
New covenants do not nullify the promises of covenants that have already been ratified, so God's covenants are eternal and cumulatively valid. The Mosaic Covenant is eternal (Exodus 31:14-17, Leviticus 24:8), so the only way that it can be replaced by the New Covenant is if it is cumulative with it. One thing can only make another thing obsolete to the extent that it has cumulative functionality, so a computer makes a typewriter obsolete but does not make a plow obsolete, which means that if the New Covenant involved doing something different that was not cumulative with the Mosaic Covenant, then it could not make it obsolete. So the New Covenant still involves following the Mosaic Law (Hebrews 8:10) plus it is cumulatively based on better promises and has a superior mediator (Hebrews 8:6). The New Covenant is still made with the same God with the same character traits, so we should not expect it to come with a different set of laws for how to be a doer of a different set of character traits.
All of God's covenants are covenants of grace, faith, and of works.
God's righteous laws are eternal, but you seem to be equating that with the old covenant Mosaic Law. The covenant became obsolete not God's righteousness. God's righteousness that we are to be obedient to fills the pages of the epistles without works of the Law. And apart from the works of the Law. It is through union with Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit---God at work in us----that we become progressively obedient to the precepts given us in the NT. None of which contradict the very same righteousness presented in the old covenant.
The fact that all of God's righteous laws are eternal, means that what the Mosaic Law teaches us about the way to embody God's righteousness is eternally valid. The only way to attain a character trait is through faith apart from being required to have first done enough works in order to earn it as the result, but what it means to have a character trait is be a doer of works that embody that trait. The Law of Moses was not given as a way of becoming righteous even as the result of perfect obedience, but rather it was given in order to teach how to be a doer of righteous works, so it describes the life of someone who is righteous as it describes the life of Christ (1 John 3:4-7, Isaiah 51:7). This is why the faith by which we are declared righteous apart from works also upholds our need to be a doer of righteous works in obedience to the Law of Moses (Romans 3:28-31). The Law of Moses was given to teach us how to be a doer of God's character traits and God's character traits are the fruits of the Spirit, which is why the Spirit has the role of leading us to obey it under the New Covenant (Ezekiel 36:26-27).
You deeply misunderstand. To show how much I will ask a question. Does refraining from eating unclean meats make a person holy? Has it ever made anyone holy? The same with the holy days. To insist that is so is to greatly diminish the work that Jesus did and the fruit of his labor. Why is it that Paul gives a whole discourse on that very thing and conclude by saying that it counts the work of Christ and Christ himself as insufficient?
Similarly, the Law of Moses was not given as a way of becoming holy even as the result of having perfect obedience to it, but rather it was given teach how to be a doer of holy works, so it describes the life of someone who is holy and there are many verses calling Gentiles to be holy. The only way to become holy is through faith. Christ spent his ministry teaching his followers to obey the Mosaic Law by word and by example, so there is nothing about following what he taught that diminishes his labor or that makes him or his work insufficient, but just the opposite.
We only know God through Jesus and it is not by embodying his character traits. And it is not by embodying his character traits that we obtain eternal life. It is by believing God when he tells us in his word that the Son laid down his life for us as a ransom to purchase us for his kingdom. That he stood in our place, taking our punishment for our sins, making propitiation satisfying God's justice. By grace you are saved through faith, a gift from God, not our own doing, and not of works. The Law has much to teach us even today that is true, but that does not mean we are under it. We are under grace. Your statement above removes grace entirely and it removes all-purpose in Christ's sacrificial atonement.
We embody what we believe to be true about God through our works, such as with James 2:18 saying that he would show his works through his faith, so everyone who is a doer of the same works as James believes in Jesus. In other words, the way to believe in God is also by being a doer of his character traits. For example, by being a doer of good works in obedience to the Law of Moses we are embodying God's goodness, which is why our good works bring glory to Him (Matthew 5:16), and by embodying God's goodness we are also expressing the belief that God is good. Likewise, the way to believe that God is compassionate is by being compassionate (Luke 6:36), the way to believe that God is holy is by being a doer of His instructions for how to be holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:16), and so forth. This is exactly the same as the way to believe in the Son, who is the radiance of God's glory and the exact likeness of His character (Hebrews 1:3), which he embodied through his works by setting a sinless example for us to follow of how to walk in obedience to the Law of Moses. This is why the Bible frequently connects our faith in God with our obedience to Him, such as with Revelation 14:12, where those who kept faith in Jesus are the same as those who kept God's commandments, and it is by this faith alone that we attain the character traits of God.
Again, Psalms 119:29-30 shows us what has always been the one and only way of salvation by grace through faith alone. In Titus 2:11-13, the content of our gift of salvation is described as being trained by grace to do what is godly, righteous, and good, and to renounce doing what is ungodly, so God graciously teaching us to experience being a doer of those works in obedience to the Law of Moses is part of the content of His gift of salvation. In Titus 2:14, Jesus gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people of his own possession who are zealous for doing good works, so the way to believe in what Jesus accomplished through the cross is also by becoming zealous for doing good works in obedience to the Law of Moses (Acts 21:20). There is nothing about by statement that removes grace or Christ's atonement.
Then it isn't a new covenant. It is the old one with a martyr on a cross. But there is so much convoluted theology in that statement that I don't feel like untangling it.
In Deuteronomy 30, it forms the basis for the New Covenant by prophesying about a time when the Israelites would return from exile, God would circumcise their hearts, and they would return to obedience to the Law of Moses, which is what Jeremiah 31:33 and Ezekiel 36:26-27 are in regard to. Jesus did not establish the New Covenant for the purpose of nullifying anything that he spent his ministry teaching.
I have picked up that your main intention is to pick up where the Judaizers left off in various apostolic congregations and insist on salvation requires obedience to old coveanat ordinances and laws.
The problem that Paul had with the Judaizers was not that they were teaching Gentiles how to follow what Christ taught but that they were wanting to require Gentiles to obey works of the law in order to become justified, so I completely agree with Paul's opposition to them. Jesus saves us from our sin (Matthew 1:21) and it is by the Law of Moses that we have knowledge of what sin is (Romans 3:20), so there is a direct connection between our salvation and being a doer of the Law of Moses, but the Law of Moses was not given as a way of earning our salvation even as the result of having perfect obedience to it.
And I am not going to argue the issue with you for this simple reason. Romans 14
In Romans 14:1, the topic of the chapter is in regard to how to handle disputable matters of opinion in which God has given no command, not in regard to whether followers of God should follow God, so nothing in the chapter should be interpreted as speaking against following God. For example, in Romans 14:2-3, they were judging and resenting each other based on whether or not someone chose to eat only vegetables even though God gave no command to do that. So Romans 14 has nothing to do with the topic we have been discussing in this thread.
