Harry3142
Regular Member
Cogito76-
Rather than try to talk you into believing, I'll simply tell you what I myself believe. And this begins with the Old Testament, not the New.
The laws and commandments which God gave to the Hebrews, and which they put in a book they call the Torah, were never intended as a roadmap to heaven. Instead, their sole purpose was to take what was little more than a ragtag mob and turn them into a cohesive society where each person felt safe among the others, and they could unite as a single force in order to defend their society against attack.
Even the promise which God made to the Hebrews as a reward for their loyalty had nothing whatsoever to do with eternal life. Here is that promise:
If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land - your grain, new wine and oil - the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young. The Lord will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you. (Deuteronomy 7:12-15,NIV)
There's the contract which God agreed to. It was a very pragmatic, here-and-now agreement, with the Hebrews obeying his laws and commandments in this lifetime, and his rwarding them as a society in this lifetime. The only attitude they had insofar as death was concerned was to see it as returning to the dust of the earth. To them death was to be seen as a wall, not a door.
Sometime between the end of Malachi and Christ's coming among us certain sects in Judaism came to the conclusion that there was another life beyond this one. The most powerful of these sects was the Pharisees. They came to the conclusion that if they obeyed all the laws of Torah (there are 613 laws in all), as well as all the sublaws that had been attached to the original laws and commandments (there were over 1,000 sublaws attached to the commandment concerning Sabbath-keeping alone) they could earn their own way into heaven. But Jesus told them, "It ain't gonna happen."
"Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' " (The Gospel of St. Luke 17:7-10,NIV)
What we did in accordance with God's will was to be seen by us as a reward in-and-of itself. We were not to see our actions as earning us any points with God, but instead see our accomplishments as nothing more than what we should be doing. A modern-day comparison would be a driver on the highway's expecting a cop to pull him over so that the cop can reward him for driving safely. We were to be childlike in our faith, but not childish in our attitude toward our own work.
But no one, with the exception of Jesus Christ himself, has literally done all that God has commanded of us. It's simply not a part of our nature. So as servants we don't make the grade even in this area. And God does not accept being 'good enough'; either we are perfect, or we are doomed. There is also no balancing of good deeds versus evil deeds. Instead, one evil deed in an entire lifetime is akin to a drop of a lethal compound being added to a water supply. Instantly the entire contents of the water supply are rendered toxic and undrinkable.
But what we were totally incapable of doing, namely, bridging the chasm between our sinful nature and God's requirement for perfection. God himself bridged for us:
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished - he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:19-26,NIV)
The righteousness which God requires of us, God also provides to us. We cannot replace this righteousness with our own , nor can we augment this righteousness through anything we say or do. It is God's own righteousness, and available only to those who will accept it as his gift to us.
So how do we repay this gift of God's own righteousness replacing our unrighteousness? We don't. The most obvious method would be through keeping his laws and commandments. But if we had been capable of doing that, Jesus Christ wouldn't have had to come here to rescue us in the first place. Even St. Paul recognized that the more he tried to keep the law, the more he failed:
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:14-25a,NIV)
What St. Paul described in this passage is now called 'paradoxical intention'. Psychologists recognize it as so much a part of human nature that they have deliberately tricked it into helping in their treatments. For example, a person who has to write a geat deal in his work, but who is suffering from writers' cramp, would be told to tell himslef, "I will try to get writers' cramp." There's also an old saying which describes this part of our being that goes, "The harder you try, the faster you fail." With this as part of our psyche there isn't a set of laws written that we can keep.
But again the chasm which we cannot bridge, God has bridged for us. He's a realist; that's why he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to rescue us. He also knows of this quirk in our nature, and has taken steps himself to deal with it. Instead of our doing what he wants of us through the obeying of laws, he has enabled us to do what he wants through a totally different set of emotions replacing those associated with our sinful nature:
So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.
The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. (Galatians 5:16-26,NIV)
At first glance this passage looks like just another set of Do's and Don't's. But whan we take a closer look, we realize that it does not involve laws, but rather emotions. And who is it fighting our sinful nature in order to subdue it in the first paragraph of this passage? It's the Spirit himself; we aren't even in the ring.
Then in the second paragraph note how many of 'the acts of the sinful nature' aren't actions. Instead, they're the emotions which, if left unchecked, culminate in the commission of sinful acts. We can no more 'corral' our own emotions than a leopard can exchange his spots for the stripes of a tiger. It takes the Spirit himself to subdue our emotions; it's simply beyond our power to do so.
But the Spirit doesn't 'rein in' our sinful nature and then leave it at that. He brings with him another set of emotions (the fruit of the Spirit) which he inserts inside us as a spiritual 'transplant'. The 9 emotions listed as 'the fruit of the Spirit' are what permits us to say and do as God wants. They are the parameters within which we are assured that our words and actions are truly in accordance with God's will.
And therein lies God's wisdom. Our salvation is assured us through what God himself did, both in his laying out the blueprint for it, and in Christ's coming among us in order to accomplish all that was necessary in order for us to obtain it.
And then, following our acceptance of his salvation, God has seen to it that in order for us to act in accordance with his will, we must have the fruit of the Spirit implanted in us. Without the 9 emotions which make up these 'fruit', we can do nothing. And they, like our salvation, must be accepted as a gift from God rather than as a salary earned.
And why did God set it up this way? The most dangerous sin is the sin of Pride. To permit us to have even a tiny part of the credit for our salvation or how we are to act after having accepted that salvation would be to permit Pride to rear its ugly head. The way our salvation and our proper behavior afterward has been planned and carried out, there is not even a crack that Pride can wedge itself through. God has effectively slammed the door on it, and by so doing has saved us from its destructive force.
This is what I personally believe. You may believe differently, but at least now you have a Christian's insight into his own belief. God bless-
Rather than try to talk you into believing, I'll simply tell you what I myself believe. And this begins with the Old Testament, not the New.
The laws and commandments which God gave to the Hebrews, and which they put in a book they call the Torah, were never intended as a roadmap to heaven. Instead, their sole purpose was to take what was little more than a ragtag mob and turn them into a cohesive society where each person felt safe among the others, and they could unite as a single force in order to defend their society against attack.
Even the promise which God made to the Hebrews as a reward for their loyalty had nothing whatsoever to do with eternal life. Here is that promise:
If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land - your grain, new wine and oil - the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young. The Lord will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you. (Deuteronomy 7:12-15,NIV)
There's the contract which God agreed to. It was a very pragmatic, here-and-now agreement, with the Hebrews obeying his laws and commandments in this lifetime, and his rwarding them as a society in this lifetime. The only attitude they had insofar as death was concerned was to see it as returning to the dust of the earth. To them death was to be seen as a wall, not a door.
Sometime between the end of Malachi and Christ's coming among us certain sects in Judaism came to the conclusion that there was another life beyond this one. The most powerful of these sects was the Pharisees. They came to the conclusion that if they obeyed all the laws of Torah (there are 613 laws in all), as well as all the sublaws that had been attached to the original laws and commandments (there were over 1,000 sublaws attached to the commandment concerning Sabbath-keeping alone) they could earn their own way into heaven. But Jesus told them, "It ain't gonna happen."
"Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' " (The Gospel of St. Luke 17:7-10,NIV)
What we did in accordance with God's will was to be seen by us as a reward in-and-of itself. We were not to see our actions as earning us any points with God, but instead see our accomplishments as nothing more than what we should be doing. A modern-day comparison would be a driver on the highway's expecting a cop to pull him over so that the cop can reward him for driving safely. We were to be childlike in our faith, but not childish in our attitude toward our own work.
But no one, with the exception of Jesus Christ himself, has literally done all that God has commanded of us. It's simply not a part of our nature. So as servants we don't make the grade even in this area. And God does not accept being 'good enough'; either we are perfect, or we are doomed. There is also no balancing of good deeds versus evil deeds. Instead, one evil deed in an entire lifetime is akin to a drop of a lethal compound being added to a water supply. Instantly the entire contents of the water supply are rendered toxic and undrinkable.
But what we were totally incapable of doing, namely, bridging the chasm between our sinful nature and God's requirement for perfection. God himself bridged for us:
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished - he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:19-26,NIV)
The righteousness which God requires of us, God also provides to us. We cannot replace this righteousness with our own , nor can we augment this righteousness through anything we say or do. It is God's own righteousness, and available only to those who will accept it as his gift to us.
So how do we repay this gift of God's own righteousness replacing our unrighteousness? We don't. The most obvious method would be through keeping his laws and commandments. But if we had been capable of doing that, Jesus Christ wouldn't have had to come here to rescue us in the first place. Even St. Paul recognized that the more he tried to keep the law, the more he failed:
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:14-25a,NIV)
What St. Paul described in this passage is now called 'paradoxical intention'. Psychologists recognize it as so much a part of human nature that they have deliberately tricked it into helping in their treatments. For example, a person who has to write a geat deal in his work, but who is suffering from writers' cramp, would be told to tell himslef, "I will try to get writers' cramp." There's also an old saying which describes this part of our being that goes, "The harder you try, the faster you fail." With this as part of our psyche there isn't a set of laws written that we can keep.
But again the chasm which we cannot bridge, God has bridged for us. He's a realist; that's why he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to rescue us. He also knows of this quirk in our nature, and has taken steps himself to deal with it. Instead of our doing what he wants of us through the obeying of laws, he has enabled us to do what he wants through a totally different set of emotions replacing those associated with our sinful nature:
So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.
The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. (Galatians 5:16-26,NIV)
At first glance this passage looks like just another set of Do's and Don't's. But whan we take a closer look, we realize that it does not involve laws, but rather emotions. And who is it fighting our sinful nature in order to subdue it in the first paragraph of this passage? It's the Spirit himself; we aren't even in the ring.
Then in the second paragraph note how many of 'the acts of the sinful nature' aren't actions. Instead, they're the emotions which, if left unchecked, culminate in the commission of sinful acts. We can no more 'corral' our own emotions than a leopard can exchange his spots for the stripes of a tiger. It takes the Spirit himself to subdue our emotions; it's simply beyond our power to do so.
But the Spirit doesn't 'rein in' our sinful nature and then leave it at that. He brings with him another set of emotions (the fruit of the Spirit) which he inserts inside us as a spiritual 'transplant'. The 9 emotions listed as 'the fruit of the Spirit' are what permits us to say and do as God wants. They are the parameters within which we are assured that our words and actions are truly in accordance with God's will.
And therein lies God's wisdom. Our salvation is assured us through what God himself did, both in his laying out the blueprint for it, and in Christ's coming among us in order to accomplish all that was necessary in order for us to obtain it.
And then, following our acceptance of his salvation, God has seen to it that in order for us to act in accordance with his will, we must have the fruit of the Spirit implanted in us. Without the 9 emotions which make up these 'fruit', we can do nothing. And they, like our salvation, must be accepted as a gift from God rather than as a salary earned.
And why did God set it up this way? The most dangerous sin is the sin of Pride. To permit us to have even a tiny part of the credit for our salvation or how we are to act after having accepted that salvation would be to permit Pride to rear its ugly head. The way our salvation and our proper behavior afterward has been planned and carried out, there is not even a crack that Pride can wedge itself through. God has effectively slammed the door on it, and by so doing has saved us from its destructive force.
This is what I personally believe. You may believe differently, but at least now you have a Christian's insight into his own belief. God bless-
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