 |
| Excerpt from Wesley's grand hymn 'Amazing Grace' |
Now concerning the message of Paul I alluded to earlier, it
is probably worthwhile reading his letters to the Galatians and the Romans, if
not the book of Acts with his letters interspersed as I indicated earlier. Paul seems to me to have three major themes
as under.
The human dilemma, as I call it, is primarily three issues:
hostility, guilt, bondage. We are, in
our unredeemed state, hostile to God, guilty before God and in bondage to our situation
– unable to free ourselves from it.
According to Paul, turning our hearts and attitudes towards
God, fully trusting in Jesus for our acceptance in His presence and dying to
self and the pursuits of the kingdom of man are how we are extricated from our
dilemma. But – as Paul knew full well –
these are only possible because of the mercy and grace of God whose pleasure is
to have us with him in full relationship as His children.
What the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of
Jesus mean (in combination) is that God’s righteous demands are met by His
gracious decree and, by fully trusting Jesus, we are reconciled (addressing the
hostility), forgiven and justified (addressing the guilt) and made fully free
(addressing the bondage).
Freedom in Christ is thus a major and central theme in “the
faith once for all handed down to the saints” and, therefore, Pauls
message. In Paul’s and Jesus’ day, the
Jews were stuck in the old covenant relationship they had with God under
Abraham, Moses and David and the law that applied to that. God’s new administration began with His full
acceptance of the life and ministry of Jesus (as I pointed to earlier) and this
is the new covenant.
In this new covenant, there is no distinction between Jews
and others, male and female, slave or free-man.
But it was this that the Jewish religious leaders of the era could not
and would not accept. Hence the record
of persecution we read in the book of Acts; and hence the violent deaths of not
just Jesus but almost all of the original apostles and the lifetime persecution
of many of the first disciples.
People – whether Jew or Gentile, man or woman, from whatever
station or profession or occupation in life – who were once in bondage and
unable to extricate themselves from it, have been set free in and through Jesus
Christ to be all they were created to be by God the Father. The Father welcomes all as children of
God. Unfortunately, freedom in Christ is
despised and ridiculed and the children of God are pursued as criminals. They disperse throughout the world, sharing
the good news of the freedom they have in Christ. Yet all the while – and continuing to this
day – the religionists stay their course of ‘creeping in unnoticed’ and ‘turning
the grace of God into acts of wanton violence’, in part by denying and
legislating against that freedom.
And that, my friends, is the meaning and definition of
‘religion’: the act of binding up again otherwise freed people. Unfortunately, the religionists have fully
taken over and claimed for their religion many of the ideas and words of the
new covenant gospel of Jesus and Paul.
Today, what ‘the Church’ says is way more important than what Jesus and
Paul did and taught. And when there is a
clash of ideas – as with William Tyndale and his English translation of the New
Testament – religion and church close ranks and silence those who seek to
“contend for the faith once for all handed down to the saints” as Jude wrote.
Today, I contend as Jude urged and Paul lived. Religion and church have completely turned
things on their head. White is black and
black is white; freedom is bondage and bondage is freedom; religion is good
when it is (by definition) bondage; church is good when it is (by definition)
stuck in the old covenant.
Is it any wonder that, on the one hand, it has no answers
for a fragmenting world and, on the other hand, it stands in complete denial of
its original DNA. If we want “the faith
once for all handed down to the saints”, we will not find it in religion and
church – these abandoned it just under two thousand years ago, for the ‘mess of
pottage’ that is the Christianity that followed.
And likewise, it is not found in books; it is found in a
one-on-one, face-to-face, fully mutually beneficial relationship with God the
Father through Jesus Christ our Lord with no human intermediaries, go-betweens
or mediators – something religion and church struggle to understand or come to
terms with.
Anyone who stands with Jesus, Jude and Paul (and all the
others of course) will be silenced one way or another. It is so today; it is as it has always been;
it is as it always will be in the kingdom of man. But let me remind you of some words of Jesus. Please, I urge you, read John 15:18-27. Here is the first part of it: “If the world
hates you, you know that it has hated me before you. If you were of the world, the world would
love you as its own; but because you are not
of the world but I chose you out of the world, on account of this, the world
hates you. Remember the word that I said
to you, ‘A servant is not greater than
his master.’ If they persecuted me,
they will also persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours
also. But they will do all these things
against you on account of my name, because they have not known the One who sent me….”
What troubles me most I think is that, for all the so-called
Christian shouting about the inspiration and authority of the bible, it is the
bible – or certain parts of it – that the religionists are ignoring. I trace this back to the unmistakable human
trait we call hubris. We have misread
our sovereign human will as the right to be impudent, arrogant, selfish and
grasping – all things that are often seen by us as virtues, not vices.
The Church takes to itself a perceived right to be an
authority and impose its will on gullible humans – all religions do it. The Church puts personal ‘health, wealth and
happiness’ front and centre of its game plan – all religions do that too, even
if it is in the form of some martyrdom complex.
The Church grabs for everything it can get by way of worldly
advantage, whether in the form of toleration by the authorities, tax
concessions or ready permits to do things Jesus and Paul stood firmly against –
like owning property and erecting buildings.
We fail to notice the gospel teaching that 1) God no longer dwells in
temples made with human hands; and 2) our bodies are the temple of God in the
new covenant, and together, what the new testament writers called ekklesia (not
church) is Christ’s body on earth.
The Church thinks it is (and claims for itself) the new
testament ideas of ekklesia and “the body of Christ” – simply because somebody,
a few hundred years ago, said it is so.
And the human bias kicks in: never let the truth get in the way of a
good story. Consequently people have
been murdered (William Tyndale for example) because they protested that such a
claim is not only preposterous, it is patently false – linguistically,
rationally, and theologically. How can
the body of Christ (the ekklesia) be made up of corrupted members and members
who do today exactly what the Pharisees did to Jesus and Paul and the first
disciples? Is the body of Christ
anti-Christ? Can it be – linguistically,
logically, theologically?
Nothing in the new testament can lead us to the presumption
that we humans get to decide who is in with God and who is not. And there is nothing in there that allows us
to rewrite what it takes for us humans to become children of God. Yet we have been led to believe that if we
hook into the Church and the ‘Christian Religion’, we have our fire insurance
and God has to accept us no matter what.
That is complete and utter bunkum.
To become part of the family of God, we get there as Jesus did – by
death and resurrection. Only for us,
because Jesus’ death was a one-off sacrifice for all, for all time, our death
is death to self and the kingdom of man; and our resurrection is the dawn of a
new life lived for the household of God and the freedom of the good news of
Jesus. [See Romans 6]
>> END OF SERIES <<
No comments:
Post a Comment