Devious Behaviour
[Begin here with a careful reading of Matthew
22:36-40 and Mark 12:28-34.]
We cannot relate to God successfully on the
basis of anything besides the terms and conditions of the new covenant; and we
are very devious, cunning and conspiratorial if we try. Paul condemns these attempts as “other gospels”
which are no gospels at all (see Galatians 1).
Indeed! We may be able to make
them sound like ‘good news’ but, from start to finish, they are very bad news
indeed – if only because they are so devious and deceptive.
As it would
be understood even in the allegory, attempting such cunning exploits amounts to
fraud. And the only response worthy of a
human being seeking the face of God is deep repentance. But does He get our repentance? Most of the time, it doesn’t cross our minds
that we are doing anything wrong. Shades
of Jeremiah 2:34-36.
The new
covenant means that, for the price of surrendering our shabby lives to God
through Jesus, we share in all the forgiveness and freedom and rights of sons
and in His inheritance. And then, when
we apply Matthew 22 and Mark 12, we fall on our faces in love and adoration and
worship; and we please His heart by bringing to others the blessings we have
received. We find ourselves gladly
serving Him and His Kingdom and His Household.
The old
covenant takes us, with whip and shackles, to the serving part without much
hope of ever getting out of the grind of rituals and sacrifices; orders of
service and obligations; buildings and programs; priests and robes. The new covenant is freedom.
The essence
of the old covenant is formula, replica and appearances; the essence of the new
covenant, by contrast, is principle, original and truth. [A table of this appears in a later post.]
I believe
that, when God abandoned the old covenant as the way to relate to Him, its
central ideas were taken up by His eternal enemy and they are now presented to
humans in all types of garb to deceive and delude. Hence, what you get is formulae (instead of
principles), replicas (instead of every one being an ‘original’) and everything
depending on appearances (instead of the ‘plum-line’ or ‘truth’ of God’s
reality).
On this
basis, under the new covenant, everything about the administration of the realm
changes. And any ‘servant’ who purports
to serve God but binds people back to the old covenant – or to him or her self
as a ‘guru’ – is a menace to the Gospel of Jesus and the eternal kingdom of
God. The apostle Paul expressed the wish
that they might go and castrate themselves!
Gulp! Small wonder some see Paul
as a “false apostle”.
However, consider
a couple of instances of the fraud I am talking about.
1. Born
again
We want to
be ‘born again’ – and to be seen and known as ‘born again’. This is one of the blessings of the new
covenant – it was not available under the old covenant. Now compare what Jesus said about being born
again and how it is achieved (and what the first Apostles said and did) with
the standard practice of any ‘church’ that says they believe in it. One says death and resurrection; denial of
self and full identification with the suffering Jesus; forsaking all for an
uncertain life on earth; faithful perseverance to the day of Jesus’ return and
more like that. The other says, ‘raise
your hand; come to the front; pray this prayer; come to ‘church’, read the
bible and pray; go live a prosperous life; serve God in your spare time; make
sure you give your tithe; and, by the way, always vote conservative.’
The latter
is a complete and utter fraud. Anyone
suggesting this is attempting to defraud God by offering His blessings on the
terms and conditions of a covenant dreamed up by His eternal enemy, written in
the style of the old covenant laws and regulations. “Do-list Christianity” is a good description
for this fraudulent religion. And how many
souls have been defrauded and dudded?
2. Church
The use of
the term ‘church’ is another instance.
The essential meaning intended to be conveyed by this word is God’s ‘called-out’ company. In the early part of what we call the Old
Testament, the idea finds its expression in Israel Israel ’s near-total
and near-fatal rejection of God – it finds expression in the ‘remnant’ of Israel
Arising out
of that remnant comes Jesus, the inaugurator of the new covenant. The early part of what we call the New
Testament gives us the record of this.
Following Jesus, Apostle Paul carries the burden of revelation of the
new administration of the kingdom of God.
‘Church’ is still God’s called-out company, but it is no longer
restricted to Israel Israel
So,
‘church’ is God’s idea from the start. The
difference in this instance between the old covenant and the new is in the
nature of church and in what it does and how it does it. Jesus makes all the difference. Until Jesus came, lived, died, rose again,
ascended to the Father and (with the Father) gave the gift of the Spirit of God
to human beings, church was mostly lived as a place to go on the Sabbath and a
program of rules and laws, sacrifices and offerings.
It never
was God’s intention that church be mostly inorganic and centred around buildings
and programs; yet that is what it became.
As long as the Holy Spirit was external and not innate and quite remote
from most of the people, old covenant church was focused on buildings,
law-keeping, sacrifices and a program of religious feasts and festivals. Remember: the Israelites chose to not relate
to God personally, but via king, priest and prophet. Sound familiar?
Once the
sacrifice of Jesus was complete (He is prophet, priest and king) and the Father
honours it by raising Him from the dead and Jesus is taken up into glory, the
new covenant church is rained upon by the Holy Spirit in fulfillment of a
number of Old Testament prophecies.
Everything is different! Every person
who genuinely turns to God in repentance, faith and baptism is given the Holy
Spirit. The Spirit is now innate. If the Spirit is allowed to do His work,
every believer, by the multiplication of the gospel, becomes a cell of
church. The inorganic slips way into the
background and the organic life of disciples making disciples comes forcefully
to the front.
Buildings,
programs and religious ceremonies disappear from the landscape and in their
place the dream and vision of God from creation begins to emerge – the family
of God, the Bride of Christ in gestation.
However,
one or two things stand out like beacons: 1) no record of church life in the
New Testament permits us to take a positive view of church as buildings,
programs, orders of service, priests, clergy-laity, temple worship, hierarchy
or anything else that was part of old covenant church; 2) what is in that record we denounce and deny
by any means available. So much for
being people of the book!
First,
there is the complete absence in the New Testament of anything resembling a
call to worship like we see throughout the Old Testament. Second, we do see strong indicators of
something hugely different – for instance Paul’s letter to the Ephesians
(especially chapter 4), Galatians 4 and 5, and his words to the Corinthians in
1 Corinthians 14:26.
In other
words, church is God’s idea and it hasn’t changed. What has changed from the old covenant to the
new is what it involves, what it looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels
like, what it tastes like – fully organic.
Anything inorganic can, at best, be a servant of the church but, by its
very nature and by definition, it cannot inherit the kingdom and cannot go into
eternity. Only people inherit the kingdom of God
Why are
things so different? Because now, with
the giving of the Holy Spirit, every believer is a brother, filled with the
Spirit, taking the gospel to the world, making reproductive disciples, and
fellowshipping with all believers wherever they go. Church cannot
be the same. And if things remain the
same, it cannot be church. Everything
must change. Every person has something
to contribute to corporate worship and must be allowed to do so or the Body
will wither and die.
When
‘church’ is happening, there is an audience, but it is not the 90% of the
congregation gathered and sitting in rows and pews watching the performance of
the 10% elect. The whole church – 100% –
is to minister to God and wait on Him.
God, then is the audience – and probably with Him, the angels. We also know that the world will be
watching. Further, we know that God uses
His church as a means of displaying
His glory to the enemy and the dark angels.
Pretty
awesome audience; pretty awesome responsibility for the whole church. But there’s
not a whole lot of point to our activity if it’s a performance led by the few
and watched by the many – and it certainly isn’t new covenant church. It’s a fraud doled out to lazy people who
want the blessings of the new covenant on the terms and conditions of the old
covenant. Just like Israel
The whole
idea of church as a building; a place to go; an order of service; a set of
do-lists; a series of programs; pastors and priests; a structure of positions
and roles; etc. etc. is classic fraud.
It is an attempt to secure the blessings of the new covenant by either
invoking the terms and conditions of the old covenant or writing our own
covenant documents based on our traditions, preferences and ‘church teaching’.
We need to
understand that God cannot, does not, will not honour the covenant documents
and promises we have constructed,
even if we have made them, in good faith, “in his name”. The only covenant He honours is the blood
covenant He made and established with the life, death, resurrection and
ascension of His Son. We are not divided
into classes. We are all, together, as
sons and brothers, supposed to be ‘a kingdom of priests’ who minister to God
and bring His kingdom to the world.
In the
current era, the vast majority of new covenant church life is underground, even
in the West. When it dares to stick its
head up, it is either chopped off or it conforms to the status quo of the old
covenant by degrees – or it works surreptitiously ‘under the radar’ as it were.
However,
much as the ‘remnant’ of Israel
No comments:
Post a Comment