Jesus and the Old Covenant

Jesus contradicted the Old Testament scriptures at least six times.

Recommended blog post by Keith Giles

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/keithgiles/2018/02/6_times_jesus_contradicted_ot/

Here’s a few really important words from apostle Paul.

When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. (Galatians 4)

Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer.  Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.  Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5)

And where do we get off preaching condemnation – as the pharisees did – when ...

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.  For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh. (Romans 8)

And in case we have forgotten, some words from Jesus Christ himself on how this other life comes about …

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”  Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?”  Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.  “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again'. (John 3)

We love quoting and preaching John 3:16, but what about John 3:17 ...

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him

Old Covenant >>> New Covenant - Postscript

How trying to achieve new covenant ends by old covenant means makes life rather complicated and topsy-turvy.

Postscript 1:

Being a skilled and famous rugby player does not make a person a sage when it comes to matters of spiritual life.  The Church’s standard line on heaven and hell is old covenant.  The very idea of religion as we know it is old covenant.  The notion that we humans have some need to determine that another person is going to hell, or to heaven, is old covenant.  The felt need to ‘preach’ that notion is playing to old covenant fetishes.

The church’s “gospel” is not the new covenant good news of Jesus but the old covenant bad news of judgement and hubris.  The church’s bible takes the old covenant documents of Israel and makes them a rule book for the new covenant era.  And it takes the new covenant documents and turns them into an extension of the old covenant up to the present.  Jesus is read as if he preached a new religion that is an extension of Israel’s covenant.

I remember in my mid-to-late teens being baptised by the elders in our local church and then finding this thing happened a bit like Luke’s gospel describes concerning Jesus: after he was baptised by John, Jesus returned to his home region “in the power of the Spirit”.  News about him spread and he attended the synagogue where he was teaching and being “praised by all”.  Smiles all round; this ‘son’ of theirs was not rebelling – he was baptised; he was attending synagogue; he was demonstrating a good knowledge of the scriptures; and he was taking early steps as a leader in the congregation.  The mums and dads and the synagogue leaders would be pleased indeed.

Luke notes that “all were speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips; and they were saying, ‘Is this not Joseph’s son?’”  I remember being Cliff and Em’s son and being watched and followed by admiring eyes and words of praise.  But it only lasts until you say something their ears don’t want to hear.  One Sabbath, he turns up at the synagogue, reads some scripture and makes some comments – with the result that “...all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things; and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff.”

We love being ‘praised by all’ in church; but it usually ends badly.  Young upstarts find ‘all’ turn on them if they stray outside expected norms, boundaries and expectations.

This is all the stuff of what apostle Paul fought against in his travels and troubles.  He was continually harassed by old covenant stalwarts until they succeeded in having him killed.  He won the skirmish in Acts 15 but, overall, lost the war: old covenant rules the Church.

A certain rugby player needs to stop listening to the pharisees who are teaching him how to be a good pharisee, and try going ‘into the wilderness’ for a while, alone with God, to be taught what the new covenant is and what it means.  That would be a good time to rip the bible into its two parts, leave the first part behind, and start reading the second part – without the alleged help of historic religion and relying entirely upon God to be instructor and teacher.

A good place to start would be Paul writing to his disciple Timothy whom he commissioned to go to Ephesus and build up the congregation there:

... remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men [rugby player maybe] not to teach strange doctrines, not to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith.  [But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.]  For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion though they want to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.

Beware of being instructed by such men!  If Paul could be in the same space as these men today, he would, if he were true to what we know of him in the new testament, be challenging them with the same force and heat as he challenged the pharisees of his day.  Likewise, if Aquila and Priscilla were in that space, they would be taking them aside as they did for Apollos (Acts 18) and “explained to him the way of God more accurately.”

Believing something is by no means the same thing as preaching it – or feeling the need to preach it.  They are two separate issues.  And this is especially important when what you believe is not simply incomplete but off track and counter-productive.  Luke who wrote Acts recounts Saul (who later became Paul) breathing hellfire and brimstone throughout the region until Jesus himself (post-resurrection) dealt him a severe blow, knocked him off his horse, and fully turned him around 180 degrees.  Paul himself recounts this experience when called before the authorities.

Here we are in 2019 and still fumbling around trying to deal with “freedom of religion” issues; and legal experts have weighed into the debate.  A few days after writing this section, ABC News ran a piece by their national sport editor David Mark in which he cites a number of legal eagles proposing what might come next in the Israel Folau saga.  One expert is well-known employment lawyer Josh Bornstein of Maurice Blackburn.  Bornstein is quoted as saying,

Folau will say 'the Act protects me from sacking because of my religion and that protection should extend to expressing my religious beliefs', notwithstanding anything in any contract or any disciplinary process or any social media policy that Rugby Australia or any other employer has. [My bolding added]

It will be most interesting to see how this plays out.  As a theologian and not a lawyer, I don’t accept that premise and I don’t think it is either sensible or reasonable.  But is the law capable or competent to rule against someone being in-sensible and un-reasonable?  If it were, the U.S. President would be in real strife.

However, as a supposed ‘bible-believing’ Christian, Folau ought to be able to self-discipline his tongue based on clear instructions from Jesus and new testament writers Paul, James, Peter and John.  Pet doctrines are not to be used as canonical precepts to be forced on people as means of social control.  Just because any of the new testament writers said something and it’s recorded for posterity, that doesn’t make it a subject for random, judgemental preaching.  Neither Jesus nor the first apostles acted that way.  We act as if God is incompetent and needs us to do His work for Him.

In essence, theologically speaking, believing something controversial does not convey or transmit the right to express it for the purpose of bringing other humans into conformity to it.  Furthermore, the concepts of heaven and hell as we know them are glaring travesties; and anyone not factoring in that travesty is being very disingenuous – not to mention being jingoistic and somewhat dangerous.

Like Apollos, if you keep preaching a deformed and incomplete message, that is the message your ‘disciples’ will, without fail, repeat.  God is the God of the new covenant.  If you want people to be reconciled to God, you'll be feeding them the new covenant not old covenant BS.  And I’m not the only one who has plenty of resources available online to counter the mountains of Church BS that is lying around.  See Mosaic and God Without Religion.

I urge people to stop using fame to pedal a cheap and nasty message of old covenant law that is – and has been for 2000 years – blocking and resisting the distribution of the good news of the new covenant kingdom of God in Jesus Christ.  The message of sin and hell evokes entirely the wrong response from hearers; one does not evoke adoration and worship from a message of fear and loathing, but of freedom and redemption.

The heaven and hell being preached in so many places is just a dodgy backyard version of the truth, and doesn’t carry much weight with God.   Invoking God and calling him to judge by our systems and standards is putting ourselves as much in line for judgement as those we preach at.

Try 'jumping out of the fishbowl'.

Old Covenant >>> New Covenant (20) Conclusion

Well ... fianlé really.

The end of a series, but by no means the end of the matter.

Indeed, it could be the beginning of a whole new approach to life.

I used the arrows in the post titles as a way of never losing sight of the fact that what I am on about here is a movement; a transition; moving from old covenant to new covenant.

From the very outset of this blog, new covenant and its implications and applications have been my priority and my motivation.  As for the human race, God no longer operates to the conditions of the old covenant.  That ended with the resurrection of Jesus.  We can continue to attempt to relate to God that way, but it will inevitably prove futile.  Even if God reaches out to us in that place and condition, He will draw us towards and then into His new covenant - unless we resist.  He does not overpower our will.

We may "kick against the pricks" as Saul/Paul did (see the account of his Damascus enlightenment in Acts 26:14); we may "resist arrest" and go off kicking and screaming; we may do as Stephen (who was later stoned to death for his efforts) accused the Jewish High Priest and others assembled of doing when he said, "You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did.  Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?  They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become; you who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it...(see Acts chapter 7)

But at the end of the day, we should know that we are not going to change God's mind: THE NEW COVENANT IS THE  NEW COVENANT - AND THE OLD COVENANT WILL NO LONGER WORK.

There's been an upgrade; and what we need to do is trust the upgraded model and not go demanding a patch for the old system.  After all, Jesus himself said that you don't put a new patch on an old garment; and you don't put new wine into old wineskins. (Mark 2:21-22)

If you read John 6, you will eventually come to the part where Jesus says to a bunch of grumbling recalcitrant Jews, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day."

###

So, as I usually do, I come full circle and return to the beginning.

Blogger Bill Britton (promiseed.com) calls the new testament letter to the Hebrews “The Book of Better Things” as this is the chief argument of the letter.  In summary, the ‘new’ is better than the ‘old’, as witnessed in these ways:

 ·         Sonship is better than the angels

 ·         A better gospel spells better dominion

 ·         A better house with a better builder

 ·         A better Sabbath (day of rest)

 ·         A better high priest in a better priesthood

 ·         A better tabernacle (tent/meeting place)

 ·         A better covenant

 ·         A better blood from a better sacrifice

 ·         A better holy place

 ·         A better day

 ·         A better way through a better veil

 ·         A better faith with a better promise

 ·         A better relationship (sonship)

 ·         A better kingdom with a better city

 ·         A better altar with a better sacrifice

From promiseed.com by Bill Britton:

Thirty years after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus we still find the Jewish Christians following the law of Moses and the ceremonial ritualism of temple worship. Thirty years after the Holy Spirit fell on the day of Pentecost, thousands of Spirit-filled priests and Jewish Christians were still engaged in the offering up of the Passover lamb and other blood sacrifices. The writer of Hebrews is trying to show them the glory of the reality in Christ Jesus, and the "better things". (emphasis added)

After 50 years of my own journey as a disciple of Jesus and exploring the history of "the church" since Jesus and the first apostles, it remains a gobsmacking conundrum to me that so many people choose bondage over freedom.  Perhaps it's because all the prevailing human systems are pre-programmed to default to "keeping the rabble in line" rather than the wisdom of Jesus - and conservatism suits us better than transformation:

If the Son [a reference to Jesus] sets you free, then you are truly free indeed.

 ۞

Just a day after I wrote this, my wife forwarded me a link to a Facebook post that I find particularly interesting.  It goes along nicely with my dismay at how so many people choose bondage over freedom.  K A Graaf “Living in freedom everyday” talks about ‘jumping out of thefishbowl’ and being pleased to have done so.  Check it out – so pertinent I think.

Old Covenant >>> New Covenant (19)

Referencing Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna
Barna, Tyndale House, 2002/8

9

Christian Education: swelling the cranium, (Pagan Christianity, chapter 10 title)

I do not accept that it is either necessary or normal that disciples of Jesus have to be educated, trained, schooled or ‘ordained’ for them to be (and to understand themselves to be) fully functioning priests ministering to God and one another.

The teaching of the New Testament is that God is Spirit, and as such, He is known by revelation (spiritual insight) to one’s human spirit...  The intellect is not the gateway for knowing the Lord deeply.  Neither are the emotions. (Pagan Christianity, p206)

And I believe that when the letter to the Hebrews says, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command...” (11:3), it opens a window on an important spiritual principle – one that goes completely counter to the natural human instincts of normal daily life.  In the world of the mind and education and information and intellect, we know something in order to believe it; in the spiritual zone, we believe something in order to know it.  I believe that is how God works; that is one of the ways the ‘spiritual insight’ spoken of above comes about.  Western education teaches us that ‘seeing is believing’; true spiritual education teaches us that ‘believing is seeing’.

The base-line for spiritual life is spiritual birth.  Despite the mocking and the disparaging comments by some, not a single human being gains entry to that sweet place of communion with God face-to-face, where we can “approach God with freedom and confidence” (Ephesians 3:10-12), without a second – spiritual – birth.  Both Jesus and the first apostles made this quite clear.  “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3) is an unchanging, unequivocal principle.  Second birth is the ‘interface’ between us humans and the eternal domain of God like computer software is the interface between us and the world-wide web – the www.  Without it, the best we will have is an imaginisation of that place and its benefits and blessings.

The most important thing to God is not that we know something; it is that we trust Him.  Faith not only gives way to the new birth (the second, ‘spiritual’ birth); it is the basis of all future ‘spiritual’ growth; of ‘walking in the light as he is in the light’, for fellowship and forgiveness.

Before I went to bible college in Sydney in the 1970s, I had several important conversations with elders in my congregation in Brisbane to clarify why I was going.  My driving motivation was to give myself two years of undistracted concentration on walking “The Way” with Jesus; “walking in the light as he is in the light”.  I wasn’t after an education but a deep, transformative experience of spiritual life.

I love the quote from B.H. Streeter (from The Primitive Church, Macmillan 1929) at the introduction to this chapter in Pagan Christianity:

The Primitive Church had no New Testament, no thought-out theology, no stereotyped traditions.  The men who took Christianity to the Gentile world had no special training, only a great experience – in which ‘all maxims and philosophies were reduced to the simple task of walking in the light since the light had come’. (p. 199)

At this point, I can do no better than direct readers towards 1 Corinthians chapter 2.  I’m not going to reproduce it here, but you can follow the link.  Spiritual things are spiritually discerned; and if we reject the quest for true spirituality, God might just have to ‘tap us on the shoulder’ (!) as he did to Saul-Paul on the road to Damascus.

Some education, training, schooling may enhance ministry, but that is as far as it goes.  If the spiritual transformation and formation is not present, education, training and schooling will not do in its stead.  The ‘people of God’ is a family and it is a living body.  That’s why we refer to things like ‘body-life’ to describe the experience of doing life together as the ekklesia.

And as Viola & Barna put it:

By body life, we are not referring to the common experience of being in an institutional church setting.  We are referring to the rough-and-tumble, messy, raw, highly taxing experience of the body of Christ where Christians live as a close-knit community and struggle to make corporate decisions together under Christ’s headship without a stated leader over them. (p. 217)

Apostle Paul is a living example of the two systems in operation; the old covenant system and the new covenant system.  An interesting day at the office, recorded by Luke in Acts 21.  Several times the Jews lay hold of Paul and seek to kill him – generally thwarted by the intervention of the Roman authorities.  Paul persuades the commander to allow him to address the mob who had been trying to kill him – even though he had to be carried by soldiers into the barracks because the mob was so urgent and pressing in around them.

Paul begins (Acts 22):

I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated under Gamaliel, strictly according to the law of our fathers, being zealous for God just as you all are today.  I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prisons, as also the high priest and all the Council of the elders can testify.  From them I also received letters to the brethren, and started off for Damascus in order to bring even those who were there to Jerusalem as prisoners to be punished.

 He goes on to recount his personal encounter with Jesus as he neared Damascus in the execution of the ‘warrants’ he had collected.  But when he got to the part where he tells the mob that God Himself had directed him to “Go!  For I will send you far away to the Gentiles”, they stopped listening and raged again ‘away with this man – he shouldn’t be allowed to live’, “throwing off their cloaks and tossing dust in the air.”  Yet again the Roman authorities step in; but then they decide that perhaps they should torture Paul to get answers out of him, so they stretch him out on the rack and are about to flog him when he claims his Roman citizenship and puts a stop to their plans.

Paul had inherited Roman citizenship via his father; the commander admits he had to buy his – with a large amount of money.

Paul had inherited Roman citizenship; he was educated under Gamaliel (a Pharisee who had the equivalent of a PhD in Jewish law); he himself was a Pharisee – and the son of a Pharisee; he was brought up strictly according to the law of the Jewish fathers; he was zealous for God (just as this mob trying to kill him was); and he had spent a lot of time and effort trying to rid the world of “The Way” – the name the early disciples of Jesus were known by – exactly as this mob was currently trying to do to him.

The story recorded in this section of Acts is extraordinary and quite graphic but I’ll leave it for now because it’s not the main point just now.  Even though a lot of the letters Paul wrote were written before these events recorded in Acts, the letters come after Acts in the construction of the bible; that’s rather unfortunate.  As a young adult, one of the studies I undertook was to locate the letters Paul wrote in the strung out drama of Acts.  It really helped put the letters in their context

And it is also worth noting that the events of these later chapters of Acts include Paul’s recounting of events in his journeys much earlier.  The story he recounts in Acts 21-22 actually happened years earlier and is recorded in Acts 9.  Between Acts 9 and Acts 21, what we often call Paul’s “missionary journeys” took place. And on those journeys, he would often spend time writing letters to ekklesias he had established earlier or to believers in places he was planning to visit.

The Paul we see, by way of self-revelation and agonising prayer for the disciples of that era, is a Paul that is almost unrecognisable against the Paul we see in his own account of what he was like before Jesus confronted – arrested – him on the road to Damascus.  I know of no other transformation so deep, profound and all-encompassing as that of Paul when he heard Jesus say “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

I think we sometimes forget that Paul would have known Jesus: they were contemporaries of around the same age.  I suspect Jesus also knew Paul – at least by reputation.  It is not unreasonable to suggest Paul (then Saul) may have been one of the Pharisees (or at least a Pharisee-in-training) in the various groups Jesus confronted when he was in Jerusalem.

But after Jesus confronted him, how did Paul view all this personal history?

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:7-11)

And how do we see Paul in his post-Damascus interactions with the first rush of disciples in the first century?  His letters to the Corinthian disciples are classic examples of the ‘new’ Paul – of his switch from old covenant to new covenant.

I reiterate my earlier invitation to read 1 Corinthians 2.  Then follow that with 2 Corinthians chapters 11 and 12.  If you had no knowledge of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, you might well think we are talking about two entirely different people: Saul the Pharisee and Paul the passionate disciple of the One he once hated with a screaming vengeance.

But here’s the point: at no time did Paul attribute this transformation to information, knowledge, academic pursuit, catechetic teaching, human wisdom.  And at every point, he attributed it to the revelation of the Spirit and the deeply personal experience of “knowing Christ and him crucified” as he wrote to the Corinthians.  Remember Streeter’s quote earlier.

Now there is also a second – and really important – issue.  In the new testament, we see three different types of knowledge manifest to us in three separate Greek words.  Our modern popular English is, in my opinion, quite lazy with its use of the word knowledge, leaving it to the reader to interpret the word as they want.  The Greek of the new testament is much clearer – and much more useful for us if we want to grasp the nettle here.

Here’s a Venn diagram to help focus the matter: English words; Greek words and basic meanings.  Western culture arrogantly boasts of superior “knowledge” based on lending the greatest weight to intellectual knowledge, while placing a little weight on experiential knowledge and virtually nothing on intuition.  Indeed, intuition is often viewed as the stuff of mystics, psychics and clairvoyants – and ‘primitive’ tribal cultures.  It is disdained and devalued; often the best that will be said is that it might be valid if it accords with intellectual or ‘scientific’ knowledge or so-called ‘factual evidence’.

Spiritual knowledge is the virtual opposite of that.  It places greatest weight on discernment and some weight on ‘getting to know’ someone or something.  Intellectual knowledge (learning) or ‘scientific’ knowledge is a peripheral consideration seen on the radar screen but not definitive.

If you follow the journey of the new testament writings, you will find this is how they ‘lived and moved and had their being’: discernment, checked by ‘experience of’ while keeping a watchful eye on formal learning.  It’s a brilliant gateway to the ‘new things’ of the Holy Spirit and to truly knowing people without judging them on their former lives.

The classic example of this is Paul himself.  Read the story of Paul in Acts 9 again.  Imagine that story without the spiritual insight (‘discernment’) of Ananias and Barnabas and without their combined experiential knowledge of the spiritual life of the region of Israel and surrounds at that time.  Relevant ‘scientific’ facts about the situation were no doubt there – and visible: what were the Pharisees up to?  What were the Roman authorities up to?  What were the local worship rites and business schemes?  And so forth.

It might be worth us asking ourselves what kind of results would have emerged from a ‘scientific’ research study of the evangelism or ‘church planting’ possibilities of that time and place.  Could they possibly have arrived at what to do next?  And would that have been what the Holy Spirit was already in the process of doing?

In the spiritual paradigm I work to, there is really only one thing to ‘learn’ – and I am by no means sure it can be learned by anything other than first, spiritual input and, second, experience of walking with Jesus – and that is what Paul talks about in his letter to the Romans, chapter 8: “Living according to the Spirit.”

I recommend this Desiring God post for your spiritual growth.

Apostle Peter has been considered to be, largely, apostle to the Jews.  He has this opening paragraph to one of his letters.  While you’re reading, note that the “knowledge” Peter is talking about uses the Greek for experiential knowledge (‘coming to know of’) in this section:

Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ;

To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you. (1 Peter 1:1-11)

Beginning with spiritual birth, God then, in with and by His Spirit, grants to all of his children, by His sovereign power, all that pertains to life and godliness through the experiential knowledge of Jesus – walking with Jesus; living according to the Spirit.

That’s the new covenant way.  But why is it this way?

It is like this so the good news of the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ is accessible to all.  We do not have to pass any intellectual tests, physical agility tests or mental acuity tests; God is the original accessibility super-hero.  No-one is banned or banished because of some lack of physical, intellectual, emotional, psychological or sexual quirk of fate. His grace is without limit and without ‘ability’ qualification.

What is the old covenant way?  It says, “Bah!  Humbug!  Let’s work it our ‘scientifically’.  Let’s follow the line of ancient history to the present; let’s study and listen to the old masters; at least we know that works for us.  If we abandon that, we lose control.”

Where did church learn its old covenant ways?  There is a natural pipeline direct from the old traditions flowing through a venturi tube of “teaching as doctrine the precepts of men”: (Matthew 15:9) and “doctrines of demons”: 1 Timothy 4:1, through to the present day.

We make the choice whether to go with the old or to transition from old-covenant >>> new covenant.

There is such a thing as old covenant church.  The way I look at it, “church” as we know it can have that word; it’s never used in the new testament to speak of the new covenant people of God.  Kuriakos, kirk, church all relate to old covenant ways and thinking.  The word the new testament does use for the new covenant people of God is ekklesia; and, as William Tyndale noted (and was murdered for – by the church) that word should never be translated ‘church’.  Old covenant: church >>> new covenant: ekklesia; darkness >>> light.

Note to self: Remember, ‘losing control’ is precisely what we need to do: if Jesus is Lord and Head, he needs to be recognised as the one in control and we need to accord him that control and abandon our schemes to ‘live according to the Spirit’.

Old Covenant >>> New Covenant (18)

Referencing Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

Barna, Tyndale House, 2002/8

8

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper: diluting the sacraments, (Pagan Christianity, chapter 9 title)

It is generally accepted that the Catholic Church recognises seven sacraments: baptism, eucharist, confirmation, reconciliation, anointing the sick, marriage and holy orders.  Most other church traditions recognise just two: baptism and the Lord’s supper (the eucharist).

But just what is a ‘sacrament’?  The ‘ment’ at the end of the word, due to a quirk of the English language, basically turns a verb into a noun.  The ‘sacra’ bit at the front derives from the old French sacrer meaning to make holy, consecrate, anoint, dedicate.  The result is that a sacrament is a thing made holy as the result of a process.  The “process” involved is whatever is chosen by the relevant authority as the means of consecration or dedication.  Often a part of that process is the application of oil in what is termed anointing.

It is also fairly widely accepted that the New Testament Greek equivalent of sacrament is musterion – much like the English word mystery only with a wider, deeper meaning.  Since the new testament original is Greek, that is the word one would look for.

Apostle Paul knew this mystery.  Indeed, he didn’t simply ‘know’ it, it was given in grand detail to him specifically as a ministration of the Holy spirit – I believe while he was in ‘the wilderness’ for three years after Jesus arrested him of the road to Damascus (Acts 9).  It was in his blood; and to use a more modern analogy, it was in his DNA.  He could no more evade, avoid or abandon this mystery than we can evade, avoid or abandon our parental DNA.  It shaped everything he believed, said and did.  It was the heart and the substance of what he “preached” – taught, debated, agonised over, declared, etc.

And I believe it is all those things and more, for us, for today, for the present and the future we all long for on this earth and in the life hereafter.  I also believe it both explains and gives the deepest substance to and ‘fences in’ what we call the sacraments we seem to hold so dear, whether the number of them is 2 or 7 or whatever number you pick. But what is it.

Let me give you a sample of the concept of this mystery (all from Paul) off the pages of the new testament letters Paul wrote (in the NASB) :

Ephesians 6:19

and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,

Colossians 4:3

praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned;

1 Timothy 3:16

By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, was vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

Ephesians 5:32

This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

But the key that unlocks the revelation of the truth of this amazing mystery is this:

Colossians 1:26-27

that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

While ever the old covenant was in force, the mystery (the true sacramentum) would remain “hidden”; few would perceive or comprehend it; even the prophets of old struggled to grasp it despite ‘seeing’ it, like in the dim light or a fractured mirror; God’s Spirit would not reveal it until the time was right.

But note that, in Paul’s explanation, God “willed” to make it known at that point in history and forever to be known – no longer hidden.  In the new covenant, there is to be no more sacramentum; no more hidden mystery to be ministered by special people, dressed in special clothes, at special times, within special buildings, using special rites, mouthing special words, enlisting special forms of speech and delivery.

What was that point in history that made all the difference in the world?  The answer is in the scriptures – in Romans 1:

Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord; through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations for His name’s sake, among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ;

Resurrection!  Note Paul again in his first letter to the Corinthians:

Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?  But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.  Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.

How can this possibly be?  It’s in the words from Paul (above) in his letter to the Colossians: CHRIST IN YOU.  The ‘mystery’ – the sacramentum – is the living reality that under the old covenant, God’s salvation, righteousness, redemption and justification would remain available but external and ministered via a human priesthood.  Whereas, under the new covenant, they become internal – matters of the soul and spirit and of imputation – ministered via the Melchizedek priesthood of Jesus who lives forever and remains the High Priest of the new covenant forever.

In this series, I’m going to stick with the Protestant pattern of two sacraments.  However, the principles I put here apply to however many sacraments there might be perceived to be.

And this is the emphatic central point of my argument: the resurrection of Jesus delivered to the world the possibility, the means and the reality of CHRIST IN YOU.  And CHRIST IN YOU is our salvation, our righteousness, our redemption and our justification.  Therefore whatever ‘sacraments’ (‘mystery’) we want practise and administer, they spring forth from this one crystal clear well: CHRIST IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY.

For me, the Missio Dei (God’s mission on planet earth’) is “God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself.”  He has accomplished that by unveiling His ‘mystery’ long kept secret that CHRIST IN YOU is our one and only HOPE OF GLORY.  Everything we need to be face-to-face with God “in freedom and confidence”, without fear, is found in this one profound thing: CHRIST IN YOU.

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper then become open, glorious, spectacular, expressions of our human participation in this truth.  They are no longer ‘mystery’; they are no longer ‘symbol’; they are no longer ‘special’ to a caste or clique or clan.

And when ‘church’ takes them back, hides them under a veil, re-surrounds them in mystery, consigns them to a ‘clergy’ class and charges people a tithe to access them, they have profaned the mystery and dishonoured the Christ who suffered to deliver them to us and whose greatest longing from his throne is that we come out from under the strictures of the old covenant and fully enjoy the sunlight. 

Baptism is the real “sinner’s prayer”; the Lord’s supper is fellowship meal of the baptised believers.

But we do indeed have a problem.  Perhaps the best way to see that problem is to read, and re-read, Acts 19.  Where there is faulty and deficient teaching, what people ‘receive’ is the product of that deficient teaching – witness the Ephesian disciples who were the product of Apollos’ deficient teaching.  And witness the difference in those disciples when Paul taught them the whole gospel of the Kingdom and the truth of the Holy Spirit.  And witness the efforts of Aquila and Priscilla to augment the knowledge base Apollos was working with.

My experience over 50-plus years is that an enormous number of the “disciples” I meet are just like those Ephesian disciples: deficient in the knowledge of the full gospel and especially the bit about the Holy Spirit.

The Normal Christian Birth: How to give new believers a proper start in life (Hodder & Stoughton, 1997) was written by David Pawson in the UK.  The book was the product of the same searching he was doing at the same time as I was doing it here: what is missing that leaves so many with stunted spiritual lives and knowing virtually nothing of the new covenant experience Jesus and the first apostles were at pains to deliver to the world?  A deficient, mostly old covenant message of religion without the baptism of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, one thing we need to do is to correct that deficiency for those disciples who have, like these disciples in Ephesus, only received the baptism of John – the baptism of repentance.  They need to hear and receive the baptism of Jesus: the Holy Spirit.  The other thing we can do is stop peddling a deficient gospel: those spreading the gospel need to first experience for themselves the full gospel and the baptism of Jesus.  Then when they give away what they have, it will be the full gospel and the baptism of Jesus.

A litter earlier I referred to a migration of German Baptists to Australia many years ago escaping persecution in Europe.  Why were they being persecuted in Europe?  In Europe, they were called ‘Anabaptists’ – ‘ana’ meaning again: they believed, lived and taught adult believers baptism and so baptised people again as adults.  The church hated them.

Paul is very clear that there is “one body, one Spirit ... one hope ... one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all – who is over all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4)  And for all those who participate in this ‘one-ness’ through Christ in you, there is one family meal for us to participate in.

The ‘one baptism’ is not the baptism of John.  See Matthew 3 for example: John himself is saying “I baptise you with water for repentance, but after me will come One more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.  He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”  And what the baptism of the Holy Spirit delivers is Christ in you.

And Christ in you is the “currency” of the new covenant kingdom of God in this world until the end comes, whatever and whenever that is.  Christ in you is not only the means of exchange, it is what we exchange.  Christ in me delivers gifts and blessings for the world; Christ in you does likewise; but we are all different and we ‘trade’ with each other to achieve what Paul wrote about to the Ephesians:

Now to each one of us grace has been given according to the measure of the gift of Christ.  This why it says [Psalm 68]: ‘When He ascended on high, He led captives away, and gave gifts to men.’ ... in order to fill all things.  And it was He who gave ... to equip the saints for works of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, as we mature to the full measure of the stature of Christ.

That is simply not possible without Christ in you; which is not possible without the baptism of the Holy Spirit; which is not possible without the full gospel of the new covenant kingdom of God; which follows the pattern of Romans 10:14-15

How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed?  How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard?  And how will they hear without a preacher?  How will they preach unless they are sent?  Just as it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things.’

Drug users hate it when suppliers deliver them “bad shit”; we need to develop a similar aversion to the “bad shit” delivered to us by religious people wanting to keep us in the ways of the old covenant, taking over what is properly the work of the Holy Spirit. (See Acts 15)

Baptism and the Lord’s suppers are not mystery (sacramentum) anymore; they are two expressions of the living reality of participation in Christ: baptism >>> participation in his death and resurrection >>> Christ in you as fact; Lord’s supper >>> participation in his salvation, righteousness, redemption and justification and participation in the his ‘body’ (ekklesia) >>> Christ in you as currency.

Baptism marks a complete break with the past and full entrance into Christ and the ekklesia; Lord’s supper marks the non-hierarchical ‘brotherly’ sharing of the whole family around the family table, with the host and ‘MC’ being Jesus Christ himself.

Note to self: Remember, baptism and the Lord’s supper are about ‘Christ in you, the hope of Glory’ and live that each day you’re alive and with each breath you take until the last one.

Old Covenant >>> New Covenant (17)

Referencing Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

Barna, Tyndale House, 2002/8

7

Tithing and clergy salaries: sore spots on the wallet, (Pagan Christianity, chapter 8 title)

You don’t have to be particularly clever to work out that the seven things we have covered up to this point cost swags of money.  The quote from John A. T. Robinson on page 157 of Pagan Christianity is well worth the read on this matter.

Hundreds of years of history has also shown us that vast numbers of so-called conversions – possibly even that of Constantine himself – were political, economic and social recalibrations, rather than true spiritual transformations.  If Jesus’ words are true, the kingdom of God was small and ‘few’, the road narrow, and its gate tight.

And someone had to pay for all this paraphernalia.  True to form in “empire” – in the kingdom of man – the plebs pay.  And from the start, there was a clear clash with the new covenant teaching Paul brought to the scene.  As he said to the Corinthians: “For we are not like many, peddling the word of God but as from sincerity; but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.”  [‘Peddling’ implies payment.]

The obligation to pay followed naturally from the establishment of the ‘clergy’.  But what method or system might be useful, justifiable and convenient (for all)?  The old testament already had record of a system (the Levitical system) that seemed to work OK – so long as the people were reminded often and prodded to maintain compliance.

Essentially, the tithe is another word for a ‘tenth’ (10%).  But it wasn’t originally ten percent of wages or income alone, it was ten percent of everything.  What that meant in practical terms was that every ten people from eleven of Israel’s tribes supported one person from the twelfth (priestly) tribe, the Levites, and the ongoing maintenance of the physical structures and the performance of the rites and sacrifices.  Mathematically, not such a bad idea.  Even today it could work: every eleventh person is supported by the ten with minimal disparity in earnings overall.

Viola and Barna chart the history of Christian tithing as spreading “from the state to the church.” (p. 177)  noting that:

The use of the tithe, or the tenth, was commonly used to calculate payments to landlords.  As the church increased its ownership of land across Europe, the 10 percent rent-charge shifted from secular landlords to the church.  Ecclesiastical leaders became the landlords and the tithe became the ecclesiastical tax... It was creatively applied to the Old Testament law and came to be identified with the Levitical tithe. (p. 177)

I have been involved in “church life” in one way or another since my baptism in 1968 – over 50 years now.  A lot of those years were spent in a range of leadership or oversight roles and some in venturing into self-initiated ventures and what was called at the time ‘church planting’ ventures. Looking back over those years, I assess my own journey and can make some clear assertions concerning a number of key matters to do with what we do as ‘church’ and how and why we do it.  One of those is tithing.  One thing I can say without equivocation is that I DO NOT practise or endorse the ‘tithe’.  Primarily that is because there is a “better way” – one which is consistent with the principles of the new covenant.

First, the tithe was given to Israel as part of their legal code for guiding their life as the community of God before Jesus.  It was their taxation system, if you like.  Neither Jesus nor the Apostles, nor the church in the first hundred years of its life practised the tithe.  And that entire code was made redundant when Jesus completed His work and ascended to the Father and sent His Holy Spirit into the ekklesia.

Second, the Old Testament tithe (literally, ‘the tenth’) was not ten percent as so many of us imagine, but at least 23.3% annually.  It was made up of 3 tithes: 2 at 10% annually and one at 10% every three years – coming to a total of 23.3%. 

Third, one of the main purposes of the tithe was so that the Levites – Israel’s priest-tribe – could live.  They had no inheritance to use to produce the goods they needed for daily life so it was up to the remaining 11 tribes to contribute to a storehouse for their priests.  In the New Covenant, all the people of God are priests, not one segment of them as in old Israel.

Fourth, the other use of the tithe was to have a storehouse for the poor and those unable to fend for themselves (widows and orphans, for example).  This aspect of giving is clearly visible in the life of the early believers without any reference to a tithe.  They were taught by the Spirit and encouraged by the apostles to ‘give generously’, ‘according to what you are able’ – no rules, no law except the law of love.  “As I have loved you, so you are to love one another.”

Tithing is often used as some kind of tool to measure the standard of our discipleship.  Neither Jesus, nor the apostles, nor the early believers treated the people of God with such disdain.  Furthermore, a case can be made to suggest that the tithe is, as Viola & Barna suggest (pp. 178-179), ‘good news for the rich and bad news for the poor’.  A 10% rule only works if the cost of living is graded so that everything you purchase is priced as a percentage of your income.  Think about how Australia’s GST works.  A refrigerator costs the same for a poor family as it does for a rich family (sadly, sometimes more!) – and GST is ten percent on top.  The relative total cost of the refrigerator can only be seen when it is calculated as a percentage of the families’ incomes.  Reduce the price of the refrigerator (make it a percentage of income) and you reduce the tax as well.

Tithing is also often “...presented as the equivalent of a Christian stock investment.  Pay the tithe, and God will give you more money in return.  Refuse to tithe, and God will punish you.  Such thoughts rip at the heart of the good news of the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ.”  (Pagan Christianity p. 180).  We DO NOT support this view or this teaching.

In God’s plan, we are all functioning priests and have a divine calling for that work.  We do not need an elevated class called the ‘clergy’; we do not need a “tithe” to pay them; we do not need offering plates/bags; and we do not need ‘ushers’ to carry them around and goad people into giving.

As Pagan Christianity points out:

Tithing is mentioned only four times in the New Testament.  But none of these instances apply to Christians.  Tithing belonged to the Old Testament era where a taxation system was needed to support the poor and a special priesthood that had been set apart to minister to the Lord.  With the coming of Jesus Christ, there has been a “change of the law” – the old has been “set aside” and rendered obsolete by the new (Hebrews 7:12-18; 8:13 NIV).  (p. 183)

The theme of this blog series is moving from old covenant to new covenant; this matter of tithing can be seen as a litmus test for whether that move is in fact being made. Viola and Barna make an interesting point on page 176: “Today, the Levitical system has been abolished.  We are all priests now.  So if a priest demands a tithe, then all Christians should tithe to each other.”  I actually support that.  It reminds me of the words in Acts 2, “all those who had believed were together and had all things in common.”  Perhaps that was their way of saying we should tithe to one another.

Note to self: Remember, the tithe died on the cross with Jesus; the new life is cheerful generosity.