God freed humanity from Law to Grace; from legislation punishing misbehavior to Grace that inspired righteous behavior; from fear of Judgment to the blessing of Forgiveness. All because God DID NOT impose circumcision on Cornelius and the men of his family and friends. Meaning that the rite characterizing all Jewish men as children of Abraham wouldn’t be imposed on Gentile men who accepted Christ as Savior and Lord.
In the finale of this series Praise God for a few of the benefits of being saved by Grace alone through faith in Christ—each benefit equal in importance. First, his Perfection compensates for our failures in discipleship, however zealously we try to succeed. No believer will be lost for failing to succeed, for Christ succeeded in being God’s Perfect Man. And his complete humanity eclipses our human limitations. Second, his Forgiveness, instantly granted when we repent of our sin and confess it to him I John 1:9. That maintains our freedom in Christ from guilt. Third, each believer has the pleasure of personally entering God’s presence when we pray. The curtain between our personal lives and God’s Unapproachable Being has been removed and Christ’s High Priesthood bridges the difference between us Hebrews 4:14-16. Fourth, all members of God’s family, wherever we live, however different our worship styles and cultural distinctions, UNITE in our common faith in Christ and in our allegiance to him as God’s Only Begotten Son. Knowing that ONE DAY, God will remove all differences from us Matthew, 15:12-13, I Corinthians 3:10-15. Fifth, the death that God warned Adam would follow if he ate from the tree of Knowledge and Good and Evil, has been sovereign over every generation. The Rest of the Story, however, IS, I Corinthians 15:5-58, Revelations 20:11-15. And these benefits only the first few of many more to come. Fini
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Simon Peter proved a bewildered, but obedient, servant of Christ’s grace in Acts 10:1-22. Note Luke’s account of both.
First, he adamantly refused God’s order “to get up…kill and eat.” Second, he repeated his objection to all three appearances of the visions and God’s command. Third, the Spirit’s direct orders moved him to obey, whatever he thought…
Note that he used his experience in Acts 10, in the same orders given by the Holy Spirit, in Acts 11:1-18, when criticized by the circumcision party when returning from Caesarea to Jerusalem. He had a particular spiritual-growth experience in Caesarea. He realized that the people he considered unclean, and not subject to forgiveness, had been pronounced clean by God and particularly subjects of forgiveness Acts 10:27-48. An ominous omission in their discussion must be noticed: no reference to circumcision occurs. Though it hadn’t been imposed on Cornelius, the Judaizers had been offended. And, in a losing cause, they devoted themselves to guarantee it would NOT BE ignored again when evangelizing Gentiles. End Part IV The large number of Jewish priests who became Christians, Acts 6:7, likely inspired by God’s action in tearing the Temple veil, surfaced two issues that threatened early church unity.
The first: eating with Gentiles. To prove that no absolutist leadership existed in apostolic behavior, the circumcised believers criticized “Simon Peter for entering the home of, and eating in the home of,” Cornelius Acts 11:1-3. It’s surely not excessive speculation to identify those “circumcised believers” as those very priests. Simon Peter’s careful, step-by-step, recitation of Acts 10:9-48 certainly offers Christians the way to answer objections to God’s actions: from the Bible, verse by verse, with no diversion to any other source of authority. By the way, in Acts 28:23, the apostle Paul used the Law of Moses and the Prophets to convince Jewish leaders in Rome. A lesson in evangelism: convince unbelievers from God’s Word, not from our personal experience. End Part III This writer drove his family from Colorado Springs, Colorado to Las Vegas, Nevada, in February, 1968, to begin a ministry with Central Christian Church (CCC). We knew it had suffered two major splits in its five year life. We didn’t know how spiritually impoverished they left the congregation. For the first two years a series of conflicts and problems left this writer unsure of the congregation’s future.
Then, selecting more positive people as elders and deacons gave a glimmer of hope. For the new board voted to begin a Building Fund to replace the dilapidated structure housing the congregation. We promised the people the fund would be devoted ONLY to the new building. Previously, money in the fund went to pay weekly expenses. When we had built a modest fund, we decided to hire draftsman Fred Greil as an architect. Being dissatisfied in their church, he and Charlotte transferred their membership to CCC. I didn’t know it at the time, but THEIR Substantial Christian lives, along with 2-3 other families who came with them, began a SPIRITUAL RENEWAL in CCC that lasted until we left in 1974. That illustration relates to the impact Christ’s DEATH had on priests in the Temple when God clearly TORE the Babylonian tapestry between the Holy Place and Most Holy Place from Top to Bottom. Acts 6:7 records the result. Now…the addition of “a large number of priests” to Christ’s lordship seemed at the time a major success. However, the addition posed a great danger to Christianity’s future. While the priests brought religious convictions with them, they lacked the spiritual vivacity that characterized Gentile Christianity. End Part II NOTE: Family health issues and technical problems have kept us from posting blogs. V
Matthew 27:50-53 reveals that four events occurred at the moment Jesus died:
While each had meaning, consider the tearing of the Temple Veil for this blog series. First, while Jewish priests performed their services in the Holy Place, they witnessed an invisible cutting edge begin at the ceiling and slice a cleavage all 30 feet down to the floor. By checking and cross-checking that event with Christ’s death, they verified the Cause and its Effect on the Shielding Curtain. Second, that shocking experience made the most astonishing impact on the priesthood—to be covered in Part II. Third, for men practiced in the Temple ritual and its meanings, an unmistakable clarity convinced them:
Summary of Part I The Sanhedrin –
Unlike earthly kingdoms, which disintegrate with or shortly after the leader’s death, Christ’s kingdom only began with his death. And his resurrection proved the success of his death. Messiah of the Jews while he lived, he became Universal Lord of all history and eternity by rising form the dead. End Part I In I Corinthians 3:16 and I Corinthians 6:19 Paul calls Christians God’s temples. In the former as congregations of believers, in the latter as individual disciples.
In II Corinthians 9:7 the apostle referred to Christians as jars of clay which hold God’s Treasure—the Gospel—another way of saying we each embody God’s presence and message as his Temple. Meaning that our role in life even now in unredeemed bodies remains being his temples by having our spirits forgiven, cleansed and reconciled to God through Christ’s Grace. Which means that our relationship with the unforgiven imposes a responsibility on us we shirk by taking refuge in our humanity instead of taking advantage of our refined spiritual state. End Part I When friends importuned 16-18 year old Mustafa Kemal on his ambitions, the future Ataturk replied simply, “I am going to be somebody.” Bio, p. 18
Exceeding that goal, the Christian boasts, “I am somebody by association with Jesus Christ, the SOMEONE who shares HIS WORTH with me. When someone saw adult Tommy Kirk on a Hollywood street, he searched his face at length, then asked the man who as a youngster starred in Disney movies, “Didn’t you used to be somebody?” Every Christian would answer that question saying, “No, I used to be a Nobody, but am now a Somebody through Jesus Christ’s Grace. Jesus makes the difference. And each Christian now has the confidence of saying, “It is now my pleasure to have my life hidden with Christ so HE can be seen in me” Colossians 3:3. What greater compliment can any mortal receive than to have it said, “That person is like Jesus.” In this summary of the series, consider:
Christians have generally taken side-door, back-door approaches to witnessing: designing worship services to attract and convince the lost. That approach more masks God’s glory from unbelievers than revealing his glory in Christians. God hasn’t left us that alternative. Our worship services, and any community outreach, may be the public face of the church, but only Christians remain the public face of Christ. God isn’t concerned that the unsaved will reject his call. That is, after all, possible. He is concerned that the saved will fail to be Christ-like, for that’s our calling and obligation. If we want God to convert the world, he must begin with individuals; and if we want him to convert individuals he must begin with US. For the renewal of the world begins after judgment falls on the church. And since we must speak to the age for God, not to God for the age, we must learn that we’re called to live UP TO our faith, but not just to LIVE IT UP as if we had no purpose but to exist. While the word Christian has a single meaning, remember that Emerson said language is like a ferry boat, not like a house. It offers a conveyance for ideas but not a place for them to live. I’m quite sure he didn’t realize the terrific spiritual truth in his statement, for it MEANS that language needs substance that experience alone grants. Not even the word Christian, then, can be exhausted by claiming it. It has to be lived. That’s why John 1:14 said, after saying the Word was with God, the Word was God, the Word created, the Word overcame darkness…John said the WORD became flesh and lived…and we have SEEN his glory. The very glory the lost must see in us. Jesus who took on his flesh, now takes over ours—with the same purpose…to show God’s beauty as the means of removing the veil of unbelief in the unsaved. That’s the challenge to Christians: if we claim the name Christian to vow to ourselves: “This week I’m going to be like Jesus!” Committing to this Christ-likeness will: drive us to the Bible for instruction and to our knees for inspiration. It will certainly multiply conversions from our witness. Fini Lessons from II Corinthians 3:12-18.
Second, we remain living examples of Jesus, in Moody’s phrase, “the unsaved person’s Bible”, whose perception of Jesus is what they see in us. How can we positively and effectively relate Jesus to the unsaved? The reconciled must become reconcilers, and the saved witnesses, but how can it be done? In a post-modern culture that sees all religion as subjective experiences, with no objective basis? Like the lady in San Diego who rises early to exercise and meditate at La Jolla Shores. It’s just like church to her, she said. Just tell me it isn’t church, she said. OK. It isn’t just like church to exercise and meditate. How to relate Christianity to multiples like her, who consider self-induced relaxation equal to soul-shattering repentance? Who delight in creation but have no interest in the Creator? Or like the people we meet daily who can’t imagine why they need repentance and baptism. When someone asked David Thoreau if he had made peace with God, he replied, “I wasn’t aware that we had quarreled.” That’s the transcendalist/environmentalist view: god is nature, we love the environment, so we’re at peace with god. But since God isn’t the environment or anything in nature, we must repent and be baptized. How do we relate that fact to the lost? By being as Christ-like as possible in as many ways as possible in private and public. The only reason we would hide Christianity’s message from unbelievers is that it isn’t equal to the challenge of educating, convicting, converting and edifying them. But it is! The only reason to hide that message is that it’s just one of many such efforts to find our way to God. But it isn’t! Christianity is God’s absolute truth, without any lie; his absolute perfection, without any fault; his absolutely final revelation, with no more to come. Therefore, let us with transparent lives express the beauty of Christ. The only proof needed to motivate the lost to obey Jesus and the only evidence needed to convince them to do it now. Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, met President Lincoln on a peace mission February 1865. As he entered the ship’s cabin he removed his gloves, heavy overcoat, sweater and scarf. And there stood tiny, shriveled, emaciated Alexander Stephens, all five feet three inches, 100 pounds of him. Lincoln afterward said he had never seen such a small nubbin come from so much shuck. Yet, that’s all of us spiritually, if we peel our nature back layer by layer until we come to our core. But…if we peel back from Jesus Christ his miracles…his teachings…his example…his personality…his death…his resurrection…what’s left? The person of God, the FULLNESS of God; the glory of God in the face of Christ. A glory to be seen, not hidden, revealed, not covered, declared, not silenced! If we want to positively impact the unsaved, let Jesus live in us. It’s God’s way of assuring success for the church in every generation. Don’t apologize for your Christian faith. Don’t compromise your witness of it. Christ in us is the only hope the world has. Pray God to make us increasingly effective witnesses of his eternal glory. End Part V The eight-point summary of II Corinthians 3:12 -18 leads to a couple lessons learned.
First, the Old Testament Needs Instructions from the New. Only Jesus frees the Law of Moses from its limitations and makes its 3500-year-old rules useful as a legal system even today. That’s why the Presbyterian minister was wrong when a Jewish man came with questions about the Bible. Not wanting to intrude on the man’s religious background, he sent him to a rabbi. Though the man came to a Christian precisely because Judaism didn’t have answers. For only when interpreted through the Gospel is the Old Testament clarified. Our text offers a perfect example. Exodus 34 says Moses veiled his face to filter the brilliance from Jewish eyes. But Paul said he veiled his face to keep those eyes from watching the GLOW FADE. So…if you read only the Old Testament you think the SEED or Offspring of Eve was some human, but No…he was JESUS. The Passover Lamb was only an animal, but No…it was JESUS. The Rock from which Israel drank was but a hard stone but, No…it was JESUS. The pillar of cloud and fire were meteorological phenomena but…No…it was JESUS. And on and on. End Part IV |
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