Growth in the Christian faith, whether quick or gradual, sudden or incremental, must characterize Christians. With the Bible, particularly the New Testament, emphasizing the life of Christ, the fundamental quintessential person in history and of our spiritual life.
The Bible remains true, whatever our view. It’s true even when unceasingly, though unavailingly, bitterly, though unreasonably, opposed, even by those pledged to Christ. Consider Jesus in John 7:16-18. He taught the model scripture, proving that the Jews would never accept him as he presented himself. And he would never deny himself, or change himself or question himself, in order to make himself palatable to their taste. That illustrates the historical struggle between God’s revealed TRUTH, whether through Moses, the prophets or Christ, and the human ego demanding the right to evaluate, alter, compromise or deny whatever we choose. In I Corinthians 1:20-25, 30-31, for example, Paul noted that the Jews demanded miraculous signs instead of FAITH, though they neither believed nor obeyed the signs. While Greeks desired human wisdom (philosophy) over FAITH, shifting like sand dunes in the winds though it proved to be. Because they wanted mortals to be in charge of THIS, and, the NEXT world. Instead, God remains sovereign of all and everyone and has relegated both Jewish and Greek obsessions to the manure pile of history. He disregarded the philosophy posing as wisdom to reveal HIM and the insatiable appetite for miracles that only titillated the emotions without convincing the Jewish mind. He chose instead the MESSAGE understood and accepted by those with spiritual clarity: who believed a crucified Savior mocked the death that seemed to mock him Colossians 2:13-15, Revelation 5:5-6. The classic “foolishness of God”...‘wiser than man’s wisdom and the weakness of God...stronger than man’s strength’” I Corinthians 1:25. Thus, the speaker at a liberal Midwestern university revealed his spiritually blind mind when declaring the Cross an inconsequential irrelevancy. He proved only that liberalism’s addiction to human knowledge, at the expense of faith in God, has two results. It renders us incapable of hearing God, and ever-less capable of believing God. Understand, however. Our desire to live by knowledge in ourselves never causes God to re-think demanding that we live by FAITH in him! End Part II
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