Spiritcode

Bad News and Good News

BAD NEWS AND GOOD NEWS 
The world is mostly preoccupied with bad news more than good news in its media expression and general conversation. That is why we have been given a Gospel of good news and it would be unwise to allow the preaching emphasis of that Gospel to be more on the bad news than on the good news. Paul writes to the Corinthian church about this in his letter concerning the ministry of death and the ministry of life.

2Corinthians 3:6 God has equipped us to be ministers of the New Covenant; not of the letter, but of the Spirit: for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life. The ministry of the law written on stone that brought condemnation and death and separation from God, came with a short-lived glory (reflecting the nature of God’s righteousness and wisdom).
The face of Moses shone, and Israel veiled their eyes and turned away… 
Will not the ministry of the Spirit have a much greater glory? So we can put our hope in this and speak clearly and confidently. For if the temporary order of things (the Law), had its glory much more will the eternal order have its glory (the Holy Spirit putting God on display in our lives). 
for even today when Israel reads the Old Covenant Law the same veil of turning away remains; But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there the heart is free. So we, with an unveiled face reflecting the glory of the Lord as a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory through the Spirit of the Lord.

The teaching of the law and Commandments had a measure of glory because it put the nature of God on display (in his righteousness and wisdom). It still does this, and if people do their best in their own strength to obey the Commandments, they will live a more ordered and godly life, but it will not be the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. When I did the podcast series on the Ten Commandments, I explained at the beginning of each session that the way I was presenting the teaching was to emphasise the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the New Covenant application of each Commandment, and that this transformation of our lives was not just from bad to good but from natural to spiritual.

The teaching of the Law was for the purpose of showing people what sin was - sin towards God and sin towards one another (Galatians 3:19) and all the sins outlined in the Ten Commandments were sins against relationships. The first four were about not trusting God and not loving him and the last six were about not loving one another.
The Bible says that loving God and one another is the fulfilment of the Commandments (Romans 13:10).

I grew up as a Catholic and was taught the Ten Commandments and all about sin and punishment and about obedience to the church commandments also, with obligations of attending church, receiving communion, going to confession, and doing penance for sins, and fasting and giving, and other sacramental rites. This helped to form my conscience and to cultivate a tender heart towards God, but I always felt guilt and shame and wondered how I would become a better person. I felt loved and secure and did my best about some of the legalistic bad news – until at about nineteen years of age I took a break from it all and went my own way. Some years after that I married a committed Protestant girl and began to search anew for God, and we had many discussions over Christian doctrine. Some time later she bought me a Bible and by the grace of God while reading that Bible in the middle of the night I found Jesus and then I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Everything began to change and so did I. And I had a clear understanding of the difference between the works of faith and the dead works of doing religion in our own strength. I also realised that the works of faith and of dead works was everywhere, in every church of every denomination, and that the Bible had a lot to say about it. I still respect the Catholic Church and every other church that teaches the forgiveness of sins through Jesus and the love of the Father and the grace of the Holy Spirit. I pray that we will all receive even greater revelation of all these truths.

I find that the hardest thing to grapple with is the teaching of a God that is ‘more angry than loving’. There is a teaching that proclaims that Jesus died for our sins to appease an angry God who was angry with all of us because of our sins and that his anger had to be taken out on Jesus who faithfully took that anger and punishment for us and so changed the Father’s heart towards us. This is called the doctrine of penal substitution (penalty substitution).

No, I believe that the Father so loved the world that he sent his Son to die for us, not to change the Heart of the Father but to change the heart of humanity, by giving them a new heart and a new spirit through the New Covenant and the Holy Spirit. 
In fact, if Jesus died on the cross to change the heart of an angry God, then it didn’t work, because God is still angry. He is still angry about the destruction that sin does to the human soul of his beloved humanity that he made in his image, and he is still angry at Satan for his dark heart of malice that holds sway over the human heart.  

That anger is called the wrath of God (orge – intense feeling of indignation) which didn’t disappear when Jesus died for our sins on the cross. It is the loving unyielding defence he expresses for his human family in correcting the harmful acts of unlove (sin) that we commit towards one another. This act of his intense love is nested in justice and truth as well as in mercy and forgiveness. (Romans 1:18)  
Today God is allowing many areas of injustice and the suppression of truth to be uncovered (apocolypto) and to come under his hand of his discipline in a world of abounding suspicion and blame and resentment. God counters all of that negative activity with a Gospel of hope and an abundance of grace where God is always within reach and peace can flourish in our inner lives. 

God hates the bad news of what sin does to people so he has good news about what forgiveness and reconciliation does for people. That is why there has to be a Gospel of good news for those who do harm and for the poor people who get harmed. The good news is that there is forgiveness, and the further good news is that there is the gift of the life of Jesus within. He gives us a new spirit - he gives us his Spirit and he gives us a new heart.

People need to be told they are forgiven, and that they need no longer be separated from God because of the feelings of guilt and shame about their sinful behaviour, which makes them hide from God and cover up in front of each other. They can receive a new mindset – metanoia – which means repentance. The new mindset acknowledges that God is not at odds with them, and they no longer need to be at odds with him. They are reconciled and can acknowledge with relief their sinful nature and be forgiven and transformed. They cannot have everything that they want, but they can receive every good thing that God wants for them. They are now able to have God’s peace. They are now able to trust God. They can now know what it means to be saved. And they also need to know that God holds us to account to not neglect such a great salvation (the healing of the soul).

Jonathan Edwards was a profoundly spiritual man of puritan and reformed theology who preached powerfully and sincerely about the death and resurrection of Jesus as our saviour from sin. In 1733 -1735 there was revival in his church in Northampton Massachusetts USA where there were 30 people being saved each week and it is reported that in six months, nearly 300 of 1100 youths in Northampton were admitted to the church. It was credited as being the beginning of a spiritual awakening that led to becoming the Great Awakening under George Whitefield in 1740. His influence of puritanism and Calvinism shaped the character of American Protestantism for many years, and it still has sway in its expression in modern evangelicalism. 

The following is an excerpt of Jonathan Edward’s preaching from ‘Sinners in the hands of an Angry God’.

‘The bow of Gods wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart and strains the bow and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all that keeps the arrow for one moment from being made drunk with your blood.’
And why should God be obliged to express such wonderful love to you, who never exercised the least degree of love to him in all your life? You never have loved God, who is infinitely glorious and lovely; and why then is God under obligation to love you, who are all over deformed and loathsome as a filthy worm, or rather a hateful viper? You have no benevolence in your heart towards God; you never rejoiced in God's happiness; And why then should God be looked upon as obliged to take so much care for your happiness, as to do such great things for it, as he doth for those that are saved? You care not what becomes of God's glory; you are not distressed how much soever his honour seems to suffer in the world: and why should God care anymore for your welfare? Has it not been so, that if you could but promote your private interest, and gratify your own lusts, you cared not how much the glory of God suffered? And why may not God advance his own glory in the ruin of your welfare, not caring how much your interest suffers by it? And why then is it harsh that God doth not do such great things for you as the changing of your nature, raising you from spiritual death to life or conquering the powers of darkness for you…

The odd thing is that even if the Gospel is preached badly and tells more bad news than good news the Holy Spirit will honour the hearts of his children who call upon his name even out of guilt and shame and not out of the gratitude and joy of forgiveness, as long as the death and resurrection of Jesus as our saviour from sin is sincerely proclaimed. The work of the Gospel in the hearts of people is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit of grace. 

This narrative has affected the mind and heart of the Western Church as well as people in Western Society who have stopped going to church and don’t want to hear about God. What and who we are told we are by God, (or someone speaking in his name) is what we take upon ourselves and has a profound effect on our souls, and if we can’t face that narrative, we escape from its punishing thought somehow. Today’s Western World might refer to God with the idea of ‘God at a distance’ but it is a world proud of its individualism and independence and is convinced that we can work life out by ourselves without God. The sad consequence is a crowded humanity swimming in a high tide of isolation and loneliness and with a suffering soul. Christians often incorrectly manage their own guilt and shame by declaring judgment upon the world for all its wickedness. 

In contrast is the spiritual understanding of Athanasius who wrote circa 350 AD. Athanasius was an Egyptian Coptic Christian Theologian and a Church Father and was the chief defender of Trinitarianism against Arianism (Jesus was not God and there was no Trinity). 

‘It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by him should be brought to nothing by the deceit wrought upon man by the devil, and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits. As then the creatures whom He had created reasonable like the Word were in fact perishing and such noble works were on their way to ruin, what then was God, being good, to do? Was he to let corruption and death have their way with them – and in that case what would be the use of having made them in the beginning? Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than have been created to be neglected and perish. And besides that, such indifference to the ruin of his own work before his own eyes would argue not goodness in God, but limitation, and that far more than if he had never created man at all. It was impossible therefore that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption because it would be unfitting and unworthy of himself…’ He writes further,
Thus, taking a body like our own because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, he surrendered his body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This he did out of sheer love for us so that in his death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because having fulfilled in his body that for which he was appointed, death was thereafter voided of its power for men. This he did that he might turn men again to incorruption who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of his body and by the grace of his resurrection thus he would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

That is why God’s wrath passionately says ‘No’ to the plunging of mankind forever into a mindset of separation from God and stuck with a heart and conscience of guilt and shame. Only his Son Jesus could sinlessly plunge himself into all that sinful humanity and bend back the separated mindset of Adam with its independence and guilt and shame. And by dying sinless for us as sinful humanity and rising again for us as glorified humanity he could join our lives to his in oneness of Spirit where we can live a life of knowing we are loved by him and able to love him back and be transformed. That is not penal substitution (punishment substitution) based on the so-called justice of an angry God but is the way for us to find new life in oneness with God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

 

 

 

WAKEUP CALL

WAKEUP CALL

There are two parables describing marriage feasts in the gospel of Matthew and they are about the Kingdom of Heaven and of God’s relationship to his Church, and they both give us a picture of the end time return of Jesus to be joined to his bride.
In Matthew there is the parable of the King arranging a wedding for his son.
“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come (Matthew 22:2) Here the attention is upon the guests who were invited and their various reasons for not attending, which dishonoured the King, but there is nothing mentioned here about the bride or the bridesmaids. In this story the King finally sends his servants out into the highways and byways to compel people to come to the feast because he wants the celebration to be well attended. 

The parable of the wise and the foolish bridesmaids is in Matthew chapter 25 and is more focussed upon the bride and the bridegroom and the bridesmaids. The bridegroom is Jesus, and the bride is the church, and the attention is upon the readiness of those who have roles to perform in their attendance at the marriage feast, such as the bridesmaids. 

Today we will look mainly at the parable of wise and foolish bridesmaids, which starts off by saying. ‘Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten bridesmaids who took their lamps in order to go out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish (m??ros –neglectful, unmindful [moron]), and five were wise (phronemos – thoughtful, mindful). (Matthew 25:1)

The background to these parables is the Jewish marriage customs in Bible times, and they give us an insight into the order of certain arrangements such as who sends out the invitations and to whom are invitations sent and the question of who determines what the wedding date shall be. There are various obligations and expectations and if these are not observed properly then a person’s honour could be at stake
The usual arrangement was that both families would arrange for a young couple to become betrothed for about a year and then work together on the future plans and financial arrangements for all parties involved. When the marriage occurred around a year later the bridegroom and the bride would not organise their own future household arrangements as the bride would join the bridegroom’s family household after the marriage. After the initial betrothal the bridegroom would live in his father’s house, and he would prepare a bridal chamber like an add-on apartment for he and his bride to live in for some time into the future. 

There was some flexibility regarding the time for the bridegroom to prepare this new place for he and his bride so there was no definite wedding date and when the place was complete, the groom would come to get his bride and bring her home for the wedding and the wedding feast. The bride would not know the day or hour of her husband-to-be’s return, and the groom’s arrival was usually suddenly announced with a trumpet call and a shout, so the bride at least had some forewarning. The bride would take part in a ritual cleansing and then came the smaller family ceremony which was attended by a select few. Then after the family ceremony the couple would attend a more lavish wedding feast celebrated in their honour which included a much larger crowd. The servants of the bridegroom’s father were sent out to invite the guests to the larger wedding feast celebration.
This is why the parables concerning wedding feasts always involve some confusion over the guests often being caught having to put off other arrangements in order to honour the host of the wedding feast, and this was a test for the guests and their order of priorities and loyalties as they often had other matters of importance or self-interest to attend to. The uncertainty of the timing of the event all depended upon how long it took the bridegroom to prepare a place for his bride (no one knew the day or the hour) and the smoothness of the process of the wedding and the feast depended upon how ready everybody was when the bridegroom announced that he was ready. Some were extremely mindful of all these proceedings while others were unmindful or indifferent.
The main point of these stories is; who was mindful and who was unmindful during the delay.

Matthew 25:1 Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten bridesmaids who took their lamps in order to go out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish (m??ros – heedless, neglectful, unmindful), and five were wise (phronemos – thoughtful, mindful). For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready (hetoimos – prepared oil in lamps) went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ 
Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

We have said that these parables are about Jesus and the Church, so we must ask the question ‘Is everybody at the wedding feast part of ‘The Church’?
The answer is yes, this is clearly the case and that there are very many people who make up the Church that are at different levels of commitment to God. God knows where his Church is somewhere in amongst all those that ‘do Church’ because ‘doing church is not necessarily ‘being Church’. 
This prompts another question ‘If the Bible says that the bride of Christ is the Church, then what is the difference between the bride and the bridesmaids and the other guests, as aren’t they also the Church?
Again, the answer is yes, but there are people also at different levels of intimate relationship with Jesus, and the ‘bride company’ of the Church exists invisibly here and there as ones who would be in the most intimate of relationship with him. The Father is very accepting and merciful to all who believe in his Son and are on their journey of faith and all we can say is that by the grace of God people make their own choices in these relationship priorities. Only God knows the heart of each one and we cannot assume or presume in these matters about where everything is at right now and where they will be one day. 

However, we can observe that the Bible describes different categories of people involved in these wedding feast stories.
The two most important ones are the bride and the bridegroom, and they only have eyes and minds and feelings for one another, anticipating a life of being together as one forever.
This speaks of Jesus coming back for his bride which is part of the Church.

Then we have the bridegroom’s father who is concerned for the honour and fulfillment of his son’s life and future. This speaks of Father God

The bride’s parents are concerned that the bride will be prepared and ready and bring beauty and glory to this very special occasion. This speaks to us of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in preparing us to be his bride.

The interesting thing about the bridesmaids is that is that ‘they all became drowsy and slept because of the bridegroom’s delay’ – That is why I’m calling this word ‘Wakeup Call’. Some were more diligent than others in being ready by having oil in their lamps, which speaks to us of being filled with the Holy Spirit and awake and alive to his activity within. The unmindful bridesmaids had indeed experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives but had been distracted and had neglected the work of the Holy Spirit alive in them and run out of oil. 
In those times the bridesmaids were chosen knew that they too would without doubt be brides one day. That would be their sure hope and expectation. We could speculate that this progression from bridesmaid to bride is there for every one of us and even if it does not occur within our lifespan, we might consider that in the age to come the Holy Spirit will cause our love to be completed in the Father’s love for us so that we too will be as the bride in perfect oneness with his Son Jesus who will appear to us as the bridegroom 
1John 3:2 we are God's children now, and what we shall be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears (phanero??- to know what has been hidden or unknown, to manifest, whether by words, or deeds, or in any other way) we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself as he is pure.

As for the many other guests mentioned in the first parable the Bible reveals that this was a test for their order of priorities and loyalties in honouring the son’s father. And when we consider how the father’s heart was so determined to fill his house at all costs that he sent the servants to get people from the highways and byways, such as beggars maybe sleeping under bridges. 

This prompts another question for further speculation.
Could there be people that we know of who have not responded to the gospel for a multitude of reasons and whose hearts maybe have pondered the Mystery of God with doubt or improbability or even the denial of a wounded and painful heart, and whom the Father sees as his children who need more time in an age to come, for their heart response to his love to be completed just as do the bridesmaids? 
Only God knows. 
But to join the dots a little more boldly I will add this; The final thing God did when he created the world, on the sixth and final day of his creation was to fashion a bride Eve for his Son Adam. On the seventh day he rested in order to enjoy the fulness of fellowship with his sons and daughters to be.
And now for another question. If God’s final work in the final days of this present kingdom age will be to fashion a bride for his Son, what will be the nature of the next Kingdom age that the Scriptures speak about at length concerning a one-thousand-year reign of Christ upon the earth during which time Satan is bound? (Revelation 20:1-6, Timothy 2:11, Romans 16:20, Isaiah 2:2-4, Isaiah 11:6-9, Micah 4:1-3 and many more).

Could this be a time of opportunity for the completion of the love response in the hearts of multitudes of people that perfects their oneness with the bridegroom Jesus?
Today I will just have to leave these questions open for your consideration and address them further in the New Year, the Lord willing. Have your questions and comments ready.

In both parables a peculiar thing happens in that some of those invited to the marriage feast have the door closed on them at the last moment. The five unmindful bridesmaids were left outside, and in the other parable a man was put out into outer darkness for not having a wedding garment. There is no explanation given about this outer place in the parable but my speculation concerning this in the reading of other Scriptures in Revelation chapters 11, 12, and 19, is that this outer place could well be a time of trial and tribulation that some in the Church may experience while those at the feast are given safety and refuge in the presence of the Lord during that time. 

In every generation that lives upon the earth there is this wake-up call to what we are here for and what we were born for and what the Father’s heart is for his Son and for his Son’s bride and for all who honour and appreciate Gods love for us. It has been a long delay!
I also believe that when Jesus does return for his bride and the wedding feast is celebrated that there will be people from down through the ages attending that reunion wedding feast that have been awake and alive to the Father’s heart for this occasion for his Son.

Paul dwelt thoroughly on the relational aspect of Christ and his Bride when he spoke of presenting his bride as having her soul cleansed by his Word and having a heart of inner beauty that is without spot or blemish.
Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish

Paul was always urging the church to awaken and to reawaken into a conscious awareness of the nearness of God with us at all times, and not to allow the difficulties and distractions of the world to weary us into a spiritual slumber.
Romans 13:11 You know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep

Paul saw that the uncertainties of the future and the fatigue of past struggles had allowed a lethargy of spirit to take over peoples’ souls that he had in his care, and he went to great lengths to remind them to live in the present moment and not in the vagaries of time that had been wasted or lost or anxious that time was running out.

He pressed upon them to take hold of the available grace that abounded towards them if only they would trust and believe. Paul saw himself as co-labouring and cooperating with God on their behalf and stirs them to be of a similar disposition of working together with God and for God. He writes, ‘I heard you at the right time and came to give you salvation but be aware that the time is right now for your grace to fully co-operate in this day of salvation’ (2Corinthians 6:1) 
Act now, Paul urges, for this is the acceptable (and only) time to do so. It is not only having had salvation come to you once and that is all there is to it, but it is time for your salvation to live in you and come out of you from a conscious kingdom life within you. 
He was saying, God hasn’t stopped labouring but have you stopped co-labouring.

How do we cooperate and co-labour?
We occupy the now (and only) moment of grace in his presence which is to us a place of safety and refuge. To do this we need to stop, be still, and engage our mind to focus upon his life actively streaming its goodness towards us.
We then trust and fully believe that God is working his Kingdom of heaven life into our earthly lives and circumstances to bring them into the order of his Heavenly life.
We trust and believe that God is redeeming and restoring our past experiences of loss and disorder in our lives into a thankful now present place of peace and order.
And that gives us new hope as we look forward to an ongoing Kingdom ordered life for the future.

 

Glorify God in Your Body and in Your Spirit

GLORIFY GOD IN YOUR BODY AND IN YOUR SPIRIT (1Corinthians 6:20)

John Chapter 13 speaks of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet at the Last supper, and through to John Chapter 17 Jesus speaks his final words to his disciples before he and his disciples go out from the Passover Feast into the garden where he is betrayed by Judas and arrested. Between Chapters 13 and 17 Jesus prepares his disciples for the new life of the Kingdom within them that will come after his resurrection. He shares with them of the coming of the Holy Spirit that will abide with them and transform them and lead them into all truth concerning the words he has spoken to them. 
In Chapter 17 he finishes with his astounding prayer to his Father concerning the glory of God that will be seen through them and through all those that come after them that truly believe in his indwelling presence. 

John 17:22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

This remarkable Scripture tells us that we have been given a share of the glory of God that was given to Jesus. This glory of God is exhibited by our oneness with God and our unity with one another so that the world will know that Jesus was sent into the world by the Father. 
The glory of God is the outward expression of the awe and wonder of an unseen God who dwells within us as we consciously dwell within him. In this Scripture Jesus is praying that we will see that glory of God at work in our lives. We will see ourselves being present with him where he is in his resurrected human form, and at the same time he is where we are in our day to day circumstances no matter what they are. When we take hold of that fact by our faith, we can go though any trial or tribulation because he is with us in it, comforting, encouraging, strengthening and empowering us.

Paul tells us that our spirit carries the inner glory of God as we acknowledge that we are joined in one spirit to his spirit, and that our bodies are the outward expression of that inner glory. 
1 Corinthians 6:20 For you were bought at a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. 
God does the supernatural work of bringing his will to pass in our inner lives and we make ourselves available for him to express himself in our outer bodily lives in a simple and often very ordinary and unspectacular manner. He does not give us his glory for us to take any outer glory for ourselves, but he can be glorified through us. It is not a matter of our physical appearance or performance. We may be young and energetic or elderly and frail, educated or uneducated, glamourous or plain, rich or poor, it doesn’t matter. All he needs in us is a yielded heart to express the power of the love and wisdom that he wishes to bring about in our world.

The Bible tells us that Jesus did not have a spectacular physical appearance that drew people to him as some kind of celebrity. He was a plain and ordinary looking person.
Isaiah 53:2 For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no stateliness about him and he was not suave or handsome that we should want to stare at him, and he had no appeal that we should be attracted to him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces. He was shunned, and we did not highly regard him. 

Jesus came to embody the nature of the Godhead and to glorify God in his body and not impress the world with any success or celebrity status. 
John 17:4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. 
Jesus saw the eternal glory that awaited him and he knew that whatever his body looked like or how well it could physically perform it was sufficient to fulfil the will of his Father and glorify him on this earth. Jesus said A body have you prepared for me; ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God. (Hebrews 10:5)
Jesus knew that his body was there to embody God’s purpose, and that gave everything that happened in his body its true meaning.

Paul understood this reality concerning his own body and that all that mattered to him was who he was in Christ. He knew his body was simply a vessel to express the inner glory of God through him and he held his body together as best he could just for that.
1Corinthians 9:27 But I discipline my body and bring it under control, just in case that after preaching to others, I should end up letting God down.
He was very aware of his physical infirmities and ailments and knew he had no glamour to impress the crowd. 
2Corinthians 10:10 “For his letters,” they say, “are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.
Paul knew that no matter what his physical limitations were that he just had to be there doing his best and letting God do the rest. 
He also knew that the church people sometimes derisively compared him to other self-appointed apostles and thought of him as a bit of a loser, but he told them he wasn’t going to compete or compare himself with them. His last word on the matter was ‘he who glories, let him glory in the Lord’ For not he who commends himself is approved, but he whom the Lord commends (vs.18). 
Paul knew that outward appearances could be deceptive. What looks strong on the outside may be pathetic on the inside and what looks feeble on the outside may be strong and durable on the inside. Living creatures of many species do their best to glamorize the outside in order to look attractive or even tough – puffer fish and peacocks 

It was around three hundred years after Paul’s ministry that the Church began to glorify the outward appearance of things in just about every aspect of Christian practice. The early Church prior to that time was not interested in worldly power or influence. There were no genuine apostles or prophets that held celebrity status or lavishly enriched themselves as ministers of the Gospel. 
But then the Emperor Constantine declared himself as being a Christian and made Christianity the main religion of Rome, and he created Constantinople, which became the most powerful city in the world, and from that point on over the next few centuries Christianity began to take on the status of ‘Christendom’ and in many ways it resembled a worldly Christian kingdom (and still does) and outward power replace inner strength. However, the heart of Christianity has remained alive and well and devoted men and women up to this day give themselves, spirit soul and body, to live their lives to glorify God through Jesus Christ and to bless millions and millions of people. 

We may be living in the times when the Holy Spirit is calling people back into the kind of inner focus upon the glory of God that can dwell within us and be expressed through us no matter how impressive or unimpressive weak we may appear on the outside. 
We may be living in the times when Jesus as head over the Church is calling forth his Bride Company to be ready for him with hearts that respond to his love and wish to spend more time in his presence.
We may be living in the times once again when the Father is speaking to us as beloved brothers and sisters of his Son Jesus to express his glory through his Body the Church, the Body of Christ. 

Does the Church as the Body of Christ glorify God and reflect the nature of God in love and unity? (John 13:35), and is the Church salt and light in the world (Matthew 5:13)?
The Church once was all of those things and it can become all of those things once again.
The logical way for the corporate expression of God’s glory through his Body in the earth is for those individuals who call themselves Church to personally live in a new way of life in Christ that offers hope for people to live a new kind of human life that is not prey to the vengeful and unforgiving patterns of this world that destroy the human soul.

When Paul wrote to the churches that made up ‘the Church’ he taught them pastorally as individuals with a personal responsibility to reflect the glory of God in their own bodies and that that would translate into a corporate expression of the glory of God in the Body of Christ. In his apostolic capacity he also addressed the Church corporately, not with the business of having political influence but with the same spiritual issues of love and forgiveness and unity. His words to the church in Rome stated this 

Romans 12:1 present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (logicos latreia – logical service – the logical way to serve God!), and be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…

He taught them of the inner spiritual pathway of spending valuable time with God and in his Word that leads to the finding of the true eternal self. As that true identity of being one in spirit with the Lord begins to take shape in a person’s life they begin to grow in faith in the mercy and grace of God that is freely available to them. Sometimes you see God shining through as they grow in confidence of who they really are in God, and what they really believe concerning his power to reorder and transform a person’s soul. Their bodies have been presented to God as holy and acceptable to him and have become more available to influence and overcome the artificial imaginations and ideologies and hollow power structures that abound in the world immediately around them. That is the only logical way for the corporate expression of the Body of Christ to emerge out of a multitude of singular gleams of light that glorify God in the earth. 

 

 

 

What is Man

WHAT IS MAN 

Hebrews 2:5 What is man that You are mindful of him… 
or the son of man that You look compassionately upon him?
You made him a little lower than the angels;
You crowned him with glory and honor,
and set him over the works of Your hands.
You have put all things in subjection under his feet.

In this Scripture the word for man is Anthropos which generically includes all humans, not just males, and it is where the word anthropology comes from which is the study of mankind and human societies and their cultural development. God is mindful of Man, humanity, and in fact that word mindful (mnaomai) in the Greek has an emphasis of ‘being a fixture of the mind’. That Scripture also says that ‘man has been created of a lower order that the angels’ because humanity is a spirit being with a body and soul
whereas angels are pure spirit beings.  
Humanity is a ‘fixture of the mind’ of God because we have been made in the image of God to reflect his nature of love and creativity and we have been chosen to be his family of sons and daughters in the earth, but not so for angels. 

Everything that God creates has a degree of separation from him because of having a lower order of being than God, but only angels and humanity have a free will and a consciousness of self-identity that can choose to live in loving and grateful obedience to God, or to choose a mindset of independent separation from God. It was an angel of darkness, Lucifer, that tempted mankind to disobey God and from that moment on a state of independent assertion of the human will has been under the sway of that darkness and has acted in favour of its own interest instead of God’s. 
From the time of Adam through to Jesus every human soul lived with an individual sense of identity their ‘I am’ (Greek=ego), which was their idea of who they were. This idea of who they were depended mostly upon what was reflected back to them by those who had influence over them in their world. They also had a conscience that guided them to do what was deemed to be right or wrong and they had a free will to follow their conscience or to break the rules and take the consequences. 

During that time frame between Adam and Jesus, God set aside a nation of people called Israel and he gave them Commandments and a Law of life to guide them in the highest practice of wisdom and knowledge concerning how a person should live before their creator God. This determined their conscience of right and wrong and gave them a sense of identity, of who they were before God and themselves and the world.

That Scripture goes on to say that in time there would come a certain someone called ‘the Son of Man (Anthropos, Mankind, Humanity,)’ whom God would crown with glory and honour and place all things in subjection under his feet - Jesus son of God and Man.
In the days before Jesus died on the cross, he began to explain a mystery to his disciples about how they would become one in being with himself and the Father through the work of the Holy Spirit. It was difficult for them to understand this mystery and he told them that when the Holy Spirit came (after his resurrection), he would reveal this truth to them.

John 14:19 A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you… These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

Jesus was telling them that they would live with a new sense of who they really were, as a new Anthropos, with a new ‘I am’ (ego), being one with God in the Spirit, and drawing life from a new source of being and power, from God himself. Jesus knew he would have to depend upon the Holy Spirit to reveal this individually to each person, but he still said it and assured them that they would remember what he said.

But just to make sure they knew the practical meaning of what he was saying he went on to tell them the parable of the vine and the branches.
John 15:4 I am the true vine, Take care to live in me, and let me live in you. For a branch can't produce fruit when severed from the vine. Nor can you be fruitful apart from me.

Those disciples walked with Jesus and were taught this Kingdom mystery by him through many parables during his ministry and they still found this mystery difficult to understand in their natural minds. But there was another apostle called Paul who did not walk with Jesus during his ministry or hear his parables, and who had to receive this truth of becoming a new creation the way we have to receive it, from a revelation of faith, through the grace of God. Paul’s revelation to us of who we are in Christ is perfect and complete and is waiting, alive and ready for each individual in each new generation of believers to embrace this Gospel of grace and to live it out.

After Jesus died and rose again and the Holy Spirit was sent from Heaven to the earth upon all of Mankind (anthropos – man – humanity) and then everything changed.
The apostle Paul was the one who was able to illuminate the words that Jesus had spoken to his Jewish disciples to all the nations, not just Jews. 

Paul explained the mystery to all the world that the old ‘I am’ (the ego) of the historical old anthropos (Man) could now receive a new ‘I am’ as a new Man, in Christ. This was the good news that Paul was given from God to tell all the world. He called this the ‘mystery that has been hidden through all the ages - Christ in you the hope of glory’ (Colossians 1:27) His challenge was to help people understand how to manage a life with the existence of two ‘I ams’ (egos) in the same person, the old anthropos and the new anthropos. Which ego would win the identity contest about who was the real ‘I am’?

Paul spoke of his personal understanding of this when he explained how to live real Christianity to us. it is no longer I (ego) who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I (ego) now live in the body I live in the Son of God by faith, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I (ego) do not hold back this work of the Grace of God (Galatians 2:20).
The revelation of this reality gives a person an entirely new mindset of who they really are. They are no longer held back by a self-centred ‘I am’ ego which has done its best by trying to be virtuous. They can now adopt the new mindset (repentance) of being one with God and they can live from a new ‘I am’ that is graced with the Spiritual power and love and wisdom of Christ. They need no longer see themselves as being an isolated individual totally dependent upon their own resources and feeling separated from the blessing of a loving God within them. 

Paul writes to us about this process when he says. Discard your old anthropos (Mankind, Ego,) and your former way of life, which is corrupted by deception and wrong desires and instead, let the Spirit renew your mind and attitudes. Put on your new anthropos (New ‘I am’) created to be with God and like God—aligned with God and set apart for him. (Ephesians 4:17)

A person who lives this kind of a life of faith will find themselves pausing to stop and reconsider which ‘I am’ they are living out of. Our old ‘I am’ Ego doesn’t want to die. It wants to win the ‘I am’ contest. The Holy Spirit has been sent into the world to win that struggle within us (John 16:8). He works to renew our mind so that just as we are a fixture of the mind of God – What is Man that you are mindful of him – so we make God  
a fixture of our mind to live within his life. 

Our natural born I am (ego) has been created in the image of God with a uniquely individual personality and a potential for remarkable skills and amazing creativity that can live out of a good conscience and grow in character and integrity. We live with an individual sense of identity which is our idea of who we are, and our natural I am can live a relatively good life and find a personal fulfilment as far as life in this disordered world can afford it. Our natural I am also has the potential to behave in a self-serving and ungodly way that can be harmful to ourselves and those around us, but God knows each heart and will deal justly with each one of us.
Our new spiritually born I am is that old natural born ‘I am’ learning live by faith in a surrendered union with the indwelling life of God. It finds a new sense of identity which is based upon God’s perfect idea of who we are in oneness with his life. This new I am can reach the true potential that God sees in us rather than the limited potential of what we strive to imagine.

The Bible says that The Holy Spirit shows us our true ‘I am’ in God’s Word. It is like a mirror so that when I look into it I see what kind of Anthropos ‘I am’. But when I turn away and do not fix my mind upon God, I forget what kind of ‘I am’ I am. 
James 1:25 But the one who looks into this perfect law of liberty and holds on to what they hear it say to them and lives it and does not forget it will be blessed in everything he does.
Let this be the fixture of your mind that your new ‘I am’ is always you and God together in everything you do. Paul tells us to discard the old limited and isolated Anthropos that gets confused by the uncertainties of life in this disordered world and plunge into the new Anthropos and taste Heaven while living on this earth living a reordered life that begins to reorder everything around you.

A person who puts this into practice and who spends generous time in the presence of the Lord while quietly allowing The Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus and the Father to them will find themselves oddly feeling the things that God feels and thinking the things that God is thinking in a subtle but certain way, and hearing the things that God says. They will go through difficult times being comforted by the wonder of a loving God always with them in the pain of this life. They will do the things that God prompts them to do and they will know that everything strangely happens to bring about his perfect will and purpose for them, and they will give thanks.

 

Where your Treasure is

MEETING LIFE’S CHALLENGES 

‘Meeting life’s Challenges’ is an autobiography of Brooks Wilson’s life that invites us to meet him at four years of age and join his journey of life up until the current time of the writing of this book. We share the days of his early years as the son of Rob Wilson who was born in Mudgee NSW Australia and ‘Peg’ Wilson who was born in Massachusetts USA as Gertrude Brooks, the daughter of Clayton and Grace Brooks. And this Australian/American heritage of Brooks Wilson becomes a central feature of his life, which is grandly enhanced by his marriage in 1959 to Ann Meredith, a journalist from Springfield Ohio USA. 

These early years that tell of Brook’s comprehensive education, business training and career achievements are marked by his foundational Christian upbringing which defines his philosophy of life. In the preface to his book he draws from the Apostle Paul’s teaching about loving one another and in his own words he says ‘Life is not all about ‘us’. The key is to forget ‘self’ and reach out to others’. The heartbeat of this philosophy is steady throughout his book.

Brooks’ marriage to Ann, whom Brooks describes as ‘the centre of his life’ not only consolidated the Australian/American heritage but it also opened up a life of travel for Brooks and Ann that took them on a journey of adventure and discovery to many countries and regions and cultures. They had many interests in common, including their shared commitment to Christian values, and their journeys of travel together reflect both their shared appreciation of the cultural diversity and social interaction they experienced, along with a shared sense of purpose and mission of investing their care into the lives of everyone they were to meet, no matter where they were from or what they did for a living.

A striking example of how travel with meaning and purpose planted itself into their relationship leaps out of the book as Brooks describes some travel itineraries from the year of their wedding. If we could see the entry and exit visas on both their passports in one eventful week in 1959 we would see them stamped with New York, London, Switzerland, and back to London, topping it all off with Brooks proposing to Anne while they were flying over Paris at night, and Ann said ‘yes’ (Page 69).

Brooks takes us into his and Ann’s active family life with their children. We get to learn of their splendid achievements, sometimes against the odds, and their growing up and marrying and the arrival of grandchildren who likewise grow up to ‘Meet Life’s Challenges’, again sometimes against the odds. All of that flows into and out of a background of significant recent and present-day events where we meet heart-warmingly regular people and inspiringly noble and notable people such that we are made to feel at home with them on their pages, with the monochrome photos aiding the connection. The author’s style is straightforward and easy to read but as you catch the style you realize how energetically it moves the story along. He employs short, punchy sentences that get the reader into lively dialogue as if we were sitting around the table with himself and a host of other guests.

After the years of preparation in laying the foundation of discipline and study and applying the principles of life that he valued, Brooks Wilson starts to hit his straps and his potential becomes realized in a career of leadership that leads to countless areas of expression.
With his home base firmly settled in Australia and maintaining strong ties with the US Brooks begins working in Sydney with a company called Koppers USA and through this company he connects with two businessmen who had been at Harvard Business School where Brooks also studied. 
Brooks worked with these two men to set up a business arrangement between Koppers USA and BHP Australia, and Koppers Australia Pty Ltd was finally registered as a 50/50 joint venture with BHP. This Australian company was renamed KAP, with Brooks Wilson serving as Marketing manager in Sydney as his first appointment, and in time becoming Managing Director of this very profitable company and creating international trade links with many countries and regions in the Pacific, North America, the Middle East and Asia. 

The narrative of the company’s international trade hits a cracking pace in this section of the book as the author describes multiple meetings with heads of State in Australia and the USA and in China, with the China connection providing a good dose of intrigue in times of global headline events. One paragraph that sits modestly amongst the dealings with China describes what is called a ‘Compensation Trade Agreement’ and it reads ‘this was the first venture of any type to be agreed between an Australian and a Chinese company and worked for the mutual benefit of both companies’. Many of these impressive milestone events are backed up by citations in the appendices from various magazine and newspaper articles.

Towards the end of the book in the second last chapter Brooks Wilson rolls the story back into the 1800’s and features legendary family members who have wound their DNA into the personalities of the current generation of Wilsons, which makes this work a true chronicle that any family would treasure. But this book goes beyond the chronicle and legacy of past and present family history. The writing has been coiled to project a decisive challenge of how to face the future to all who read it. This book is not just for the extended Wilson family and their friends, it is a book to be offered to any person of any age who desires to know how to build a vision for their lives, and who would like to know what ingredients of character, and courage and compassion deserve to be taken in hand and given to their world.

Paul O’Sullivan

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/meeting-lifes-challenges-brooks-c-wilson/1142275488

WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS Matthew 6:22

Matthew 13:44 … The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

In the days when this parable was written there were no central banks as we know them today but there were money lenders who kept peoples’ money on low interest and lent money out on high interest. This led to the practice of people burying their money in fields that they owned, in a hidden place, to use when needed, and if anyone happened to be working on that field for whatever reason and found the treasure, he would know that it belonged to someone else and that stealing the money could get him into big trouble. So, if he really valued that treasure, he would have to buy the field and use the treasure perhaps to trade in business or even get some interest from the money lenders. 

We see this principle in another parable where a land owner who was travelling to a far land gave different sums of money to his servants and told them to trade it and he would reward them when he returned (Matthew 25:14). They all did well and profited to different degrees and the landowner was pleased with their results, except for one servant who buried the money in the field and did not put it to profitable use and didn’t even put it in the ‘bank’ (from ‘trapeza’ – a four legged table that served as a money exchange counter). The unprofitable servant was punished for his idleness and the unprofitable servant was cast into the outer darkness (vs.30).
Outer darkness is the state of the soul that is driven by fear and frustration and emotional turmoil while inner light is the state of the soul that is powered by faith and hope and love. The point is, that it is one thing to have a treasure buried somewhere but it is essential to put that treasure to good use, as we have a responsibility to be productive and to share our productivity with others and not just heap up treasure for ourselves. As far as spiritual treasure is concerned, nothing compares with participation in the outward flow of the Divine life for bringing grace and goodwill into this world. It is also the most fulfilled state of being that a person’s soul can experience. It is sadly odd that most people are not interested in that.

In the parable of the treasure hidden in the field the treasure represents the gift of the life of Jesus hidden within our hearts and our hearts represent the field. We don’t buy the treasure, we buy the field and the field yields the treasure. The Bible says that where our heart is that is where our treasure will be also (Matthew 6:21). We may have allowed the field of our heart over the years to treasure random things that bear no worthwhile comparison to the highest treasure there is of the Divine life within. We need to sell off that old field of our heart that contained all the pursuits that we once thought were treasures and buy the new field.  

The miracle of God’s Grace is that a new heart is given to everyone freely by God, simply waiting to be discovered by our faith. Every decision of faith in that new territory of the new heart grows the area of this new territory and as the old heart gives way to the expanding territory of the new heart, we experience a greater and greater appreciation of the new treasure within. Our spiritual journey is one of being aware of having a new heart and letting our faith decisions become the trade-offs of the old worldly values and the negative emotional baggage, for the new life-giving values of the Kingdom of God. The apostle Paul said that he had suffered the loss of all things to gain Jesus. Paul purchased the right field and found his treasure. (Philippians 3:8). 
Paul also writes about the treasure as being in an earthen vessel, which is our outer life, and no matter how fragile that vessel is, or how formidable are the pressures upon that vessel, the inner treasure is of greater power than the outward pressure. 
2 Corinthians 4:7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are pressured on every side by troubles, but not crushed and broken. We are perplexed because we don't know why things happen as they do, but we don't give up and quit.

Many people today are getting stuck in a cycle of negative emotional reaction to adverse circumstances in their lives and those emotional reactions come from a negative spiritual energy, but Paul is describing the ‘excellence of the power of the Spirit of God ’ within him which flows from the inner treasure in the heart. The word for ‘excellence’ in the Greek in this verse is ‘hyperbole’ which is the word we use to mean exaggerated or overstated. The Greek word means ‘to be thrown out beyond the normal range’. In other words, Paul experienced a power that was out in another orbit. It operated above the normal energy of willpower or mere emotional determination. He found the power of the indwelling treasure of the life of God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. 

When we ask ourselves about our outward capability to manage the circumstances and challenges and pressures that come upon us in these days we might well say ‘How do I cope with these difficulties or how this will work out’ – it’s unknown and unpredictable.
But each one of us can know that our inner capability to come through these pressures spiritually and emotionally is a spiritual energy that nothing can overcome and that is getting stronger day by day. As Paul says in the same Scripture above concerning the treasure in earthen vessels ‘Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward self is perishing, yet the inward self is being renewed day by day (vs.16). As all things are being shaken in these days we can see these shakings as God awakening people in the earth at this time to an awareness of the power of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. The excellency of this power is of a Kingdom within that cannot be shaken.
Can you imagine the futility of us trying to make things change in our world and not allowing things to change in ourselves first? That has never worked. 

If all that we have as a mindset is the pain of the adversity of today, we will think of life as being all about what we don’t have and what we are not, instead of the inner treasure that is about what we do have and about who we truly are in God. Whatever that mindset is becomes the spiritual energy that radiates out from us that manifests who we are and manifests the inner grace that we have to everyone around us. We have to sell off that ‘don’t have’ and ‘am not’ for what we actually ‘do have’ and who we really are, now, and allow the ‘excellence of the power of God’, that real inner state of who we are be found in us. It is a spiritual energy exchange. We can experience the peace and rest of that beautiful field and the treasure it contains.  

‘He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.’ (Psalm 23)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Church and disputes with the World

THE CHURCH AND DISPUTES WITH THE WORLD
It is understandable that the world will have reason to dispute with Christianity in general and with the Church in particular because the belief system of the Church is based upon a spiritual reality that is not understood by the material and non-spiritual rationality of the world. If you talk to a person of the world, you will not expect them to believe that God in Christ created the universe, and that Jesus was raised from the dead and is now Lord over the Universe and Lord over our lives. 

Christians understand the material and non-spiritual rationality of the world, but they also understand a transcendent reality that comes from the revelation of God to our spirit so the Church does not have to be engaged in disputes with the world because Christians can engage in good will discussion within both kinds of realty. They can have healthy debates with all people and agree to disagree with each other on all kinds of day-to-day issues that depend solely upon observation rather than revelation from God. 

A Christian can live effectively in the world of material rationalism and be successful and productive and operate with a motivation of God’s love to bless everybody in that world that God loves creating no basis for antagonism. A Christian can let that love be on display knowing that it is only the Grace of God that changes the basis of reality for an individual from the natural realm into the spiritual.

1Corinthians 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges (to discern, examine, determine if right or wrong) all things, yet he himself is not correctly discerned by the world.

When Jesus said his Kingdom was not of this world (John 18) he was making a distinction between the spirit of the world and the Spirit of the Kingdom of God. He was sending his disciples into the world to serve and to save and to heal the disordered soul of humanity, and when he saw his disciples wanting to judge the world for their sins, he rebuked them.
James wanted to call down judgement of fire upon those that opposed the message of the Kingdom of God and Jesus rebuked him saying ‘you don’t know what spirit you are of’ (Luke 9:55), and he explained to his disciples that the authority of the political State of worldly government operated from a power base that oppressed and lorded itself over people. (Matthew 20:22).

Jesus taught them that this was not the way for them to exercise their spiritual authority, which was based on servanthood, just as Jesus demonstrated his own spiritual authority when he emptied himself of Divine privilege and became as a servant Saviour to all the world (Philippians 2:7). And he did not judge the world.
John 12:46 I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness. And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him—the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day 
In other words, there will be an accounting, but it will be in God’s way and in God’s time.

Paul wrote that God does not authorize or empower Christians in their condemnation of the sins of the world but he empowers the message of reconciliation through Jesus. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their sins against them, and has committed to us this message of reconciliation. (2Corinthians 5:19). And he also wrote ‘For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? (Church discipline issues) God judges those outside (1Corinthians 5:12).

We are here to live a life of faith that is consciously aware that we are IN Christ as a New Creation (him always with us and us always with him) having inherited all the spiritual blessings of the Father as sons and daughters with his Son. We can live this life of spiritual blessing and share the good news of the Grace of God with people and prepare their hearts to receive Jesus as Saviour. The Apostle Peter encourages us to always be ready for this - but in your hearts honour Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect… (1Peter 3:15)

At one end of today’s global worldly population there are multitudes of worldly people of good will made in the image of God, that have little or no faith in God and are simply living out of a good conscience as best they can. They are depending upon their skills and experience and integrity to live a good life and be happy. At the other end of the worldly population there are wrong hearted people (also made in the image of God) who behave in a self-serving and ungodly way that is harmful to themselves and all those around them. God sees the hearts and will deal differently with each individual as he decides.

There is also the political State of worldly government that operates from a power base that can be corrupted and oppress and lord itself over people, asserting itself for its own ideological ends. It creates institutions and deceptive power hierarchies to preserve and consolidate its power and wealth. 
Jesus told his disciples not to build his Church into a political power base to contest with political worldly power over the State. When Jesus was sentenced by Pilate, who embodied the political State of Rome in that moment, Jesus said. 
“My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” ( John 18:36)
Judas had meanwhile betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver because he realized that Jesus was not a political activist in a contest for political power and he was bitterly disappointed in him. The closest thing to power for Judas was the money.
This does not mean that Christians should not get involved in politics as citizens of the State, and it is a good idea if they can have leadership influence as that may be their gift and calling. That is simply being a responsible citizen. 
But they do not speak for the Church, they simply live out of Christ. They have no authority to speak for the Church and they have no mandate to judge unbelievers for their sins. 
If as a parent and as a citizen in a democratic country I am offended at a school that my child attends in allowing transgender males to occupy female bathrooms, it is my business as a citizen to oppose this politically and take whatever action I can to see that kind of a practice was changed. That is being personally active as a citizen that lives in a political world where we have freedom of speech and protest and the right to vote, but it is not Christian political activism in God’s name against the State. 

There have always been times when Christians have been persecuted for their beliefs and this will never change, and no secular laws will ever effectively change this attitude of the world against Christians who give obedience to God rather than man because of being forced to do something against their conscience before God. When Peter and the apostles was forbidden to preach the Gospel by the leaders of the nation of Israel, he said to them.
‘We must obey God rather than men’. (Acts 5:29). And consequently, they were put in prison, but an angel released them. Peter later writes to the Church and advises them on how to respond to persecution.
1Peter 3:15 And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you are blessed. "And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled." But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.
If Christians live the gospel of good news of the love and forgiveness of God and preach that, the Holy Spirit will bear witness to that, and God will supernaturally confirm it.
Mark 16:19 So then, after the Lord had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen.

Church leaders must ask God for wisdom in these matters and teach their people to follow the ways and the words of Jesus. We are living in times when God is allowing the works of darkness to be seen for what they are, and the more the darkness is revealed the more God’s light will be upon his people. The Church does not need political power, it needs God’s power from Heaven, and one is gained at the expense of the other – we do the choosing. And God chooses ordinary Christians to often shine as lights in this way, not always Christians of prominence or wealth or political power. A person simply needs to stand for God in their particular situation of challenge.
1Corinthians 1:27 Look at your brothers and sisters who were chosen, that not many were wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty.

The spirit of God’s Church has compassion on the suffering of humanity, acting to bless and comfort people in their pain and suffering, to be loving and forgiving and motivated to bring people closer to God so that their souls will be healed and saved.
The Christian heart and mind and will of God’s Church of love and mercy has created institutions based on these values for centuries. Those institutions have served the world through education and nurture and care of a suffering humanity. 
This heart of God’s mercy towards the world is the overflow of the justice and mercy of God that has been poured upon us through the New Covenant and gratefully received, and we know that when we show mercy, we are shown more mercy (Matthew 5:7). It is the activity of God’s grace upon the human heart that brings the individual spirit into life out of death
Ephesians 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).

 

Church and Disputes of Faith

CHURCH AND DISPUTES OF FAITH 
Romans 14:1 Accept and receive those who are weak in the faith, though not with a view to settling disputes. Don’t criticize them for having different ideas from yours about what is right and wrong.

When Paul wrote his only letter to the church in Rome he had never been there and didn’t get to go there for many years to come. The Roman church was a mixture of Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians and there were disputes between the groups about how to honour God. The Jewish Christians believed that they had to stay faithful to the Old Testament food laws about abstaining from meat and to the observance of all the Jewish Sabbaths, while the Gentile Christians were growing in a robust New Testament faith with freedom in the simplicity that was in Christ. 

Each group had a differently developed conscience regarding the rights and wrongs of the practice of Christianity and harsh and unloving judgement of one another was going on between them. Paul had been among the most learned of Jewish teachers and was also the one that God had given revelation to concerning the Gospel of Christ as the Saviour of the whole world, so he was the one chosen by God to address these critical issues of religious division. Paul wanted to see the Jewish Christians become stronger in faith in the simplicity of Christ, and he wanted the Gentile Christians to not boast about their stronger faith but to exercise faith that worked through love (Galatians 5:6).

Romans 14:2 For instance, don’t argue with them about whether or not to eat meat that has been offered to idols. You may believe there is no harm in this, but the faith of others is weaker; they think it is wrong and will go without any meat at all and eat vegetables rather than eat that kind of meat. Those who think it is all right to eat such meat must not look down on those who won’t. And if you are one of those who won’t, don’t find fault with those who do. For God has accepted them to be his children. They are God’s servants, not yours. 4. They are responsible to him, not to you. Let him tell them whether they are right or wrong (the work of the Holy Spirit). And God is able to make them do as they should (Philippians 2:13).

Paul believed and preached the simplicity of Christ and that the Old Testament rites and ordinances were just shadows of the reality that was Christ. He himself came under criticism from both sides of these disputes because he had freedom in his faith to both comply with the Jewish rites or to discard them. He said he had become all things to all men that he might win more people to Christ ‘I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings (1Corinthians 9:1). Paul lived a life of faith that worked though love. He taught that the old life of limited human effort passes through the cross and is resurrected into a new living work of the Spirit of God within us. God commends the work of faithfulness, but he empowers the work of faith.

Romans 14:5 Some think that Christians should observe certain days as special days to worship God, but others say every day alike belongs to God. On questions of this kind everyone must decide for himself in his own mind (nous)

This word nous is a description of the conscience, and it is described as the intellectual understanding and reason as the capacity for spiritual truth, the higher powers of the soul, the faculty of perceiving divine things, and of recognising good and evil –- The other Greek word for conscience in the Bible is sunedeisis which means to perceive a notion of something in dialogue with one’s own mind). 

Romans 14:6 If you have special days for worshiping the Lord, you are trying to honor him so you are doing a good thing. So is the person who eats meat that has been offered to idols; he is thankful to the Lord for his provision and he is doing right. And the person who won’t touch such meat, he, too, is anxious to please the Lord, and is thankful. We are not our own masters to live or die as we ourselves might choose. Living or dying we follow the Lord. Either way we are his. Christ died and rose again for this very purpose, so that he can be our Lord both while we live and when we die.
You have no right to criticize your brother or look down on him. Each of us will stand personally before the Judgment Seat of God and will give an account of himself to God.
(And the inner motivation of the hearts will be revealed - 1Corinthians 4:5)

The Jewish Christians observed the Old Testament Commandment of Sabbath days of gathering together as a time of resting from all worldly labour and effort in order to honour God. 

The Gentile Christians mostly observed Sunday for gathering together to worship and share fellowship in the breaking of bread and the preaching of the Word because Sunday came to be called the Lord’s Day by the first Christians in the Book of Acts (Ch.20). It replaced the Jewish Sabbath to honour the day that Jesus rose from the dead, on the first day of the week, and it was the day on which Paul directed them to give their tithes and offerings to the lord (1Corinthians 16:2). Paul would preach in the synagogues on the Saturdays whenever he had an opportunity in his travels, and he would gather with Gentile Christians on a Sunday. 

But Paul really saw every day as a Sabbath day of resting in the finished work of Jesus by living to the Lord and with the Lord day in and day out, not for just one seventh of the week. 

Romans 14:13 So don’t criticize each other anymore. Try instead to live in such a way that you will never make your brother stumble by letting him see you doing something he thinks is wrong. As for myself, I am perfectly sure on the authority of the Lord Jesus that there is nothing really wrong with eating meat that has been offered to idols. But if someone believes it is wrong, then he shouldn’t do it because for him it is wrong. And if your brother is bothered by what you eat, you are not acting in love if you go ahead and eat it. Don’t let your eating ruin someone for whom Christ died. Don’t do anything that will cause criticism against yourself even though you know that what you do is right.
For, after all, the important thing for us as Christians is not what we eat or drink but stirring up goodness and peace and joy from the Holy Spirit. If you let Christ be Lord in these affairs, God will be glad; and so will others. In this way aim for harmony in the church and try to build each other up.

The word for conscience is a word of significant meaning for our inner life. Our English word derives from two words, con=with, and science=knowledge. This knowledge stems from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the management of knowing good from evil differs with each individual. We noted earlier the other Greek words for conscience in the Bible, nous and sunedeisis. The conscience is a spiritual sensibility about what is right and wrong that God places in each person’s heart, then as children we are taught what is right and wrong by parents according to their religion and culture and community values, and some children develop a more moral sensibility than others. 

Romans 14:20 Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

The conscience for Israel was formed by the Ten Commandments and provided the most complete and most comprehensive fountain of the wisdom and knowledge of God’s nature which was designed to bring them to maturity individually and as a community. The Commandments express God’s ideology of relational integrity between us and God and between us and one another.

Under the New Covenant the wisdom and knowledge of God contained in the Commandments is written in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. In this way we become led into all truth, directed, guided and steered as the Holy Spirit arranges learning events for us so that we come to know God and become known of God. 

The story of the Apostle Peter is an example of this journey of transformation from a constricted Jewish religious conscience into a clear and strong Christian conscience. His first lesson was when he argued with God about having to eat with and visit with a Gentile Centurion which was strictly against Jewish Law, but this Gentile wanted to hear the Gospel. God won the argument and the Centurion and his household were saved.
Peter was even rebuked by Paul in front of the other Apostles for causing division in the Gentile church at Antioch. Peter had been eating freely with the Gentile Christians for some time but when a group of Jewish Christian leaders were sent from Jerusalem to check out the church Peter refused to eat with the Gentiles and caused much division and offense. He learned many lessons the hard way and his transformation of conscience was accompanied by a transformation from his ethnic and religious identity into his true eternal and spiritual identity in Christ.

It is on this journey where we all come to find our true identity which was created by God in our spirit in eternity before we were born. As we grow in the freedom of faith and love through the grace of God, we ultimately become the real self that can be expressed through our transformed soul each day of our life.

 

 

 

The Blood of our Communion

THE BLOOD OF OUR COMMUNION

Exodus 12:3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household. 
Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. It is the LORD'S Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.

That miraculous event was celebrated by Israel every year during their Feast of Passover to acknowledge that life was given to God’s people through the blood of the Passover Lamb while death came upon the families of Egypt. There were many such rituals that God commanded Moses to have Israel perform to the most precise detail after they escaped from Egypt and journeyed through the wilderness towards the Promised land. Every year would begin with the ritual of the Feast of Passover which was followed fifty days later by the Feast of Pentecost and followed later in the seventh month of the year by the Feast of Tabernacles.
For fifteen hundred years the sacrificial blood of animals was spilled on the ground day after day by the priests of Israel for the forgiveness of their sins. God told Moses to say to the people ‘I have given you the blood to sprinkle upon the altar as an atonement for your souls; it is the blood that makes atonement because it is the life’ (Leviticus 17:11). Blood speaks of life as well as forgiveness.

But since the time of Jesus there is no more spilling of blood every year on the ritual Feast of Passover for the sins of Israel. The Bible says that John saw Jesus coming to him, and he said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), The blood of Jesus as our Passover Lamb spilled on the dusty ground of Calvary was the last drop of lifeblood to be spilled, and that blood is for the sin of all Mankind, (The whole earth) and it brings the life of God to all humanity. His blood is the blood of our Communion, the union of his life with our life.
And since the time of Jesus, we no longer live by rituals. The Bible says these were just symbolic of the inner reality of Christ and his life working within us 
Colossians 2:17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the reality is of Christ. 

The only way that the blood of Jesus can be applied to us today is to our hearts in the inner work of the healing and salvation of our souls so that we can live in partnership with Jesus, sharing in his life of faith and love wherever we may be, as the Scripture says. ‘But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ’ (Eph. 2:13).
And just as Israel lived with the day-to-day reality of the blood of sacrifice so can we also live with a day-to-day consciousness of having the life of Christ working within us. That is what it means for us to be ‘saved’, thanking him for the blood applied to our lives

The blood of Jesus cannot be applied by us upon any external thing as it is solely for the inner redemptive work upon the soul of mankind, even though some Christians oddly enough still practice ‘applying the blood’ or ‘pleading the blood’ upon their houses or their cars for protection and safety. Israel only ever once sprinkled the blood of the Lamb upon the doorpost of their houses in Egypt. Our faith in Jesus’ blood has nothing to do with houses, and ‘pleading the blood’ does not exist in Scripture. That belongs to the same area of superstition in the way that some other Christians believe in having a St. Christopher medal hanging in the front windscreen of the car to protect them while driving. These are no better than a rabbit’s foot, and I can’t find that in the Bible either.

Under the Old covenant every spiritual act that the people did was performed as a formal ritual. This is not the way we live Christianity. 
Jesus told the disciples to baptise people, he also told them to share Communion in eating of the bread and in drinking of the cup. He also said that the true worshippers would worship in spirit and in truth. 
Jesus did not make these activities into formal rituals, but the Church has unfortunately turned these faith practices into a multitude of formal rituals that have now  become the reality instead of ‘the reality that is of Christ’, and contention over these formalities has plagued the Church with disunity for centuries.

Baptism is the reality of our identification by faith in the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus and our commitment to living in newness of life through Christ (Romans 6). Worship in spirit and in truth is the physical act of offering our bodies to God as a living sacrifice in humble adoration and prayer and the singing of our praise to God, and in our loving service to others. (Romans 12). Sharing Communion is our participation together in the mystery of the hidden life of Christ within us as Jesus said at the last supper. This cup that is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood.
(Luke 22:20). We stop and linger in a moment-by-moment powerful remembrance of our oneness with God and with one another in the Body of Christ, as the lifeblood of his heart beats within our hearts.

In this life it is important for us to know what we believe, to know what we should do, and to know what to hope for. We are living in a world where many do not know what they believe, so they don’t know what they should do, and they have nothing to hope for. 

Knowing what we can believe
The world had to wait for nearly two thousand years for the supernatural work of the lifeblood of Jesus to become the fulfilment of life on earth for humanity. The Bible says that John saw Jesus coming to him, and he said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), but it was more than just taking away sins, it was so that we could have life and not death. Jesus died and rose again to give us his life. Humanity could now be relieved from its mindset of separation from God and could have the faith and confidence to walk close to God and get to know him as a person. 

Knowing what we should do
Hebrews 10: 19 Therefore, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus … let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience 
As we spend more and more time in his presence, we receive the wisdom and guidance for our daily lives from the Holy Spirit to do God’s will for our lives. (1John 2:27 – the anointing abides in us and teaches us).

Having a hope for the future.
We no longer put faith in our rituals or demand signs and wonders but in a powerful life that dwells within us which becomes the main thought and activity of the renewed mind. This divine loving intelligent life never ceases to operate in us, and this is the essence and substance of our faith and gives us hope for the future. 

This God life is the powerful life energy that created the universe and orders everything in it, and this indwelling life in us creatively orders and reorders everything in our personal life and in our immediate world of people and things. If God who designed the movements of the galaxies and who created every molecule and atom and unseeable particle of matter and who has his eye on every sparrow, how much more is he vitally and personally interested in us as his beloved family that live ordinary lives and do unspectacular things. He yearns to participate in those ordinary yet special things with us in close and intimate Communion.

Forgiveness and Mercy and Yom Kippur

FORGIVENESS AND MERCY AND YOM KIPPUR

John the Baptist was the messenger that had been sent by God to prepare the way before Jesus, preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins that would come through Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world 
Luke 7:29 When all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too, they declared God just, and were baptized with the baptism of John, but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.

One of those Pharisees who had rejected the teaching of John the Baptist that day afterwards invited Jesus to his house for a meal where there were many guests, and among them was a woman of ‘the city’ who was one of those who had repented and been baptised along with some of the other guests. Such dinners of hospitality were often open and public for the Jewish community with both local and regional guests and where many topics of the day were discussed.

Luke 7:36 One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.”
“A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

The Pharisee that had invited Jesus to his house and many of the company that were there would have rejected the call to repentance and the offer of baptism from John and there would have been an awkward division in spirit between those who had accepted John’s teaching about Jesus and those who had scorned it. Nonetheless because of the growing reputation of Jesus as a prophet and a teacher, as well as the reports of his working of signs and wonders there was due respect given to him by the host and by other guests that were there.
When the woman began to wash and anoint the feet of Jesus the Pharisee whose name was Simon said to himself, either by muttering or just by thinking silently, that Jesus’ behaviour was scandalous, and as the host, he was aware of the other guests who were also looking askance at the spectacle. Whether or not Jesus heard Simon mutter or whether he simply perceived the obvious disapproval in his spirit it does not say. Jesus broke in on the awkward moment with a tantalizing hypothetical for Simon about two people having debts cancelled, with one debt ten times larger than the other and asking Simon which debtor would have the greatest love for the moneylender. 

Simon was compelled by logic to give the correct answer and Jesus uses the situation contrasting Simon’s lack of courtesy and honour to Jesus as his guest by ignoring him, compared to the sinful woman’s extravagant act of loving appreciation and gratitude. 
The woman continued to wash and anoint the feet of Jesus with an outpouring of gratitude and love that were sentiments born out of her transformed soul. Her extravagance in honouring Jesus with such a greeting of love outshone the Pharisee’s unceremonious welcome to Jesus as his guest and she was able to now acknowledge Jesus as the forgiving Messiah God that John had proclaimed him to be. 
Some guests asked the question who is it that can forgive sins because only God can do that’, but Jesus then brings home his point that the women who had sinned so much and who was forgiven so much had also loved so very much in return. 
The woman is traditionally believed to be Mary Magdalene because in the verses directly following the above account, Mary Magdalene who had seven demons cast out from her is mentioned along with two other prominent women in the community who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities and they as well as others provided for Jesus and his disciples out of their means.

In this outstanding story of contrasts, we see the extremes of utter sinfulness and utter forgiveness which are only possible in the expansive love and mercy of God. And in this mighty comparison we have the major point of the story which is that God has always desired oneness with us as his sinful creation, and yet sin has separated us from him. 
But sin has not separated him from us. He pursues us relentlessly into our repentance and faith because forgiveness and mercy are always on God’s mind and heart. Jesus lived forgiving and he died forgiving - Forgive them father for they know not what they do.

From the moment Mankind first sinned it was God’s loving and determined intention to make us aware of his forgiveness for our sinfulness. Our yes to that resolute appeal is our repentance. Sinfulness was Mankind’s wilful self-determination to pursue its own self-interest, expressing its independent mindset of separation from God. 
God formalised his commitment to bridge the gap of separation that sin had caused between humanity and himself by making a Covenant of partnership between himself and the nation of Israel, and Israel became the test case for all of humanity. 
The Old Covenant was all about sin and forgiveness through a ritualised structure of blood sacrifice being made as an offering for their sins, and instruction in wisdom and righteousness being given to them though the Law so that they would know explicitly what sin was because of the Commandments that they had to obey, but never could and never did. That Covenant also offered many blessings for obedience and a Promised Land for an inheritance.

This arrangement was as close that God could get to bridging the gap that sin had caused. It was not perfect because it was only in the strength of the human will that people could try to stay in line with what God had commanded, and no one could ever manage to stay in alignment with God’s requirements.
But day after day sins were committed and day after day the sacrifices were offered, and day after day sins were forgiven. this went on for fifteen hundred years. Many were able to draw close to God over that time, but no one throughout that time could ever achieve the oneness with God that was his eternal purpose.
The day after day sacrifices were offered to obtain forgiveness for explicitly known sins but there was another kind of unclassified sin called ‘unintentional sin’ and this also marred the conscience because people knew they were falling short and were not sure of what sacrifice brought them forgiveness. This kind of sin required not so much forgiveness but mercy and such was the mercy of God that he instituted a special day once a year called the Day of Atonement for the cleansing of all the unintentional sins of all of Israel. (Hebrews 9:7 the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people)
Unintentional – agnoema – shortcoming - error. a sin of ignorance or thoughtlessness.

These sins were offered up by the High priest on behalf of all of Israel and the blood of the sacrifice was offered with the sprinkling of blood seven times on the mercy seat upon the Ark of the Covenant (Leviticus 16), ‘seven times’ speaking of the fulness of mercy on offer from God. ‘Seven times’ is also a Biblical code for events that occur in the end time fullness of time and Jesus told Peter to forgive seventy times seven times, so forgiveness and mercy are both to be an emphasis in God’s end times purposes. 
That was the greatest day in their year (Yom Kippur) and it speaks to us not only of the abundance of God’s mercy upon their ‘sins of ignorance’ but it speaks to us of God’s mercy upon us today where we unwittingly keep falling short while intending to be faithful. It shows God’s eternal purpose for us as his children to know oneness with him through our faith in Jesus who is our atonement (however you wish to pronounce it). 

The new Covenant tells us that the Law is now written on our hearts, so the Holy Spirit can now clearly show us what sin is and reveal how great God’s forgiveness is and to turn our hearts away from sin and turn our hearts towards God (repentance). We do not have to offer sacrifices all the time because of the one sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary.
The New Covenant also tells us that our sins and our iniquities he will remember no more! It also tells us that he will have mercy on all of our unintentional sins of ignorance, our constant falling short that puts us out of alignment with his perfection. Our Day of Atonement is all day every day. We still have sin within us in our humanity and God still closes the gap of separation by giving us the bridge of forgiveness and mercy. We often walk across the footpath of the bridge of forgiveness with a heart of repentance, but we mostly move along a moving footway of mercy for our unintentional sins. We all need that moving footway all the time and we all need to be consciously aware of its gracious provision all the time.

So this story about Mary Magdalene had to be extravagant and emotional because it is a story of God’s most determined intention for our lives, that we are at one with him and with peace in our hearts. Only by knowing this inner peace can we possibly love him back, and Jesus sealed that reality for Mary by telling her that her faith had saved her and that she could go in peace – the peace of oneness with Jesus. 
So if you feel at any time that you need to be closer to God than you are, remember God’s bridge of determined love for us. It is still about sin and forgiveness and mercy but it is God’s bridge, and it is for us to move confidently across this bridge of his grace into his Kingdom life where all things are made new.

Water into Wine

WATER INTO WINE 

The first miracle believed to be performed by Jesus is the changing of the water into wine at the wedding at Cana in Galilee. Mary the mother of Jesus is an invited guest, and it is held that Mary and Jesus were actually present as family, along with other relatives and friends and some disciples of Jesus. This is supposed because Mary the mother of Jesus takes a very close familial role of responsibility in noticing that the guests were running out of wine and sees herself as being in the place to give orders to the servants, as it is the place of family to attend to the needs of the guests for the bride and bridegroom and their parents.

John starts his account of the events at the wedding by saying ‘On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there (John2:1), which prompts us to go back and read what had been happening on the first and second day of whatever Jesus had been doing. It states in chapter one that John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus who had been baptizing people in the Jordan River and telling people that there was One coming that was greater than himself then saw Jesus coming towards him and proclaimed him as ‘The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’. 
This was the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus, so this is what happened on the first day. Two of John the Baptist’s disciples asked Jesus on that first day if they could now become his disciples instead of John’s and Jesus tells them to follow him. Andrew is mentioned and he goes to get his brother Simon Peter who also becomes his disciple that day.
We then read in verse 43 ‘The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee’ and we take this as the second day. He found Philip there and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ Then Philip found Nathanael. That second day was about Jesus gathering disciples.
The next day would have been the third day where the next verse starts in John Chapter two with the story of the wedding feast in Cana where Jesus and his new disciples are guests. 

John 2:1 On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until last.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.
This miracle is the first of what are believed to be the seven ‘signs’ of the coming of the Kingdom of God through Jesus in John’s Gospel. The other six signs are said to include three major healings, the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, Jesus walking on the water, and the raising of Lazarus from the dead. (John 4:54) (John 5:18) (John 6:1-14) (John 6:28) (John 9:16) (John 12:18).

The word for ‘sign’ in the original language is semeion. A sign is a supernatural event just like a miracle (dynamis), but a sign is also a ‘signpost’ pointing to the coming of the Kingdom of God with the mighty and dramatic change that comes to humanity when the divine being of God is joined to his created being of humanity through Jesus. This is the Father’s gift of the Holy Spirit into his Kingdom, through his Son. 
Mary had told Jesus that they had run out of wine for the guests and Jesus was taken aback by her pointed remark which implied that he had the power to miraculously change the situation, and he commented that this didn’t have anything to do with him, because his hour had not yet come. Mary seems to disregard his comment and tells the servants to “Do whatever he tells you.” The Bible then relates how Jesus goes into action and tells the servants to fill six stone jars with water. 
The Master of Ceremonies then tasted the excellent miraculous wine and makes the legendary statement to the bridegroom “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until last.”
There were six stone jars at the entrance of the house and these were for the religious ritual purification of the washing of each person’s hands and feet as they entered. 
The number six symbolises our fallen human nature - Mankind was created on the sixth day of creation and the water represents the waters of chaos with creation beginning with the Spirit of God hovering above the waters 
Genesis 1:2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep (thom - an abyss as a chaos of surging mass of water) and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The water speaks of the disorder of our natural human life which waits to be creatively touched by the Spirit of God. The water in the six stone jars being changed into wine symbolises an inner supernatural transformation where we become a New Creation, being made one in spirit with God. The water does not cease to exist but it becomes transformed into a new creation reality.

On this occasion, Jesus did what his mother asked him, but the Bible says that Jesus did nothing unless he was told by his Father to do it. Jesus would have understood  that his mother had been told by his Father what he was to do (Mary had indeed heard from Father God on many occasions before this).
This speaks to us not only of a family occasion at a wedding, but it speaks of Father ‘s family plan for humanity on earth which is that through Jesus, mankind was destined to dwell with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for all time. 
The Family in Heaven always was a family that lived with one another and for one another as one. Theirs is the perfect state of relationship and that was forsaken by Adam and Eve for all of humanity when they believed Satan who charged God with being self-interested and not perfectly loving to us. Jesus has reversed this lie into the truth of God’s perfect and inclusive love for us.
1John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit: and these three are one.
We are now part of the three in one God Family and we share their life and being and purpose and meaning. Jesus had explained to his disciples shortly before his death and resurrection that their lives would forever be intermingled with himself and his Father and the Holy Spirit.
John 14:20 In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you. 26. And the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things.
John has been unfolding the Kingdom truth in this story that Jesus would be the one who contains the Father and the holy Spirit within his earthly being and so he is 
central to our being included in the Trinity because while being fully God, he took upon himself and into himself our human nature with all of its limitations, as we see in the following Scripture
Colossians 2:9 For in Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.
Jesus is the one who causes us to know that the love the Father has for us is the same as the love that the Father shares fully with Jesus himself. Jesus was also the one through whom he sent the holy Spirit, and it is to Jesus that we continually pray to be filled with his Spirit. John the Baptist had just previously said ‘I baptise with water but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit’ and this supernatural act of God of the water being transformed into wine within us is the intermingling and the flow of God’s life in us and though us. 

We are fulfilled in our lives when we go with that flow and do not resist it and then we become like it and reflect it and all the while we try to observe what is in us that is resisting it. We can now have faith that this flow of life is acting towards us, and as we yield to this flow of God’s life it empowers and heals wherever it touches us, in spirit soul and body. Belonging to the Heavenly family of God through Jesus becomes the realm or sphere in which we now live towards his human family in the earth. It is Jesus himself, who is the Lord of peace, who is to be present and ruling in our midst.
Ephesians 1:4 This was the way God planned it before he even created the world, choosing the destiny of us as humanity being joined to divinity in Jesus, complete and innocent and unashamed of who we are in our close love and intimacy with him.
The love and joy and peace of Jesus is to hold sway over every aspect of our lives, and instead of pouring out of our own weary humanity we can now invite people into this family by offering the life-giving new wine of His Spirit of grace and love to everybody around us, and always being aware of ourselves as water being mingled into wine.