Unbelieving believers

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.  Philippians 2:12-13

Were I to read the above passage with the mindset that I had before a revelation of grace and the new covenant, it would have been something like this:

Stop sinning and always obey, for you need to live holy and stop sinning so God will be pleased with you.  If you mess up, you better be really sorry about it and fearful that God will be displeased.  Then, get back to work!  Your salvation is on the line!

I would like to point out several key words in this verse from Philippians that will help us understand that this passage is actually an amazing encouragement about God's grace!

1. "You have ... obeyed."  This phrase is the Greek word hypakoúō and is an intensification of the Greek word koúō, meaning "to listen."  Hypakoúō, then, means to "attentively listen to" and "to be fully compliant under the authority of the one speaking."

In some public venues it is illegal to yell "Fire!" because doing so will create a panic which could result in the injury to the persons present.  Why could people be injured from this false alarm?  Because what we believe affects our actions.  If the phrase "you have...obeyed" in Greek really means to be fully compliant, then we can say it this way:  "You have believed" or "You gave heed to" or "You have acted according to the message you heard" all fit this definition.

2.  "work out."  Katergázomai means to bring to a decisive finality.  It is the action of someone who brings something to its conclusion.  The question for us, then, is what is our involvement in our salvation and how do we then "bring to conclusion" our salvation.  The answer is forthcoming!

3.  "fear and trembling"  Both words in the Greek, phóbos and trómos, include the idea of personal inadequacy, but trómos especially regards the distrust in one's own ability.  That being the case, this simple explanation poses the opposite idea of what most Christians believe about this verse, namely, that it is a call to double one's efforts and rely heavily on one's ability to bring about.  Instead, the truth of these words is to have no trust in one's own strength or ability.  That sounds like faith placed in Christ.

4.  "God who works in you."  Energéō describes the energy needed to bring something from one state to another, much like the electricity that energizes the wires in a light bulb, causing it to become a shining light.

So, with a better understanding of these two verses in Philippians, we must come back to our question of our katergázomai, our "working out" of this reality.  How do we "work out" our salvation?  It's very simple, really.  The instruction in these verses call on us to "do" the following:

Believe what you have heard about God's energy working in you.  He has brought you from one state to another.  In order to believe Him fully, you must have no confidence in yourself at all.  Your belief that you have been saved and changed is the end conclusion of your salvation.  That you would believe you are saved is the goal of God's salvation power in you!

I see so many Christians struggle to believe that they are in fact new creations; that they are one spirit with Christ; that sin has no power over them.  They live defeated, depressing lives that follow a cycle of effort, failure, depression, effort, failure, etc...

If only they would obey as Philippians 2 calls them to:  to believe that they are saved, righteous, holy, justified, etc., and that they had nothing to do with it.  It was God and always has been.

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

I Have Decided Not to Believe in God; I Am an Atheist

To all who know me:  I've been considering a decision that will have a radical impact on my life.  I wish I could say it was difficult to make this decision, but although it was taken several years, it was in the end an easy decision.  I also realize that I do not make this decision in a vacuum; it will affect you and all others whom I meet.  

I have decided that I am really an atheist.

I have doubted God's existence and the world's view that He is to be served.  I served this God for years and to be honest, it wore me out.  There are so many things in life that I want for myself, and your God holds them from me unless I obey Him.  Neither do I believe that we should sacrifice this one life of ours for Him.  Why should I give something so precious to me to a God who only demands more?  I cannot believe in this God that so many have preached.  In short, I have decided that I am truly at heart an atheist, because I absolutely and definitively refuse to believe in an angry God!

As any pro-active atheist does, I will speak out and be a voice against your belief in an angry God.  You will not be able to silence me.  I will fight you tooth and nail.  I will post on Facebook and internet blogs; I will write the truth and use your own favorite Scripture passages against you to debunk your insane and irrational beliefs.  Wherever I travel I will take with me this message.  With my last breath I will preach that your angry and vengeful God does not exist.

You may resent me; go ahead!  You may disagree with me; Jesus proved you wrong centuries ago.  You may refuse to let go of your angry God; no problem, my God is kind enough to let you believe what you choose.  When I preach that my God is good and loving and gracious, your skin may crawl as you realize your good deeds and efforts are no better than poop.  It will incense you that the God I preach about justifies the ungodly.  In your opinion, I'm sure you consider that unfair.  The truth is He gives your own good deeds and your bad deeds the same worth:  nothing!

So, I leave you to your angry God and your efforts to be a good, respectable, and obedient Christian.  Good luck with that.  I'm sure you'll be perfect at that...never.  And that your angry God will be appeased by your efforts...not.  And for the best spoiler yet, I feel compelled to be even more honest with you:  while you think that you're "walking in the Spirit" by not "walking in the flesh," I assure you that they're not the same thing.  Your focus on not sinning is not the spiritual life God desires for you.

If you would ever like to hear about a better way based on better promises because of someone else's better behavior...well, you better put down your weapons and your sacrifices and start to listen to and trust in better news.

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

"Whose Doing?"...or..."Eating Flesh and Drinking Blood?"

In John chapter 6:51-58, Jesus makes a remarkable and mysterious statement:

I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh."  Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.  For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.  As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.  This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.

What could this mean?  Well, we see that those who eat Jesus' flesh and drink His blood benefit by doing so.  Here Jesus also gives insight to His relationship to the Father.  "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me."  How does Jesus' relationship with the Father affect us?  Let's look at another statement of Jesus' regarding eating and drinking.

In John 4:31-34, the disciples return to the well in Samaria where they find Jesus talking to the woman there.  Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, "Rabbi, eat." But He said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." So the disciples were saying to one another, "No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?" Jesus *said to them, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.

Jesus clearly states that He knows something that His disciples do not:  Jesus' food is to do the will of the Father and complete the Father's work.

Follow along with me just a bit longer.  When Jesus was asked what one should do in order to do the will of God, He responded by saying:

Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal." Therefore they said to Him, "What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent" (John 6:27-29).

In these passages, we see that Jesus is the one who is doing the "doing."  We are the ones who benefit from His "doing."

It would, then, seem to work like this:  Jesus' food and drink is to do the will of the Father.  Our food and drink is to consume from Him; that is, we rely on His works.  Our "doing" is to believe, trust in, rely upon, and rest in His "doing," not our own.

Many will see this passive receiving as too passive.  "Give me something to really do!," they might say.  Let us not forget:

But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.

1 Cor. 1:30

...be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is...

Romans 12:2

Jesus Christ...gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.

Galatians 1:3b-4.

This reliance upon Christ's "doing" is so important, that even the writer of Hebrews in chapter 10 encouraged the believers to not throw away their confidence so they would endure to the end.

We rest in Jesus' "doing," not our own.

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy

Jesus: the Almond Tree and the Bread

In Luke chapter 24 Jesus meets the disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus.  Their conversation went something like this:

And He [Jesus]  said to them, "O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?"  Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

And they approached the village where they were going, and He acted as though He were going farther. But they urged Him, saying, "Stay with us, for it is getting toward evening, and the day is now nearly over." So He went in to stay with them.  When He had reclined at the table with them, He took the bread and blessed it, and breaking it, He began giving it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He vanished from their sight.  They said to one another, "Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?"  (Luke 24:25-32, NASB)

The Hebrew word for almond is shaqed.  It means to awaken early from winter's sleep.  The almond tree is the first tree to blossom.  Shaqed comes the Hebrew word shaqad, which means to keep watch; be wakeful over.  It is the word used in Jeremiah 1:12 - "Then the Lord said to me, "You have seen well, for I am watching over My word to perform it."

Exodus chapter 25 describes the ark, table, and lampstand in the tabernacle:

Put the bread of the Presence on this table to be before me at all times.  Make a lampstand of pure gold. Hammer out its base and shaft, and make its flowerlike cups, buds and blossoms of one piece with them. Six branches are to extend from the sides of the lampstand—three on one side and three on the other. Three cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms are to be on one branch, three on the next branch, and the same for all six branches extending from the lampstand. And on the lampstand there are to be four cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms. One bud shall be under the first pair of branches extending from the lampstand, a second bud under the second pair, and a third bud under the third pair—six branches in all. The buds and branches shall all be of one piece with the lampstand, hammered out of pure gold.  Then make its seven lamps and set them up on it so that they light the space in front of it.   (Exodus 25:30-37)

So, now we have a better picture of why the disciples suddenly realized it was Jesus who was before them.  After explaining the scriptures, they suddenly saw him as the fulfillment of those prophecies.  Jesus, the first to awaken (shaqed) to eternal life, was the light of the world, and it was when he broke bread with the disciples that they recognized him.  In the tabernacle, the lampstand, which was shaped as a golden almond tree, provided light for the bread on the table and watched over it (shaqad).  This light specifically watched over bread that was to be broken; and that brokenness is the work of the Lord which was to be performed.

How rich are the scriptures, which point to Christ.

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy