Let My People Think

Posts tagged ‘finished work of Christ’

Is Divine Courtroom All There Is?

Gavel

My impression is that in current Western Protestantism, and even more so in Catholicism, there’s an over-emphasis on the judicial side of what God has accomplished through Christ, and a severe under-emphasis on the existential side, so the present day restorative work of God through what’s been done through Christ and is currently available through the Holy Spirit is still largely ignored. Healing is one example of what’s been missing from the large picture until the last 100 or so years.

The symptoms of that skewed emphasis are evident in that the most prominent debates in Christian circles mostly center on justification. As a result, heaven becomes a future reward as opposed to a present position that we should operate out of, people talk about future hell (from the context, meaning gehenna, as opposed to hades, meaning a place of judicial punishment) a lot more than the present reality of death in its manifestations such as sickness and poverty, intellectual OSAS (once saved always saved) doctrines as opposed to present vital union with Christ and the reality of new creation as the source of security for believers, sickness as sometimes good if it may somehow aid in the process of securing a position “in heaven”, the next coming of Christ to help people with issues that have already resolved through Christ’s initial coming, and so forth.
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New Covenant

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Discipleship

learning

Here is one cluster of disciple qualifications, per Jesus himself:

Luke 14:26
“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.

Luke 14:27
And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.

Luke 14:33
So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.

It’s clear that we have to fulfill ALL of the above, to be his disciple.  Trying to fulfill doesn’t count, either.  

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Difficult Questions

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Partaking of the Lord’s body

communion

Let’s look at the primary text concerning the communion / Lord’s supper / partaking of the Lord’s body:

1 Corinthians 11
29 For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
30 For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep.
31 For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged.
32 But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.

Let’s begin by establishing the cause-and-effect sequence, as laid out in the passage, which is as follows: people act in a certain way, the result of that is them being weak and sick, and after that the Lord teaches them something. Rather than the Lord acting a certain way, and they are weak and sick as the result.

Let’s look at the verses in sequence.

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New Covenant

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