God's Love

 God’s Love.

I used to live in fear of the Last Judgement. God was supposed to be up in heaven, going through the records of every person who lived on the earth, in preparation for the Last Day of Judgement. When all of the sins of our lives would be revealed. What a rotten concept! 

Be afraid! Be very afraid!

But, hey, if you just ask God to forgive your sins, He’ll forgive you. At least until you sin again.

But what if you hadn’t asked for forgiveness in a while, and you are involved in a car crash with no chance for a quick prayer? Too bad for you!

Maybe you just walked past someone begging for a handout in the Walmart parking lot, and a sudden stroke kills you instantly. Is that sin of omission going to send you to the flames? Didn’t Jesus say we should feed the hungry, with no judgment. Inasmuch as you do it to the least of these, you have done it unto Me. 

Maybe that’s what prompted that text about praying constantly. What a wonderful life! Not!

This is the Jewish belief in the Law and sin. It is well described in the New Testament Book of James. Which has not a word about redemption.

 Oh, what a relief it was, when I found out that God actually loves us. He does not wish for any to perish.   2 Peter 3:9

I believe that Jesus gave that description of the Last Judgment as an allegory. If I was being judged on every bad thing I’ve done, it would take years! If every one one earth went through that judgement, it would be eons on eons. 

Jesus was showing the things we should be doing if we have love for God and man. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting prisoners, etc. 

Not a word in his judgement scene about believing a particular doctrine, or being a member of a particular religion. It’s all about love.

Best of all, Paul came up with a new religion. We don’t have to ask for forgiveness, or beg for mercy. 

The wages of sin is death. Jesus paid it.

That is not the same as forgiveness. Forgiveness and mercy are for Jews.

Redemption and grace are what saves Christians, according to Paul.

When I get to that last checkout register, I will not have to plead for someone to forgive my debt. I won’t have any debt.

My salvation is paid for. In full. Don’t owe anything! It is done already. No fear about getting that last prayer for forgiveness in before I die.

“…Scripture says, ‘a curse is on all who do not persevere in doing everything that is written in the Book of the Law.’ It is evident that no one is ever justified before God in terms of the Law.

…Christ bought us freedom from the curse of the Law…” 

Galatians 3:10-13 NEB

“…my present bodily life is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. I will not nullify the grace of God; if righteousness comes by law, then Christ died in vain.”

Galatians 2:20,21 NEB

Surely we have to do something, right? 

Paul and Jesus both said we must have Love in our hearts. God is Love.

“He who loves his neighbor has satisfied every claim of the law. For the commandments, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet, and any other commandments there may be, all are summed up in the one rule, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love cannot wrong a neighbor; therefore the whole law is summed up in love.”

Romans 13:8-10 NEB

But that’s too easy, isn’t it? Just love everybody?

Try it sometime. Some people are hard to love! But love we must. The love must be real, from inside us, where God is.

If we have real love for our wife, we will never cheat on her. Don’t need a law to tell us that.

If we have real love in our hearts, we won’t judge others. We will be loving, not judgmental or critical. 

Here is a well known text from Paul, from the New English Bible. It is used in weddings a lot, but it applies everywhere: 

“I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I am without love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal. I may have the gift of prophecy, and know every hidden truth; I may have faith strong enough to move mountains; but if I have no love, I am nothing. I may dole out all I possess or even give my body to be burnt, but if I have no love, I am none the better.

Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, not conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offense. Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.”

1 Corinthians 13:1-7 NEB

Those who know me may ask, “But don’t you claim to be Buddhist? How can you talk of God if you worship Buddha?”

They demonstrate a profound ignorance of Buddhism. The Buddha was not a God. Those sects of Buddhism that believe in reincarnation may address prayers to Buddha, but not all Buddhists do. 

The Buddha was a teacher. Not how to get to heaven somewhere, but how to live a life that has less pain, and less conflict, here and now. Love is an essential part of Buddhism, too. I find his wisdom of immense value in the day to day events of living a good life.

May we all be filled with God’s love, and may that love reach around the whole world. Peace upon all. 

Insults in the New Testament

 Insults in the New Testament

Today the Rev. Mark Davies gave a wonderful discourse on the various beliefs and different sects in the original Christian apostles and preachers leading up to the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.

He covered them all, including the Docetists, the Marcionites, the Gnostics, and the Manichaeans. Since the Roman ruler Constantine had formerly been a Manchaean before deciding to make the bishops come to a common agreement on the basic beliefs of the official Roman church, he had a personal stake in the outcome.

Arius’s belief that Christ was created by God and was not made of the same substance as God was ruled heretical, and he was tossed out.

This goes beyond what Mark mentioned in his discourse. 

The statement that resonated with more than one of us was that the disciples had bitter arguments with each other and even called each other names.

Some translations of the New Testament try to downplay or obscure the insults, but I find the books far more interesting to read when you understand that they were written by real human beings, and not by an infallible Divine being. So let’s go look at some of the pokes and jabs.

One of the plainest is in the book of James. He writes this book as a direct response to Pauls writing in the Epistle to the Galatians.

Paul wrote, “…If righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain…no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident; for the just shall live by faith.” Galatians, 2:21, 3:11.

James wrote, “…wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” James 2:20, KJV.

Literally from the Greek “O empty man”.

The New English Bible translates this as  “you quibbler”

The New International version says, “You foolish man,”

See how much more fun this is? James is getting personal!

James at this time was the leader of the original apostles at Jerusalem. As near as I can determine, they were Jews in every respect. They believed in circumcision for all converts. Acts 15:1. They believed in the kosher rules of food and eating with Gentiles, Galatians 2:12. They were monotheists, believing in just one God, James 2:19. Jesus was the Messiah, (the “anointed one”) but not the Son of God.

Conversely, Paul believed that Jesus was the Son of God, come to earth to pay the penalty of death for man’s sins, and redeem us from condemnation of the Law.

James believed that we must keep the Law perfectly, and if we couldn’t we must fall on our knees and beg for God’s mercy and forgiveness.

Paul believed that Jesus paid the debt on the cross, and all we have to do to be saved is to accept his sacrifice on our behalf by faith.

This may be an oversimplification, but that’s my understanding after 60 years of studying the first 400 years of Christianity.

Paul went to Jerusalem more than once to argue his case to the apostles there, and it seems he lost every time. He even gathered up a collection of money for the church at Jerusalem, and still was rejected.

That explains the sarcasm in 2 Corinthians 11:5. It isn’t very evident in the King James Version. It’s downplayed: “For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.”  

Literal word for word from Greek - “over-exceedingly apostles.”

Here’s the New World translation: “For I consider that I have not in a single thing proved inferior to your superfine apostles.” I can hear the bitterness in there!

From the New International Version: “But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those “super apostles.” 

Finally, the New English Bible: “Have I in any way come short of those superlative apostles? I think not.”

To set the stage for the last fight, Peter has come up to visit Paul’s church at Antioch. Peter’s house was in Capernaum, in Galilee. Archeologists have found the foundations with his name and some fish carved into the stones. So I don’t know for sure what his beliefs were. He seems to me to be trying to go both ways and not take sides.

As he is visiting in Antioch, he eats meals with the Gentiles Paul has converted with no regard for the kosher rules for Jews. But when some of the other apostles come up from Jerusalem, Peter suddenly withdrew and separated himself as a Jew would. To say the least, Paul was offended.

In Galatians 2:11, Paul says he got right up in his face! 

In the King James Version it says “I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed.” 

From Greek, word for word: “down on face to him I stood against.”

The new World Translation says, “I resisted him face to face, because he stood condemned.”

From the New English Bible, “I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong.”

The New International version is similar, “I opposed him to his face, because he was in the wrong.”

In verse 13 Paul calls Peter and the other apostles hypocrites! 

It couldn’t be much plainer that there were serious differences in the personal opinions between the early leaders of the Christian church. 

In the long run, Paul actually won the debate, only because he wrote it down and got the letters he wrote distributed throughout the churches in Asia Minor and Greece.

James and the other apostle’s church down in Judea was destroyed by the Roman general Titus in 70 A.D. The few survivors escaped south to Petra and on to Arabia, where a few hundred years later another religion, Islam, was founded there with beliefs very similar to those of James’s church.

I have always hoped that Peter and Paul made up and became friends before they were both executed in Rome by Nero about the same time circa 67A.D. Nero blamed the Christians for the fires that burned Rome to the ground.

Boring? The Bible? No way! Not when you know the rest of the story!

Donald Rogers 1/9/2022