Posted on 12/04/2006 7:52:47 PM PST by Pyro7480
Like I said about hijacking the Holy Spirits ministry..
Which by the way is the ONLY unforgiveable sin..
The leaning I have in the Spirit is that Jesus means for us to eat His flesh and drink His blood really - but not literally.
The key is in Jesus' response to His disciples when they were offended by His commandment. He said:
But Jesus is the bread of life sent from heaven. We are to consume Him, the Living Word of God, take Him in, let Him become a part of us, alive in us. He is our food and our drink, our life.
My bad. I should have pinged y’all to post 15182.
Solo Logosura?..
Thank you very much for the article. I read the whole thread. :) I think I get the basics of the connection between circumcision and baptism, but I still struggle with passages like this:
In applying this sign to the boy babies in the Old Testament, circumcision was still primarily spiritual and not just national. The sign was applied not only to Isaac who was the sole representative of the racial blessing, but to Ishmael as well. Deuteronomy 30:6 makes it plain that the circumcision of the child was primarily spiritual just as was the circumcision of the adult. "And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live."
I'm sympathetic to the spiritual angle, but if Issac and Ishmael were circumcised, then so were Jacob and Esau. We know for sure that God hated Esau, and so we know for sure that his heart was never circumcised spiritually. Per Warfield then, what is a reasonable presumption? Schaeffer appears to concentrate on what the Jew-turned-new-Christian would have expected. But I wonder how many such Jews did consider grace through faith alone as a completely new teaching. IOW, does Schaeffer assume that most Jews of the time were righteous? I actually don't know, but my guess would be against. If most Jews were unrighteous, then we should discount their expectations.
One other thing that really caught my eye was under the section: "Questions Asked Publicly of Parents Before Infant is Baptized" :
4. Do you realize that this sacrament is not a matter of magic, but that in it you covenant with God to raise this child in the fear and admonition of the Lord, to pray for and with him, to keep him in the house of God and with God's people, to be faithful in your home life for Christ as you live it before him, and to do your utmost personally to lead him to a saving knowledge of Christ at an early age?
Is this an oath? :)
Enjoying your good testimony, and adding my belated birthday wishes, dear FRiend betty boop! I thank Our Magnificent God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for you.
Thank you. Amen.
LOL. Nope. It's a covenant. The one God knew He'd bring you into from before the foundation of the world. In baptism, parents present their child to God in recognition of this covenant.
Infant baptism acknowledges that God's covenant precedes a person's birth. It doesn't begin with an adult declaration of intent. It's God's intent that matters. Baptism is passive, as the reception of grace is passive, from Him to us.
"God pronounces that he adopts our infants as his children, before they are born, when he promises that he will be a God to us, and to our seed after us. This promise includes their salvation." -- Calvin, Institutes, 4.15.20
That's why non-Baptist Reformed believers have a difficult time reconciling a true Reformed understanding with the Baptist insistence that an adult must make a public declaration before they are somehow admitted into God's family.
The Resurrection was NOT in response to prayer of His human nature, FK; it was not an act of humility, or obedience, which was so essential in His earthly ministry. It was an act of His divine power. He never doubted His Resurrection. There was no need to pray for that.
When you say that He never needed to pray about the Resurrection because He never doubted, what does that say about the things He DID pray about? I don't think Jesus ever prayed out of genuine doubt. From His existence at the time, I think He prayed to commune with the Father and Spirit, and to set an example for us as to what we should do also.
The Fathers who formulated the Creed were careful to stress that He rose and not to repeat +Paul's misleading words that He was raised.
What's the difference? Why is this significant, with the understanding that "He was raised" is not exclusionary of Christ's Divine power? No one thinks that Christ was needful or dependent for help. Neither did Paul.
If His healing were divine interventions of His own, then what would be the purpose of His human nature and ministry, FK? To show us that God can do anything? He didn't come to teach us that in order to believe we must see.
Jesus says flat out in John 20:29 - "Because you have seen me, you have believed; ...". Eventually, it WORKED for the disciples. Of course He goes on to say that the rest of us who believe are blessed, having not seen. But there was still a point to it.
One purpose of His human nature and ministry was to show us a God we humans could "identify with" and "touch". Rather than lightning bolts from Mount Olympus, we know about a God who condescended to take human form and perform miracles Himself to convert the first Christians. This system worked because wherever He went people marveled at Him. This part of the plan was intended to be short-lived, but it certainly did get the ball rolling. :) I believe the Bible is clear that Jesus claimed to be God. He didn't mince any words, so when people saw His miracles it would have been fine for them to assume He accomplished them on His own authority. Jesus plainly CLAIMED power and authority.
How did the Apostles heal if not through the purity of their prayers? Hocuspocus?
This does not appear to mesh with the general Apostolic belief that great power was voluntarily turned over to the Apostles and their chosen successors by God without prayer by them as a catalyst. If the Apostles healed by "perfect prayer", then is the same true of priests and the absolution of sin? IOW, do all priests validly (and supernaturally) forgive sins through perfect prayer? I don't see how this would be possible since some priests are unworthy. Yet, in their cases, the imperfect prayer still counts as efficacious.
How could BEV Mary conceive if not through the purity of her complete submission to the will of God, not because she was forced, but of her own free will and free of any doubt, ego or pride?
"BEV" Mary conceived through the purity of God's good, pleasing, and perfect will, not through the "yeah, OK" of some young teenager. :) She wasn't forced, her heart was changed just as it is in all believers. She wanted to obey God, and said OK because God specifically ordained that she would.
Thank you so much for your kind birthday wishes .30Carbine!
For it pleased [the Father] that in him should all fulness dwell; And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, [I say], whether [they be] things in earth, or things in heaven.– Col 1:15-20
That is my leading as well, dearest sister in Christ. It seems to me we must take care not to be too literal-minded if we wish to grasp the intentions of God's Word. A literal reading tends to be reductionist....
I gave you the relevant scriptures. If you are stating your opinion without a relation to them, then consider yourself done: I am not interested in personal opinions.
The word is metanoiete, from meta, “change” and noos, “mind”; it is a verb in imperative tense. “Repent”, “do penance”, “change your mind”, “reform yourself” are all possible translations, except “change your mind” is an idiom that has a connotation of fickleness in the English language, even though it is the closest morphologically. If you look at the actions of St. John the Forerunner, you see similarity with penitential work of Christian monks, hence “do penance” becomes the most accurate on substance.
The controversy was, by the way, not about how people should repent but about the necessity of sacramental penance. Whether we translate St. Peter’s words as “repent” or as “do penance” does not change anything in the fact that in order to enter the Church one has to do a sacramental confession and be baptised.
This morning, in remembering my testimony last night at post 15182 - it occurs to me that I should have addressed the observance of the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper as well as the Spiritual discernment of John 6:32-71.
So here goes...
Israel was given many ordinances to observe (and they developed quite a few on their own as well.) Circumcision, wave offerings, sacrifices, feasts, priestly apparel, construction of the Ark, Tabernacle, Temple and so on.
We Christians are given but a few – the bread and wine, baptizing in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, washing each other’s feet and so on.
All of these ordinances have a Spiritual purpose and meaning which must be discerned. Just “going through the motions” not only doesn’t accomplish anything but can also be an offense to God:
Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; [it is] iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear [them]. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.
Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. – Isaiah 1:10-18
Take for instance the washing of each other’s feet. (John 13) We are clean because of what Christ has done for us. But we are yet in the world, so we pick up dust on our feet as we walk in the world. So, should we pick up a basin of water and a towel and wash a brother or sister’s feet, our thoughts should turn to this ordinance and Him and our obligation to help one another remove the dust we pick up being from the world.
Likewise is the observance of the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper. In either case, we must remember the Spiritual Truth behind what we are doing or the end of it is Spiritually perilous to us:
After the same manner also [he took] the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink [it], in remembrance of me.
For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.
Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink [this] cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of [that] bread, and drink of [that] cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. – I Cor 11:23-29
There is nothing in that particular discourse that sets it apart from the rest of the scripture. All of it is given us for reproof and faith formation, as St. Paul says in 2 Timothy 3. This particular passage is there for us to know that the Eucharist is not a metaphore but rather is "food indeed": something we physically eat while it really is Jesus' body.
John 6:63 explains the nature of the Eucharist further. It does not negate the preceding discourse. It explains that while His flesh Jesus will give us is "food indeed", it is not there to feed our flesh, that is, our stomach, but rather to feed our spirit. It therefore is the refutation of the charge of cannibalism that opens up the discourse.
We need to be careful and avoid reductionism when we read the scripture. For example, when we read of Mary becoming the disciple’s mother at the foot of the Cross, it is important to grasp the eternal dimension in which the relationship between Mary and the Church is defined, and not merely an economic arrangement.
At the same time, we must read what is written. When Jesus struggles to explain that the Eucharist is real food and at the same time His real flesh given for the salvation of the world, we should not be tossing that away as too literal, when the passage insists on literal meaning with such force.
John 6 explains that we are to eat His flesh and drink His blood really - not literally, not figuratively - but really.
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