Why Do People Reject Jesus Christ?

I'll Be Honest ^ | 4/8/19 | Tim Conway

[imardmd1]

You are quite right about these Judaizers going out into the Gentile world, trying to persuade the Gentile that the needed at least to undergo circumcision to become fully accepted in the Jesus culture.

In fact, the whole letter to first churches of Galatia (then Anatolia, now referred to as mid-Turkey) addressed this issue in great detail. It was the success of his first missionary journey despite the stiff resistance of the Jewish synagogues there, combined with the works-based doctrine of "Christians" claiming to be sent out from the Jerusalem church, that brought Paul and Barnabas down to Jerusalem to complain about the interference of the Judean itinerants with the doctrine that Paul had established in the baby churches.

But even much later, Paul had to warn the Corinthians (as I wrote in Post #79, and also to the congregation at Philippi:

Philippians 3:15-19 (AV):

¹⁵ Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.
¹⁶ Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.
¹⁷ Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample.
¹⁸ For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:
¹⁹ Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)

Inasmuch as some denominations have imagined themselves to be the modern form of a spiritual reincarnation of the old Israel with its priestery and emphasis on law-abidiung to be salvific, they repeat the same old error of dipping into the mechanics of a man-made religion, rather than simply trusting and abiding in Christ as the vehicle of attaining peace with God The Father.