Sorry FRiend, been down that road. I’m seeing this altogether differently than when I was a young technical purist. I found in the end the direction of Paul not to judge people over calendars and diets and even sabbaths was just exactly right. It just distracts people from either preaching or hearing the Gospel of God’s grace. There’s a good reason it made Paul so angry in Galatians. He loved Jesus with all his heart, and refused to let the glory of Christ be obscured by the shadows of the now defunct Mosaic Covenant. It had served its purpose, but clinging to the old when the new has come in the person of Jesus brings nothing but hurt to the body of Christ.
When I was saved, I only knew one thing. I had awakened from my sinful stupor in the middle of a pig pen, and I didn’t know if God was still interested in me. Turns out he was. It’s a miracle. Lost people don’t need calendars or food lists. No, really, they don’t. It’s got nothing to do with how God reaches those whose lives are wasting away while they wait to enter hell. Not. One. Thing.
You know what I remember of the people who witnessed to me about the love of God? Their tears on my hands. Real tears, shed for me, by total strangers. I knew all the facts. I was better at the facts than most folks. But my heart was dead in sin, and now it is alive in Him, and by His grace I will never go back. It’s not His will for us to live lives reduced to lists. The plain old Gospel of God’s amazing love, that Jesus died to give life to hopeless sinners like me, is potent new wine. The old wineskins are too brittle to contain it. But the new wineskin is all about being there, where the people of God are, and the ministry of the word and the Spirit. Whatever prevents us from being in that holy circumstance is a device of the evil one, who mocks us with petty distractions, like calendars and diets, while conning us out of our heritage of love and rich blessing. I’m over all that. See you in church.
Peace,
SR
Been there. Still doing that.