Thank you for sharing Terry, im sincerely sorry for your loss there and I very appreciate your insights.
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Brilliant stuff Marshall, great perspective.
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I think you have nailed it right there JMP, i forgot all about the acceptance part. Do you think that perhaps humanity has a habit of being unable in moments of dispair to also forgive self in order to accept the forgiveness God has on offer?
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I like this part of your comment…given the bible says we are in the image of God, i feel that means we should also maintain a balanced perspective such that God is a person who can laugh and cry just like we do.
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I do this quite often because we can very easily become blinded to our own path…ive heard of quite a number of instances where conservatives have lost sight of the gospel preferencing the legaism of the law. I do believe both are necessary in explaining the story, however i think Christ made it pretty clear with stories such as the good samaritan, that all the legalism in the world doesnt save anyone. It easy to sit on a church seat and criticise that others arent good enough practiscing Christians…the good samaritan just saw a man in need and went to help…no mallice, no blame, just kindness and love for his fellow man.
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Its all a matter if you agree with the argument Paul presents in Romans. if you agree That human nature as wholly fallen in Adam
Romans 3:23
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Romans 3:10
As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one;
and
james 2 :10 says
For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.
Then true justice would condemn all humanity, But God in mercy offered salvation.
Of course this gets into the whole Calvinism debate which is probably better suited to a private conversation if you want.
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I agree we need not criticize or speculate on the ultimate fate of others, but pay attention to our own planks! God is merciful and mysterious. True salvation manifests as love for fellow believers. But we must get the order right, salvation unto good works (love, highest work) rather than salvation by works of obedience (even love).
When I examine that parable very carefully I see a lawyer was trying to test the Lord. How do I inherit eternal life? he asked . He was seeking self justification. No one earns an inheritance. It is given as a birthright (born again by God). Jesus gave him the gospel in the form of a parable, and said you go and do likewise (earn salvation by works Dut 6:5 of love). Jesus command was an impossible task, referencing of the ultimate saving work only Christ can do. The true meaning was hidden from the lawyer, and is revealed to the disciples. Salvation is of the Lord not of works of the law. Said another way only Jesus kept the Law on our behalf (the church). Jesus is the good Sarmatian, the fallen man is us, half dead naked in a ditch on a decent from Jerusalem(city of God) to Jericho (city of satan). Jesus has compassion, picks us up, places us on the donkey of salvation and takes care of us in the church (Inn) and by the Spirit (inn Keeper).
Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand
And He said to them, “To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables,
So we say a salvation unto good works (law keeping/love), not a salvation by good works (law keeping). This way no man can earn an inheritance, but praise God for the mercy of a inheritance (sons/daughter of God) given of free unmerited grace.
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Troy, I respect you. I think you would agree that it would be praiseworthy of God to seek all, and help us all to repentance, as in Peter… It is not characteristic of Christ, who is God’s image, to destine some for destruction.
God has got to be better than my parents–and my parents were wonderful, Christlike people.
Thanks.
Randy
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Yes Randy and God is perfect, all this ways are just, and we must use the whole council of God to see his perfection. Gods plan does not fail, all who are drawn will come to Jesus.
John 6:65
And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”
Look carefully at what Christ said regarding not telling everyone about salvation in his day. This is a divine mystery.
And He said, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that ‘Seeing they may not see, And hearing they may not understand.’
Paul’s complete argument on this matter. Yes you can disagree. But this is what he says:
4 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! 15 For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” 16 So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.” 18 Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.
19 You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” 20 But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
22 What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, 24 even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
This is a very very difficult passage. It should never be used a judgement on others. It should produce a Godly fear in every Christian. I think that is why Judas as a “son of Perdition” is a powerful representation of Paul’s argument. Those who are called of God should be the most humble and thankful for God’s saving grace. If we believe on his name the Father has called us into union with Christ.
Yes.
No.
Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Yes.
Romans 3:10 “There is none righteous, no, not one;
Yes.
James 2:10 For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.
This is taken out of context. This most certainly does not mean that the person who tells a lie is also guilty of murder. Otherwise you sound like the Pharisees looking for an excuse to condemn Jesus by saying His healing is doing work on the Sabbath. And with the words of Jesus in Matthew 5 this becomes even more ridiculous. No. People are only guilty of what they have actually done.
Let’s put the passage back in context:
James 2:10 For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. 11 For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12 So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. 13 For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy.
Back in context, whoever has the least sin still has sin and is not fit for heaven. This is because even the least sin will grow to consume everything.
I think understanding is found in 1 John 1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. And thus by the time we can speak enough to say such a thing it is no longer true. But no it does not mean we are sinners even before we have done anything at all.
It is not an alteration of human nature. We have always been habitual creatures from the beginning. It is thus only a question of good habits or bad habits – the good habits of life in which we learn and grow, or the bad habits of anti-life where we refuse to learn and grow. Do we use the gifts of the mind God gave us to build and become more than we were, or do with misuse those gifts to tear everything down and become less?
You can certainly say that along with an inheritance we have from God which gifts us with the powers of the mind, we have an and inheritance from Adam with all the many ways we misuse the powers of the mind.
Another thing to consider is that the stories in the gospel seems to be parallels to older stories.
Moses was a Jew who was sent to Egypt by his family because the pharaoh was killing all young Hebrew boys. Moses preformed a miracle at the Reed Sea and crossed the water.
Jesus was a Jew who went to Egypt with his family because the ruler was killing young Hebrew boys and at some point he too crossed a sea as a miracle.
Joseph was sent to Egypt by his family ( in a different way ) and was sold into slavery by his own brothers. Jesus was sold into death by Judas who was part of his inner circle. To me Judas was almost brother like to Jesus. All the 12 were. Some perhaps literally.
So when I became aware at all the ways Jesus’snstory hyperlinked back ( literally it maybe even fictionally ) to the stories through the Old Testament I instantly think of the stories of all the conflict and betrayal by brothers. So many of them all ends up being resolved in some way.
In the story Judas seems to regret it. I’m not sure how long it all took. The story seems to imply it all happened before just a few days and Jesus came back. If Jesus did go to some Greek like underworld full of shades of who we were and he was a light there and preached, then I imagined Judas would have been there and would have known Jesus still loved him.
Many bring up that he died without being able to repent.
But we just don’t know that. Suicide is not a sign of someone’s change in heart over what they did. Judas could have felt bad, regretted it and knew it sundone it and then killed hior not regret it. Or he could not have regretted killing Jesus but regretted losing his closest friends over that betrayal.
I also have to remember we are all Judas. Jesus died in part because of all of us. We all exchange his life and mock his sacrifice every time we choose to do something we know is wrong and rely on his death being payment to make it right. None of us have killed ourself to end the betrays. I also don’t think we should just highlighting he potentially felt so bad he exchanged his life over it.
Same as we are all Barabbas. We were all set free despite being the guilty ones and the guiltless one was condemned in our place.
The Bible is not a seamless story. It’s broken. Contradictions, different details, and so on. We see places of God as this wicked powerful being drowning the whole world, and we see places of God as loving and caring. I think same begin to realize the limitations of the Bible we often have to choose what kind of God is he. Is he a god that destroys a man over some bad choices forever? Is he a God that sends a man to a place where he is tortured for ever, billions upon billions for maybe 70 years of wickedness? Is he a God that makes sure all of the world is saved and all of creation is restored?
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The problem here is our view of both time and justice…7o billion ears is only cruel if yu re in linear time. If, as we believe God is, eternity is timeless then the passage of time for punishment is meaningless. It amounts to an instant of happiness or an instant of horror.
Human justice demands that wrongs be at least paid for, but forgiveness does not.
The Gospel turns human justice on its head. We can’t have it both ways. Either there is forgiveness or there is not. God does not seem to have the hierarchy of crimes that we do.
Richard
Agreed, but in Gods view all sin is equal. Although the bible teaches God punishment is graduated according to what was actually done and the level of knowledge one has. this is very sobering.
Revelation 22:12
“Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.
Luke 12:47-48
And that slave who knew his master’s will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes, but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few. From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.
James 3:1
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness
agreed ,although I would look at it more connected to Gods perfection, God is perfect and demands perfection, we by necessity are not perfect or we become God .
Yes, agreed in part this is where I have been trying to argue the two types of sin. Ontological and moral.
Everything created is ontologically less than God by necessity… Miss the mark of perfect glory…
Moral sin is when we act/ think use mind and body in accordance to that ontological not God-ness (you say bad habits). We could call it animal nature (flesh) . Gods image would then be an gift to transcend this animal nature by true religion. I would argue that true religion is a gift from God (knowledge and agreement with gospel), not given to every person. Adam then becomes the first human to receive true religion and grace through Jesus. Gods clothing of Adam is a true marker of ascent from animal nature to redeemed Nature (image of God, able to know and praise the true God, and love other as self). Note all angelic and visions of God are always clothed. Jesus on the cross becomes sin and is stripped of all clothing. Jesus takes on our animal nature and all its evils, and dies in our place. We in turn get all Christ righteousness and goods. The great exchange.
yes
but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted?[a] And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to[b] you, but you must rule over it.”
My first thought is to ask, “How badly does God want people to be back in His family?” – because if He really, really, really wants people in, He’ll find a way.
My second thought goes to a fellow student in grad school who jumped off a bridge and plunged ninety feet into just-under-freezing river water: over beer and peanuts or pizza for longer than a week we agonized over whether he could have repented on the way down. One guy offered the opinion that this was why people’s live flash through their memory at the time of death: one last review to prompt repentance.
Could Judas have repented as his life flashed through his memory? Sure. Can we believe that he did? I’d say that depends on just how much God wants all people to be saved.
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I recall that one even called him “Prince of Traitors”.
Some Anglicans and Lutherans still have that custom – I’ve seen church graveyard where there was a definite dividing line, one of them marked with thorn bushes.
Not that much of a mystery: if people could have understood and figured things out, Satan could have realized that the very worst thing would have been to get Jesus killed. So He spoke in “hidden” ways right up almost to the end.
It reads easier in the Greek; “one” is contrasted with “all”, so it isn’t meaning each and every item, it’s meaning that the whole is broken if just one part is broken.
I don’t agree with any of the assumptions in this.
- That Jesus getting killed would be the worst thing for Satan.
- That Satan is seeking a way to thwart God’s plans.
- That Satan is so clueless about what is happening.
- That Satan is so powerful that God has to somehow fool or trick him.
Jesus hoped for something better in His prayer at the Garden of Gethsemane. But in any case, Satan is not that powerful, not that clueless, and not opposed to God. Satan was given by God the role of adversary to mankind, for 2 reasons: To give us a better scapegoat than God Himself, and to teach us that power and responsibility go hand in hand (i.e. we cannot give Satan the blame for our actions without giving him power over us).
It is one thing to believe Jesus died for our salvation and quite another to make incredibly egocentric leap to thinking the entire universe revolves around this and God had no choice but to do things in this way. If all that were true then Judas would be a hero and clearly he is no such thing. So was God just making the best of a bad thing? YES!!! The whole history told in the Bible is completely about making the best of one bad thing after another.
I think that was changed in the 80s.
Robert Guidry wrote an entire book on the issue of Matthew and Peter and his judgment was pretty negative. I never even considered the possibility before that book came out. I was not swayed but it made interesting points and it shows how much tradition and harmonization shapes our interpretation of individual books. The work in question:
Peter: False Disciple and Apostate according to Saint Matthew
I find that material in John may be redactional and just casting Judas in as poor a light as possible. At any rate, it raised the old question of why Jesus would knowingly allow a person with money issues to be the group treasurer. I mean, do you have an alcoholic run your bar for you? It doesn’t cast Jesus in a good light. Judas was used. Was he truly used by God in this sense or the evangelists in telling their stories? Jesus does say, it would have been better if he were never born. Is there anything concrete in the scriptures even saying Jesus had to be betrayed by a close companion?
This is my view based on sifting all the data. I even vaguely remember reading an article by a scholar a while back arguing Jesus’s arrest was somehow planned and known about by Jesus as he agreed to be taken into custody because the festival was a highly tumultuous time. Judas was the liaison but instead of being released after Jesus was crucified by Pilate and Judas ended up taking the blame. I can’t seem to find the article though. I would like to read it again.
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I wonder who was listening to write that down?
The three disciples were asleep!.
You are out on a limb here.
Satan means opposer. That makes him in opposition.
As for power or clueless? You are making God the dictator now, if you think that God would not “create” or even “allow” a valid opposition to Him. The "ying / yang principle comes from observation as much as principle. There would be no logical reason to think it would not extend to God Himself. You seem to be entering the realm of conspiracy theories here. We do not need any scapegoat, we are quite good at disavowing self responsibility without one. That was one of the main points of the Garden Narrative "It’s not my Fault? It was - Him, Her, it, etc,
Richard
Probably not. But on the other hand, I probably wouldn’t ask a teetotaler to manage my bar either.
This question fascinates me too. One of my personal speculations on it is that Jesus just wasn’t all that concerned about money. Yes, they apparently made use of it and purchased things like food - probably on a regular basis. (Otherwise the multiplying of loaves and fishes wouldn’t have been all that big a deal to the disciples - if Jesus was just miraculously serving up all the food on a daily basis.) But my sense is that Jesus saw money as something that everybody else (especially the wealthy) were always preoccupied with, and resolved not to let such pursuits take up any of his own labors in the same way. It’s an acknowledged part of life yes (your Heavenly Father knows that you need these things…) - but not to be the center of it.
If I’m right about that, then maybe Jesus was to money what Tom Bombadil was to the ring of power - a most careless keeper. “It just doesn’t have any hold on him.” And he refuses to to join the world’s obsession over it - and in fact, very deliberately snubs any measures that a prudent manager might take to help grow some nest egg against that future rainy day. Okay - yeah - it’s there, and this is what you guys use for your daily currency and commerce - I see that. But my life is not, and will not be about that - and nor should yours be. Those of you tax collectors or others who’ve been all about that stuff - break a leg. But … watch me and see in contrast, what I’m about. (In a similar way zealots or Romans who may keep a sword or two around - Jesus seemed to let those dabblings hang on in their turn too …, but in contrast: watch what I’m about instead!)
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