All of orthodox Christianity is based on the belief that Jesus was a blood sacrifice offered by God to appease His wrath against our sin and enable Him to forgive and accept us into heaven when we die —if we say the right prayer which proves that we have accepted that sacrifice on our behalf.
But when Jesus was asked about what is most important, He responded that it is to love God and our neighbor —that everything in the Bible is pointing to this.
Matthew 22:35-40 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Mark adds a bit more to the above conversation:
Mark 12:32-34 And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.
Jesus is agreeing that loving God and one’s neighbor is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices
and adding that even a scribe
(one subscribing to the law of Moses) who understands this truth is not far from the kingdom of God.
That kingdom of God
is within
that scribe (not a place out there
which can be seen with human eyes); and he is on the verge of discovering this for himself.
Luke 17:20-21 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
The kingdom of God
is the place of realization that
1John 4:18-19 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us.
the place of realization that
Romans 5:5 … the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.
the place of realization that nothing can separate us from that love —nothing that we do or don’t do.
Romans 8:35,38-39 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The orthodox response to this is that this applies only to those who have accepted the blood sacrifice of Jesus —which means that we are in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Everyone else will be banished from that love and burn forever in hell.
I think much of our difficulty would be resolved if we could only get the revelation of God is one
(1John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. Galatians 3:20 … God is one.). If we are in Christ,
we are also in God.
The reverse is also true.
Acts 17:28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
(See One with God and Who or What Is Christ?).
I think it very difficult to get that revelation when we compare God in the Old Testament to Christ Jesus in the New Testament. In the Old Testament we encounter the Lord
who creates darkness
(Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.) while in the New Testament we are told by John that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all
(1John 1:5). (See Listening to the Holy Spirit , Belief in Two Powers and What Is the I AM?) In the Old Testament we see that the Lord
told Moses to have a man stoned to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath day (Numbers 15:32,35-36). But when Jesus’ disciples pulled ears of corn on the sabbath and the Pharisees reminded Him that it was not lawful,
Jesus
Mark 2:25-28 … said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him? How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him? And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.
If Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever
(Hebrews 13:8) and Jesus Christ and God are one (John 10:30 I and my Father are one.), how can He have such diametrically opposed responses to the very same act?
We read in Leviticus that the Lord told Moses (20:1) that anyone who committed adultery must surely be put to death
(v 10). But when the Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman taken in adultery, in the very act
(John 8:4) because Moses had in the law commanded that she be stoned (v 5), Jesus said to them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her
(v 7). And to the woman He said, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more
(v 11).
In the Sermon on the Mount recorded in Matthew, we hear Jesus saying repeatedly, Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time. … But I say unto you. …
(vv 21-22, 27-28, 31-32, 33-34). And then would follow something even more difficult to obey, e.g., not just committing adultery, but even looking on a woman to lust after her
(v 28). Calling your brother a fool
would cause you to be in danger of hell fire
(v 22). Before Jesus said any of these things, He said:
Matthew 5:20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
So it is righteousness (right standing with God; knowing that we are loved and accepted) that we need to enter the kingdom of heaven (to experience peace and joy —Romans 14:17 For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.) Jesus is obviously saying that no one can ever become righteous by obeying the law of Moses —which Paul and other Pharisees did blamelessly
(Philippians 3:6 … touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.). More than that, God’s righteous requirements are such that no one has any hope of attainment by doing or not doing anything —which automatically robs us of peace and joy
until
we learn from Paul that the righteousness required for entering the kingdom of heaven is a free gift
which came upon all men
(Romans 5:18), thereby removing the judgment and condemnation man brought upon himself through his belief that he was separated from God and that he had to do some things and not do other things to be accepted by God. Paul tells us
Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.
But we have been very reluctant to accept this free gift. We have feared that if we did, it would just be a license to sin (Romans 6:1,14). We have preferred the law God
who still takes our children from us by giving them cancer and wipes out the modern day Sodom, the sin city
of New Orleans, with a hurricane.
We have not understood Paul’s statements about the law:
- Romans 5:20-21
- Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.
- Romans 11:32
- For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.
So what do all the laws, sacrifices, washings, etc. we read about in the Old Testament have to do with God? The writer of Hebrews refers to them as carnal
(7:16), unprofitable
and weak
(v 18), unable to perfect anyone (v 19), something that God Himself found fault
with (8:8), something that waxed old,
decayed
and was ready to vanish away
(8:13). And Paul calls the law the ministration of death
(2Corinthians 3:7). (See Listening to the Holy Spirit).
But we read in Proverbs:
Proverbs 12:28 In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.
So how could God (who is Life, and who appeared to us in the form of Jesus to bring abundant Life) give and enforce that which could only minister death? Paul reminds us that
John 1:17 … the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
Since man is made in the image and likeness of God and given dominion over all creation (Genesis 1:26), we have the same capacity that God has to bring into manifestation whatever we conceive (become aware of, or hold in consciousness) —good, bad or indifferent. That’s why we were instructed not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (see Belief in Two Powers). As soon as we did, we began to conceive and bring forth evil. We conceived a God who bore little or no resemblance to the true God
Jesus Christ showed to us when He walked this earth and also prayed that we would come to know (John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.).
And the God that we conceived was the God we experienced. Our awareness of that God brought Him into manifestation in our lives. We actually experienced all the qualities that we attributed to Him. We lost the knowledge that we were created in His image and began to create Him in the image we had of ourselves. Most of the time when we heard His voice (with our human mind), it was a voice of wrath, judgment and punishment, telling us what we must do and not do and how far short we were falling from His impossibly high standards. Then we heard Him telling us of all the sacrifices and offerings we must make in order to escape His ever-present wrath. We even heard Him tell us to sacrifice our own child to keep a foolish vow we had made in our zeal (Judges 11:30-40). And the more we attempted to follow all His commands in our humanity, the more we failed.
But the only true God
(John 17:3) was always revealing Himself to anyone with any openness to receive revelation; He revealed Himself to the extent of their capacity to receive. In Hebrews 11 we have a list of some of the more notable examples. He was there speaking to us any way we could hear, telling us the truth —that He was always with us, even in this hell
we had made for ourselves (Psalms 139:8), that we could, without fear of punishment, eat the shewbread that only the priests were allowed to eat, that we could even bow ourselves
in the house of a false god without incurring His wrath (2Kings 5:18-19). One man walked so closely with God that he walked right into the next dimension without even experiencing what we call death
(Genesis 5:24), but what the true God
called sleep
from which we all needed to be awakened (Ephesians 5:14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.). To more than one, He revealed that He never even wanted all those sacrifices and offerings (Psalms 40:6; Hosea 6:6; Mark 12:32-34) we all thought He was demanding of us.
And this true God
so loved
us that He took upon flesh and blood,
appearing to us in a form that we were able to see with our human senses. This form was conceived by a young girl named Mary who was able to hear the voice of God and respond, Be it unto me according to thy word
(Luke 1:38).
This is where I stopped writing last night before going to bed. This morning (November 4, 2012) I found the following sermon on the internet. It was preached today by my good friend Tony den Hartog in Australia whose spiritual insight has been of great benefit to me. I had just sent him news of my new website a few days before. This is an excellent sermon which further clarifies all that I’m attempting to convey. I strongly recommend that you listen to it. You will also enjoy any of the other hundreds of sermons on the same website.
http://freedom-voice.net
3250-Released-from-the-Gordian-Knot-2.mp3
This true God
took upon Himself our humanity, not so He could be sacrificed for our sins to appease His own wrath, but to release us from our humanity (that body of sin
which He destroyed on the cross (Romans 6:6) —see Purpose of the Cross) and reveal to us that we are Spirit being (God expressing Himself as us —the body of Christ (1Corinthians 12:27), or the body of God) who are one with God, who know all things (1John 2:20) and have all things (Luke 15:31), who were created in righteousness and true holiness
(Ephesians 4:24) and don’t have to do anything to attain to what we already are. We just have to be awakened to the truth of our spiritual identity (the new man
) and put off the old man
(Colossians 3:9; Ephesians 4:22) which was crucified with Jesus (Romans 6:6).
Jesus said that He came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17-18). He came to show us that we are one Spirit with Him (1Corinthians 6:17 But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. 1Corinthians 12:13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. Ephesians 4:4 There is one body, and one Spirit.), that He is our very life (Colossians 3:4), and that He IS our righteousness which exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees.
1Corinthians 1:30 But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.
The writer of Hebrews attempts to convey this truth to us —that as long as we attempt to relate to God in our humanity by trying to keep commandments written down in a book (trying to attain righteousness by human deeds), we will never know either who God is or who we are. He says that these things he is trying to say to us are hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing
(Hebrews 5:11) because we are unskilful in the word of righteousness
(v 13). But God has Himself come into and overcome
this world
(John 16:33) (which we in our humanity have made for ourselves) and revealed His kingdom which is a kingdom of grace, not law. Now we have fulfilled the promise He made to us even while we were relating to Him in our humanity:
Hebrews 8:10-12 … I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more (quoted from Jeremiah 31:33-34).
Now that we know Him, we know that God is one, and we are one with Him. We no longer have feelings of guilt and condemnation because our conscience (which never let us feel loved and accepted by God) has been purged from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14).