There is more than one interpretation of the Bible and the word "Christian" belongs to many different kinds of people of many different cultures and many different ways of looking at the world and at their various individual histories and individual and/or collective relationships with God in Christ Jesus.
I really believe that God has an absolutely unique relationship with each and every human being . . . and that each one of us can come to know Jesus as the Holy Spirit reveals Him to us -- and that we are complerely free to have a relationship with God, the divine Creator or not -- and that in whatever way we are able to access the spiritual -- and be aware of who each one of us is in Spirit, God understands.
I firmly believe that God became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth partly to break down the narrow interpretation of God's laws and make an unrestricted access to The Divine as opposed to the restrictions present in the era, and especially the ways that the leadership of the Temple kept people from being free to worship because of the myriad of judgmental customs and hoops to jump through that had multiplied over the years. The faith that came out of the experiences of their culture and history had become religion of works righteousness rather than faith in God and emphasis on His mercy and grace.
God's relationship with the Children of Israel and with other people and ethnic groups in the Bible demonstrates that God deals with each individual and with each nation in unique and specific ways according to the historic setting and the cultural world views of the individuals, families and nations chronicled.
Jesus taught and demonstrated a new reality based on God's direct interaction with human beings. He taught about the Kingdom of Heaven that was brought to Earth when He was born. He demonstrated God's love, mercy, and forgiveness through the ways He loved and related to individuals and groups.
The miracles and healing a He brought about made it clear that He was of God and from God. By His suffering, death and resurrection, He released all human beings from sin and guilt. God's intervention thorough Christ Jesus paved the way for each person to receive deliverance from sin and death by recognizing Him and receiving God's grace.
So no matter what sin anyone commits and no matter what sin is committed against any person, up to and including the destruction of life, God has already forgiven all of it for each and every person. But a person receives forgiveness from God in Christ individually. There is not a way for any person to ever say that another person has committed an unforgivable sin.
And no one can give God's forgiveness to you. God has already bestowed it and you have only to receive it. No one can take your forgiveness away from you, either. And no one can condemn you, not even your self, because God in Christ has already forgiven you.
So when people decide that they have the right to keep anyone who has free will in Jesus Christ from doing what she or he wants to do with her or his own body, it is sad. They have missed the most important part of the Gospel. We have been given freedom in Jesus Christ. No one can take that away. Even people who are imprisoned physically are free in Jesus Christ because of the love of God.
Human beings were all given free will by God from the earliest time of their creation, but complete freedom only came from when God became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth.
It's sad when anyone tries to take that liberty from sin and death -- and the freedom to have an unimpeded relationship with the Living Loving God from any other person. Women are just as precious to God as men are, and each individual person is just as important to the Lord as any other person.
So the bottom line is this. No one has any right to say that they know better than another person concerning that person's relationship with God. And before God, each sin is as heinous as any other sin, yet Jesus died to cancel out the punishment for every single sin by taking them all in Himself.
In all of this we see God's amazing love and mercy and complete understanding of all human beings and of each one of us. God is for us because He loves us, not because of what we do or don't do. In Psalm 139 it says that before we each come to be incarnate, God already knows everything that will happen in our lives.
He knows how we will love and He knows how we will sin. He knows what will be done to hurt us and He knows what it will take for us to recover. He knows whether or not we will be able to believe in Him and He knows what it will take to convince us to believe.
But no one has the right to tell us what to believe and no one has the right to tell us how to live our lives.
The people who believe in the right to bear arms believe that no one should take that right away from them. But that is not biblical. It is only for the Bill of Rights. If people try to tell them that it's possible that registering gun ownership and restricting the type of weapons would make a difference in how many weapons are used to kill innocent children and other people, they flatly refuse to even listen, demanding that there is an unfettered right that should have no restrictions so that their weapons can be used against people any time they see fit.
But there is a higher law than the Bill of Rights. And that is the law of freedom in Jesus Christ undergirded by God's sacrificial, unconditional complete and eternal love. It is guaranteed by God to each person and no one can modify it or change it. Only the Holy Spirit can truly reveal all of this to each person's heart.
May the Lord continue to bless and keep you and yours, now and always.
❤️❤️❤️
I really believe that God has an absolutely unique relationship with each and every human being . . . and that each one of us can come to know Jesus as the Holy Spirit reveals Him to us -- and that we are complerely free to have a relationship with God, the divine Creator or not -- and that in whatever way we are able to access the spiritual -- and be aware of who each one of us is in Spirit, God understands.
I firmly believe that God became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth partly to break down the narrow interpretation of God's laws and make an unrestricted access to The Divine as opposed to the restrictions present in the era, and especially the ways that the leadership of the Temple kept people from being free to worship because of the myriad of judgmental customs and hoops to jump through that had multiplied over the years. The faith that came out of the experiences of their culture and history had become religion of works righteousness rather than faith in God and emphasis on His mercy and grace.
God's relationship with the Children of Israel and with other people and ethnic groups in the Bible demonstrates that God deals with each individual and with each nation in unique and specific ways according to the historic setting and the cultural world views of the individuals, families and nations chronicled.
Jesus taught and demonstrated a new reality based on God's direct interaction with human beings. He taught about the Kingdom of Heaven that was brought to Earth when He was born. He demonstrated God's love, mercy, and forgiveness through the ways He loved and related to individuals and groups.
The miracles and healing a He brought about made it clear that He was of God and from God. By His suffering, death and resurrection, He released all human beings from sin and guilt. God's intervention thorough Christ Jesus paved the way for each person to receive deliverance from sin and death by recognizing Him and receiving God's grace.
So no matter what sin anyone commits and no matter what sin is committed against any person, up to and including the destruction of life, God has already forgiven all of it for each and every person. But a person receives forgiveness from God in Christ individually. There is not a way for any person to ever say that another person has committed an unforgivable sin.
And no one can give God's forgiveness to you. God has already bestowed it and you have only to receive it. No one can take your forgiveness away from you, either. And no one can condemn you, not even your self, because God in Christ has already forgiven you.
So when people decide that they have the right to keep anyone who has free will in Jesus Christ from doing what she or he wants to do with her or his own body, it is sad. They have missed the most important part of the Gospel. We have been given freedom in Jesus Christ. No one can take that away. Even people who are imprisoned physically are free in Jesus Christ because of the love of God.
Human beings were all given free will by God from the earliest time of their creation, but complete freedom only came from when God became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth.
It's sad when anyone tries to take that liberty from sin and death -- and the freedom to have an unimpeded relationship with the Living Loving God from any other person. Women are just as precious to God as men are, and each individual person is just as important to the Lord as any other person.
So the bottom line is this. No one has any right to say that they know better than another person concerning that person's relationship with God. And before God, each sin is as heinous as any other sin, yet Jesus died to cancel out the punishment for every single sin by taking them all in Himself.
In all of this we see God's amazing love and mercy and complete understanding of all human beings and of each one of us. God is for us because He loves us, not because of what we do or don't do. In Psalm 139 it says that before we each come to be incarnate, God already knows everything that will happen in our lives.
He knows how we will love and He knows how we will sin. He knows what will be done to hurt us and He knows what it will take for us to recover. He knows whether or not we will be able to believe in Him and He knows what it will take to convince us to believe.
But no one has the right to tell us what to believe and no one has the right to tell us how to live our lives.
The people who believe in the right to bear arms believe that no one should take that right away from them. But that is not biblical. It is only for the Bill of Rights. If people try to tell them that it's possible that registering gun ownership and restricting the type of weapons would make a difference in how many weapons are used to kill innocent children and other people, they flatly refuse to even listen, demanding that there is an unfettered right that should have no restrictions so that their weapons can be used against people any time they see fit.
But there is a higher law than the Bill of Rights. And that is the law of freedom in Jesus Christ undergirded by God's sacrificial, unconditional complete and eternal love. It is guaranteed by God to each person and no one can modify it or change it. Only the Holy Spirit can truly reveal all of this to each person's heart.
May the Lord continue to bless and keep you and yours, now and always.
❤️❤️❤️
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