If this post sounds confused or unstable...it is just purely from lack of organization since I am trying to see this from many different angles all at once....
I do not think there is essentially anything wrong with being carefree. After all, God says “do not worry about tomorrow for it will worry about itself.” He did NOT say, “do whatever the &#$@ you feel like doing today because tomorrow is a new day.” But, you might ask, why should we not sin? And why is it sin anyways? IT IS SIN BECAUSE GOD SAID SO. How can you call yourself a follower of God and then pick and choose the commandments that you feel are best suited to your lifestyle and obey only them? That is like saying, “I am a child of ME”, not “I am a child of God.”
Of course, I know that nobody is perfect. I am not perfect, and I would never go so far to say I am anywhere close unless I was fooling around. “For all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God,” but that is no excuse. God accepts that because he wants to accept everyone. That is why he made it possible to be saved merely through faith…because he knew it was impossible to be human and save yourself just by attempting to follow the law exactly. But you should not say, “Well, I guess we are all sinners…it is inevitable that I am going to sin anyways so I might as well not try to stop myself.”
Our reason for not sinning should not be for securing a place in Heaven, either. If we are all “justified freely by his grace”, then we are all going to Heaven, simple as that. However, as I said in a previous entry….don’t you think we owe it to God to obey his simple commandments? He has given us such a precious gift of grace and eternal life when we don’t deserve it. So why don’t we try the best we can to deserve it?
In the beginning, God gave man ONE SIMPLE RULE—DO NOT eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. (You know, that is a pretty cool name for a tree. Nowadays we just have “magnolia” or “pine” or “apple”….those are so boring.) Adam and Eve could not see why God did not want them to eat the fruit, so they did, and look where that got us today. (Okay, it is probably true that if Adam and Eve did not sin, someone would have eventually done something.) God has made lots of commandments that do not make sense. Like, why can’t you eat pork? People eat pork all the time and it doesn’t hurt them. WELL….maybe you should not eat pork because GOD SAYS SO. Don’t you remember when you were a child and your parents told you to or to not do something, and when you questioned them they gave that frustrating answer, “because I said so”? I always hated that, because I liked reasons. I do not like doing seemingly unreasonable things: “Why do we only get to go 35 mph on this road? It’s perfectly safe to go at least 50!” I still haven’t figured out why Sunset Lake Road is that way……it takes FOREVER to go anywhere when I have to use that road.
Now, what if you still feel like you are under grace and that eating pork is not a problem? Well, that is your personal interpretation and conviction to believe that God has saved you thus, and that is fine. Still, wouldn’t it be better to be on the safe side? God may have even said, “It is okay to eat pork now,” but maybe he is also fine if you feel like you should stay with his original commandment. It obviously won’t hurt. And I am not saying anybody has to do this…this is just a personal conviction of mine that I have felt I need to adhere to. Why do we even have the Old Testament if it suddenly does not apply anymore?
Anyways, I have never read the entire Bible all the way through, so I have started doing that now. I may be wrong about some things. There is a certainty that you shall see more theological musings from me in the future. I am also willing to be corrected by someone who has read a part of the Bible that I have not. I just want to get it right, and I am very excited about all this!
I will talk to you all later,
~Jessica
12 comments:
I think God did say it was okay to eat whatever in Mark 7:14-23, but I don't see a problem with abstaining from certain things anyway. Like I've decided not to drink, which isn't a sin, and I have no problem with other people doing it (as long as they aren't getting drunk). Of course, a lot of people think that's strange...
I recently started reading the OT too and am in Leviticus. It's been bothering me that people take verses like the one about not getting a tattoo and use that to judge people when the very next verse is about not cutting your hair/shaving a certain way that nobody follows. It seems like if we're preaching about one verse we should follow the next one, too (not that this has anything to do with your post :P).
Some of the commandments in Leviticus I think were more for safety, like they were actually medical issues and such. To prevent disease from spreading people were supposed to go outside the camp until they were clean. I'm not sure how the pork fits in there though, although personally I have no problem with eating pork.
I'm not real clear on the OT law vs. the NT commandments and such, but I'd suggest reading Romans. I love the book of Romans! :)
Pork can have a parasite in it. It is only safe if it is cooked thoroughly.
Wow. If you haven't read Romans yet, I can see how the His Spirit is moving in you. What you just said is in Romans 5 and 6. 7 & 8 are good too. WHO AM I KIDDING!? THE WHOLE KIT AND KABOODLE IS GOOD!
You hear "you'll always sin while on earth" a lot, but I don't believe it has to be true. Look in the 2nd chapter of I John. Not that you shouldn't read the other chapters. They're good too. WHO AM I KIDDING!? THE WHOLE KIT AND KABOODLE IS GOOD! :D
J. Vernon McGee had a quote that really rang true to me regarding sin and the saint (you're either a "saint" or an "ain't"...another J. Vernon witicism). I can't seem to find it, but after explaining that we've been created new creatures with a new spirit, he rhetorically asks how much sin will it take to fully satisfy a saint? The answer is sorta like the answer to "have you stopped beating your wife yet?"
The problem that we have is that we don't really believe we're that new creature. We still pretty much feel we're the "old man" that's been cleaned up and modified a bit. But He says we're a NEW creature. OLD things have passed a way. His commandment then is for us to put off the old self and put on the new. Boy, there's a lot to dig for in that. More in Romans.
I use to eat pork before I was married. Some of my first fights with my wife was over me ordering bacon and eggs with a side of bacon at many breakfast eateries. I had a love for Jewish believers and a "Completed" Jew moved to town who was an author on nutritional subjects (Dr. Gordon Tessler).
I went to hear him speak because he was born again. What he had to say made me swear off pork (and all other unclean animals), for health reasons. I want go into the details here, but one of the main things that got to me about his talk was that pigs and humans have very similar digestive tracks and consequently share a host of common parasites. Animals with cloven hooves that chew the cud, do not. Further, the temperature needed to destroy some of the said parasites would also destroy the meat, making it not food. It was there that I felt like the Lord was not being arbitrary in His laws. I'm not sure they're all health related, but I just want to be blessed by them. There are still many that we don't do.
People have said when they find that we eat this way, that they hope we're not offended by them eating that way.. RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. :D Innocently implying some legalism on our part. We usually answer: "Go ahead. We don't believe it will keep you out of heaven. In fact, we think it'll get you there quicker."
My last comment was hastily written (sorry) and therefore teeming with grammatical errors and incomplete sentences. Also, I forgot to mention that the Jews were commanded the laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. In Acts 15:22-29, Peter and the apostles write to Gentile believers that the only thing essential for them was to "abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication".
Rebecca - That is another thing I was wondering about...if we follow one law but break the next...it just doesn't make sense to do it. Yet there are a million justifications people can make up.
Natalie - I am trying to balance out my OT and NT readings, because I know that if I read too much in one I will forget the other to some degree, which is something I don't want to do.
Haha, Mr. Hargett. I'll take it from you that the entire kit and kaboodle Bible is good...even though I already guessed that. I will check out those John and Romans chapters tonight. :) I think the thing in Acts is an example of how God has constructed the new faith (Judaism being the old faith), which is making it more possible for Gentiles to be saved. Before they wrote the letter the apostles discussed what they should say, and they concluded what the bare minimum was that they could ask of the Gentiles was to not do those things, making the faith as approachable as possible. I am very tired right now but I think that that is my thought on the Acts passage.... :)
We sin all the time. We envy others for their success and try to blaze our own successful path without caring what it is going to take. Also, we eat too much food or waste too much of it on a daily basis.
I think some sins are pretty minor, but a sin is a sin. Plus it depends on what sect you are. Correct me if I am wrong, but it's only the Catholics (maybe the Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox too) that believe you are born as a sinner while the others do not, right?
"Essential" meaning what is required after being saved, not what is required to be saved. It wasn't a recruitment tool as in "How can we make it easier so we can gain more recruits."
There were some Jews who thought that once you were born again, you needed to adhere to the Jewish laws even if you weren't Jewish. It also didn't mean that you lost your salvation if you violated the essentials.
As for being born a sinner, scripture is clear that we ARE born little sinners. Our heritage coming from the first Adam the first sinner. Jesus's father was not Adam, but God and therefore referred to in scripture as the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45). He had no sin nature because he didn't inherit it from Adam. He lived a sinless life as a human and then willingly died paying for our sin. "The wages of sin is death" Romans 6:23. That's where they get the lyrics "I owed a debt I could not pay, he paid a debt He did not owe." This guy says it better than me click here
And when I say we are born little sinners, I don't mean they we are sinning as soon as we're born, only that it is our nature to sin.
Let's say sleeping upside down is a sin and a baby bat gets lost...awwwww. Someone finds him and plops him in a bluebird's nest for them to take care of and so he'll be raised right. When he comes of age and is out on his own, dollars to donuts he's going to be sleeping upside down and, I might add, staying out all hours of the night.
Do you try to correct him for doing such. No, it's not going to do any good. Can you tell him it's wrong. Sure. He needs to know his plight. He needs a miracle. Let's say God touches him and turns him into a bluebird on the inside. If he looks into a mirror, he sees himself as a bat. When he tries to sleep upside down, cause that's what bats do, he gets a headache. Tries to party all night...even bigger headache. His nature has been changed.
It's like that for the believer. Because we agree with God that we've sinned and can't change on our own (repenting) and trust only in Jesus as our savior, he takes away our old dead spirit and gives us a new and improved one. Turning us into saints from aints. Our nature is now not to sin. When we sin now it's because we try to live our lives out in the "old man" or our old nature instead of our real new nature.
From what I read, these stood out to me more than the rest, although it was all good, like you said:
Romans 7:5-8 - "For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in a new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not say, 'Do not covet.'"
1 John 2:4-6 - "The man who says, 'I know Him,' but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys His Word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we re in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did."
Also you said, Mr. H. aka Christopher: "'Essential' meaning what is required after being saved, not what is required to be saved. It wasn't a recruitment tool as in 'How can we make it easier so we can gain more recruits?'"
And yes, I understand that, and was trying not to say that was what they were doing. I think the point of the letter was to come to a common ground with the gentiles and not confuse them. The whole, "How can we make it easier so we can gain more recruits" thing has been used several times...such as when the Pope named a pagan holiday Christ's birthday to turn the pagans to the Catholic faith, while still letting said pagans continue in their libertine practices...
Good piece of writing...
Regards,
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