A while back, o.k., a long while back I said I wanted to tackle some of those tricky Bible passages that seem to contradict the grace message. Overall, I've seen that these Scriptures do NOT contradict the true gospel (surprise surprise!) but only the way they have been taught by men and women who do not have revelation of the New Covenant and therefore wrongly divide the word according to their own lack of understanding. I will freely confess to you all that I am no Bible scholar, so I'm relying on the Holy Spirit to reveal truth to me , to reveal Jesus, through the black and white words on the pages of my Bible.
Also, I'll be using some basic study tools to help me understand the original Greek which will allow us to examine the verses beyond the inevitable slant of perception that will come through the translators of whatever English Bible we use. And very importantly, I'll be paying close attention to the context of these difficult passages, taking into account who the words were specifically written by and for, as well as the cultural context of the recipients of the words which were either in the form of a letter or historical account. As well, I want to let Scripture interpret Scripture where possible remembering that God will not contradict himself because he cannot lie.
All that being said, I'm hoping that people more (or less hehe) knowledgeable than me will chime in with their perspectives to help along this whole process. I don't feel I'm the most qualified in terms of worldly wisdom, knowledge, or intellect but I'm not sure this matters! I think it's time that more of us 'gracers' tackle some of these verses head on since they will be used more and more against us as weapons to try and cut down the gospel and the power of our faith in Jesus. It's time to get prepared so that these attacks of flaming arrows fall flat and powerless as being continually extinguished by our shields of faith.
So stay tuned! The first passage I plan on tackling is from Philippians 2 "...work out your salvation in fear and trembling..."
If you have any requests, just let me know in the comment section and I'll try to deal with it at some point.
7 comments:
You tease, haha, I thought I was gonna get some meat in this post and now I have to wait.......hmmpfh!
All kidding aside, I am looking forward to your upcoming posts!!
I'm grate to see you confess that you are no Bible scholar!
Hebrews 8:11 No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.
We need to be in the New Covenant Spirit (after the Cross) to see all these beautiful truth!!!
Well, Lydia, let's take our seat and wait for the steak to be serve. (Julie, I want mine to be well done!) If it is meat, it needs time to be cooked and it's wroth waiting...!
Grace, grace, grace...
Awesome project!
Pete Day and I were talking about the Book of James - thats a whole problem in and of itself! So how does that fit into our New Covenant grace picture?
Sorry this is not relevant...and maybe I'll have time to come back...but just to say I finally have succeeded in my wrestle with cybershot and microsoft. Have a peek at the hayling sea baptisms
Jul,
Anne and I are very much looking forward to the continuation of this post. Certainly I am on the less scale of the worth to chime in lol, more than likely it will simply be more questions :-). I do have a few passages that are often a plague to us, but will put those to you in another comment. We appreciate you stepping into this, I can imagine that it isn't easy to begin the process.
Ron
I wish I had read all of the comments before commenting, because the book of James and even some of 1John are some that I don't even touch because of the way they make me feel. I know thats not very faithful, but I am only just coming into this walk, and from a strongly legalistic order.
Ron
Thanks for all your ideas and encouragement everyone!
I'm very excited that both James and 1 John (one of my favorites)were brought up since I've already been down those roads before. I'm equally excited that so far no one has brought up any of the passages that still really have me stumped, and don't ask me to tell you which ones those are haha! But seriously, though this is a lot more work than I normally put into my blog I'm really excited to be getting fresh revelation of grace with all of you through the Scriptures.
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