We have finished our study through the book Irresistable by Andy Stanley. What an interesting and thought provoking book! We have discussed at length where we find ourselves agreeing and disagreeing with the author.
"Participants in the new covenant are not required to obey most of the commandments found in the first half of their Bibles. Participants in the new covenant are expected to obey the single command Jesus issued as part of his new covenant. Namely: As I have loved you, so you must love one another."
This is the last chapter in the book before we get to the "application" - or "so what" section.
Ephesians 5 says that we are to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. This week we unpack that verse and those that follow it.
If someone told you there's only one thing that counts towards godliness, you might respond that there's a whole lot more to it than that. But you'd be wrong.
Paul is very clear in Galatians 5 - there's only one thing that counts.
I am constantly amazed at how radical Jesus was. The Pharisees had 660 rules that were necessary for the spiritual life. Jesus replaces them all with one. (John 13:34-35).
Today we covered: The Precept, the Pattern and the Promise.
What is the most clear evidence of a Godly life? The answer may surprise you. It certainly surprised the people around Jesus.
When the teacher of the Law asked "Who is my neighbor?", he got an answer that broke all his faith paradigms.
When we assume the Old Covenant is part of the Christian credo, we force an allegorical approach to interpreting Scripture. And that's never good.
An allegorical interpretation of the Bible is an interpretive method (exegesis) that assumes that the Bible has various levels of meaning and tends to focus on the spiritual sense, which includes the allegorical sense, the moral (or tropological) sense, and the anagogical sense, as opposed to the literal sense.
Paul could not be more clear in Galatians. Those who shared the "blended" gospel were distorting and perverting the truth and were to be condemned. That's pretty strong language!
The turning point for the church in the first century was the Jerusalem Council. Other than the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit upon believers, nothing compares to it's importance.
We're getting to the meat of the book's premise. Hebrews 7:22-24 is pretty clear. Christ is superior in every way!
"The challenges we face in mixing and matching covenants are not the result of the Mosaic covenant being flawed. Our challenges stem from our unwillingness to accept two undeniable historical realities. First, God’s covenant with ancient Israel was . . . with ancient Israel. Second, God’s covenant with Israel (Mosaic) was temporary. Important, strategic, divinely ordained, but temporary." - from the book...