There are people who say the law did not “enter”, it was always there. παρεισηλθεν has to mean “enter” plus carry the dimension of “alongside”. I’d rather not hear the explanation because this is straightforward: it’s an amen or a naymen. A lengthy explanation is bound to be from a bad place. In addition to law “entering alongside” we also learn that sin was not always defined by law. “Before the law” means before the law and that was a time when sin was rampant and destructive but not recorded against the individuals.

For prior to the Law sin was already in the world; only it is not entered in the account against us when no Law exists. Romans 5:13

What indeed would be the point of a law that proscribed behaviours and situations that could not be imagined. A law for whom? Angels? Yes, if they are the beneficiaries of a divine law, but they have no property, wives, children, and there was no competing entity militating to take God’s place.

Grace Takes the Reins

The purpose for this is to establish divine accountability. The magnification of sin, the guilt of humanity and the futility of trying to pay for our sin.

so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 5:21

The outcome has nothing to do with the benefits or the effect of the law. God’s righteousness is not based on any law. Every person who is familiar with Bible history – the facts, I mean – knows that Law is a 13-dollar bill for people who hate the idea that God loves and forgives.

Romans 3:21ff

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

Neither reforming Germans nor fundamentalist and commandment-keeping Christians can change the glorious gospel.

For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift…

This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

All the debate and commentaries are barking up the wrong tree. Gospel does not mention sin except to pardon, but the sorry legalists still push the law in the face of God’s loved ones, as if they are now making one guilty, as if they are the convicting Holy Spirit. Gospel says nothing about law except that it is fulfilled, it is a good riddance ex (former spouse), and it has no authority. The gospel says nothing about prophets or Moses because John the Baptist ends their practical uses for the kingdom of God. Gospel says “God is looking for you, has an inheritance with your name”. If you like bondage, confusion, and futility, hitch your wagon to this mule: law and grace.

Ignoring the counsel of committed allies, the United States exits the Iran nuclear Ageeement, opens a new Embassy in Jerusalem, and the Israeli and American governments, American evangelicals and other evangelicals who have been molded by American evangelicalism are hailing a new day, a historic moment.
With Gaza within shouting distance “New days” are cheap and shallow.

Gaza, where Samson spent his last days! Yes: that Gaza, 1 of 5 Philistine strongholds and Gaza of those non-Jews who have citizen rights in Zion.

When the location of an embassy overrides the location of the divine name “new days” are not much at all. Let us assume that something new involves building on what is newly created, but in this timeline nothing has changed in the marketplace: we still hear the groans of the prisoners, and liberty for those who were doomed to die is hard to find. The hoopla in Jerusalem today is Much Ado About the Quagmire of religious intolerance and compassionless politics. It is a celebration of a land claim that has little to do with what Zion has looked like over the (same 3 in the claim) millennia and less with what Zion will look like when the lessees lose their property.

Hear Solomon. About the house that matters.
1 Kings 5:4-6

But now the Lord my God has given me rest on every side. There is neither adversary nor misfortune. And so I intend to build a house for the name of the Lord my God, as the Lord said to David my father, Your son, whom I will set on your throne in your place, shall build the house for my name. Now therefore command that cedars of Lebanon be cut for me. And my servants will join your servants, and I will pay you for your servants such wages as you set, for you know that there is no one among us who knows how to cut timber like the Sidonians.

Hear David. What the name of God in Zion means.
Psalms 102:18-21

Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord: that he looked down from his holy height; from heaven the Lord looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die, that they may declare in Zion the name of the Lord, and in Jerusalem his praise,

Messiah owns Jerusalem: no-one else does. If you can imagine a legitimate peace in Jerusalem without upfront representation of all of earth’s families then Babylonian juice may be your favourite drink.
All full of themselves, the powerbrokers tighten their screws in pursuing everything but justice. Bloodshed by an Israeli ruler is disqualifying. Messiah’s Jerusalem admits no Jew/Gentile split, no slander, no clash of beasts (worldruling powers) no space for propaganda, no space for slutty behaviour like the embassy gambit.

What is shocking about the embassy hoopla is that Israel has always been the beneficiary of the greater powers whether that means local governments such as the Midianites and Philistines or whether that means being a province of Rome or Greece or Persia.
So now America legitimizes the Jewish state – created by America’s mother- by moving an embassy and Jerusalem’s capital is being spent on luring a john so they can obstruct justice and freedom for those who are bound and for the bringing down on barriers so that I can have her children from all over the world to celebrate the one true God

John 3:16 has got to be the verse on which believers are most surefooted about salvation. Exactly how surefooted only appears when one connects its so with as and so in verse 14.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, John 3:14 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:15

The writer says “For God thus loved…” or “Because (for) this is how God loved…”

So = thus = in this way = like this, (oυτω, HOO-toe). It is an adverb; it modifies a verb, defines the action under the miscoscope. God loved the world like this, in this way.
What way? Like how Moses elevated the serpent in the desert. Fact check on how.

Moses elevated the serpent

• for a people saved at the Red Sea (Exo 14:13)
• for a saved people on their way to Canaan (Num. 21:5-9

This is why John can write

• he who keeps believing (πιστευων, present tense believing)
• may keep possession of life (εχη, present tense having)

One look does it for snakebite, one confession and one belief (Rom 10:10-11) saves from lostness and condemnation. Jn316 is definitely about saved people looking to Christ for relief, not about people who are believing for the first time, that is, unsaved people. It is a perplexity for those who claim to be in compliance with God’s will while denying that snake-bite happens and while denying that believers need the elevated Christ for maintenence of the gift of life. Without this grace we are hopping back and forth between saved and lost, dead or alive, or we find ourselves making claims that leave nothing to hope for.
What remedy can there possibly be for fatal afflictions other than the Son of Man himself? Christ who started us on our journey by giving his life on the Cross, now lives forever to save us (Heb. 7:25).

Nicodemus, though he sneaked in a nocturnal audience with the Saviour, was a man who needed maintenance salvation. He was a Jewish leader, an unwitting believer, who tried to get answers about how salvation works. This would have been a prime occasion for the Lord Yeshua to drive home the Jewish tradition – covenants and prophets, and kings – but no, he steered Nicodemus smack into believe and keep your life.

It is amazing how one little word – so, oυτω – hidden from view by careless translators and commentators, comes to the light up this layer of our great salvation.

This journeying layer of salvation often gets, regrettably, attached to things, virtues and non-virtues, but John 3:16 connects God’s love for the pilgrim with a one-on-one with the Elevated Saviour.

Again he convinces us that our need – to have a good journey in the new life – is met fully in His Inimitable Majesty Yeshua Elevated Son of Man.

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I know I am not alone wondering what to make of the likelihood that the religious world is being ravaged with lies in a similar fashion to what we are seeing in the political sphere. I suppose that many of us have actually confirmed the phenomena of truth being a well-worn lie and of minors taking over the roles of majors but we do not know what to do with our discoveries.

Certainty and corrosion

How many times have you seen a cart leading a horse? It happens often. Let us establish the reality of well-worn lies and what are some of the minors that have become majors, and that there are carts pulling horses.

1. To be sure that no one can complain that God is being arbitrary or robotic because he organizes every era of human existence under various covenants.
2. Nothing moves into the realms of the Messianic kingdom without repentance. A change of mind is essential.
3. Pride of property, family and place is not divine justice: all humans sin
4. Death is not life elsewhere: there is no life in Gehenna or Hades.
5. God made flora, fauna and humans with seed: immortal ones in creation do not exist.
6. If the whole of man is commandment-keeping we know what departure from the faith looks like.
7. All messengers or gatekeepers are by comparison to the Good Shepherd thieves and robbers.
8. Compare the picture of every nation becoming a kingdom priests, peculiar and higher than the rest with spiritual and truthful worship in places other than Jerusalem and in no particular place.

The 45th president in your church

Stories of truly great things morph into incredible folklore and junk.  Instead of shiny truths we end up with corroded materials: justice at the cross loses to condemnation at Sinai. “I accept Jesus as personal saviour” replaces “Jesus is lord” so that there is no tension between Christ and Caesar.  Still, Caesar does not bow to Christ and we know that Christ is Caesar’s maker and has Caesar on a leash.

Making sure of a working salvation

Before recommending a strategy let us ensure what our motives are. We go to church to participate in four graces: prayer, apostolic doctrine, sharing meals, and fellowship.

And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. Acts 2:42

This is reflected (fellowship assumed) also in Peter’s conclusion in the welfare discrimination case:

But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word. Acts 6:4

Whose prayer pattern, whose doctrine dominates? Every organized church has a focus that is adrift from the once-delivered faith. Just look at the names of the denominations. The faith of Jesus Christ needs no revision or amendment (sorry all you religious revolutionaries, American patriots and reformers, you should have learned to read and practiced believing the report). Reform movements began with the Pharisee attempt to turn Gentiles into Jews (Acts 15) and revivals are always a quixotic response to (seemingly threatening) current events. They eventually show that they are not tethered to the gospel. They paper over the walls of salvation by repeating the lies, the fables, and unsubstantiated allegations about life and death, many of which are inherited fron the Jewish tradition.

Bible Club Bible Comfort

There is more talk about “God” than testimony about Yeshua yet we know so little about God without Yeshua’s face. There is a concerted effort to bash people with the Bible rather than offer them the great news there is of God’s love and what he has provided for humanity.

Of course people can say they see strings connecting Christ to every prophet, exorcist, and magician. They can accept every hook, line, and sinker as appropriate. They can ally themselves with every merchant, landowner, and legislator, but Christ is not only separate from sinners (humans) he is higher than the heavens.

They can turn the new covenant into the old, turn justice-pardon into obedience, turn the law into life-giving words. If the regurgitated slogans, childish songs, and maxims omit the grace of the dying lamb they are not worth the time.

So, ask the question. Do not be intimated, especially if you are a young person and female of any age.  Ask everyone – including yourself!!! – who uses the Bible: what does this have to do with the promise, purpose, and progress of the Crucified Christ?

Be sure to make the question the primary filter for your thinking and thereby ensure that what comes out of your mouth is not defiling. Your behaviour will also be approved apart from injunction and prohibition. Do this and you will shred the powers of the deceiver. The sacred superpowers – churches, states and prostitution rings – cannot stand real change, neither do they appreciate the consistency of Christ.

Braves Boot the Bullies

Do not keep saying “Amen”