Stay tuned, because the people who claim to be at the centre of God’s will often be found making him look like a typical dysfunctional secular or religious head of state. The actual number of expectations that can be attributed to God keeps growing as one pays attention to all his utterances and observe his actions. Law-abiding citizens of many countries can find themselves in deep trouble if God comes calling, so it is a good idea to rid oneself of the burden of knowing all that God has ever said. Getting to that point of knowing all divine utterances has eluded everyone so the goal of exhaustive compliance is also going to be elusive. Still there are people who think that finding one, two or three, or even ten significant commands they can will have the effect of magically turning a person into a fully delightful worshipper of God.

Faith that works through love is the undisputed goal of God’s unchanging will

Never mind that walking in the Spirit puts a believer in the seat beyond the reach of destructive desires, which we have to admit are at the centre of human life.  Never mind that the Spirit is the divine helping hand for each believer, people still want to look elsewhere for a vibrant and victorious spiritual life. A personal achievement record will certainly rise when the books are opened. The credit most people claim to have with God does not really exist. Without God’s amazing grace people will find themselves playacting and saying great and puffed up things about themselves.

A spiritual life without trusting in God and caring about other people is a useless life.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.

Galatians 5:16, NASB

“Faith that works through love” is a phrase that makes most believers scratch their heads.  Most believers have bought the idols of shallow Christianity.  They subscribe to man as a free moral agent then require loyalty to organizations like church and state, and insist on tribal allegiance. Another shallow idol is Ten Commandment morality.  Since when can morality be defined by 90 percent idleness?  Nine of the Ten Commandments require no action; they rather impose the absence of certain behaviours.  There is no achievement if a person can be locked away in a room and have no interactions with people, such a person can be righteous having had no opportunity to interact with people he cannot be said to achieved anything by not stealing not killing not committing their country not carpeting not breaking the Sabbath and so on.  On the other hand Ten Commandment morality includes honoring one’s parents, and this remained a massive problem evoking the ministry of John the baptist, to turn the hearts of children to parents and parents to children. Even the Lord Jesus highlighted the fact that Jewish people constructed a wall between themselves and parental respect and honor by claiming that they had obligations to the tabernacle.   Meanwhile a faith that works my love is waiting in the wings to arrive, I got love has a clear template, the love of laying down one’s life for one’s brother, not literally, but the readiness to put others first.

Holy cup, most holy faith

The legend about the cup used by the Messiah came to life in the Middle Ages when people from Europe set out to find the cup.  The superstition was that the cup – the grail – had magical powers.  Wherever that cup may be has nothing to do with the salvation of the world.  The significance of the cup is that people can receive faith to grasp God’s promise and become his peculiar possession.  The cup of the covenant finds neither counterpart nor type in the vessels or processes of the Levitical priesthood, yet the most proudest and the most presumptuous indoctrinations have their root and branch in the Levitical priesthood, from which the guarantor of the covenant takes neither lead nor cue.

Good deeds without holiness comes from deadly algorithms

Holiness is understood to be an attribute of God.  Holiness without his personal intervention is abyssal smoke without a fire.  Fire on each head in the Pentecostal Event is the signal that each believer is lit up with divine light, and firmly planted in the house of the commonwealth of grace.  It is only the absence of diligence that gives the impression that one is lost or under a cloud of indecision.  There are lots of people doing good things and most admit no gift from God infusing their deeds.  0John’s first letter refers to compliance with God’s demands and the assurance of that compliance.  He comes right up to the line of saying “A pox on your commandment chasing”, but knowing that a salvation without a sustained processing of goodness, he pitches the old and new benchmarks into the pot.

Compliance asserted

• “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.” (1 John 2:3, NASB)
• The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; (1 John 2:4, NASB)

Compliance assurance affirmed

• “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.” (1 John 2:3, NASB)
• “The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.” (1 John 3:24, NASB)
• “I am writing to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I have written to you, children, because you know the Father.” (1 John 2:13, NASB)

New command, old comnand

Here John has tried to dispel the opinions that were popular in his day about what fulfils God’s demand (singular), in particular, he settles the debate by centering “command” on the Son of God.

Jesus himself had said that  the work of God is for humans to believe on his son, in answer to a question:
It can be perplexing finding that one injunction that ends the quest.  The Jews kept asking Jesus about the one thing they could do to inherit eternal life for example.

Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:8, KJVA)

Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

Romans 13:10, KJVA

The great command in the law meets its Red Sea in a crucial conversation between the Son of God and his contemporaries 

“Therefore they said to Him, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?”” (John 6:28, NASB)

John 6:28

Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.””

(John 6:29, NASB)

Notice the alternation between plural and singular, in WORK and WORKS

In any case the singular commandment ends up having two inevitable parts. 

“This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.” (1 John 3:23, NASB)

The SINGULARITY in John’s expression – his reference to a single commandment –  here appears practically in the fact that interpersonal love is the product of faith in the son of God.  There is no legitimacy to divine love displayed by humans that does not have other humans as the target of that love.  John wants to be absolutely practical.  It is a bold lie that true love gets expressed when one is in full compliance with all of God’s commandments.

καὶ ὅτι πᾶν ψεῦδος ἐκ τῆς ἀληθείας οὐκ ἔστιν.

1 John 2:21b

LET ME TRANSLATE THAT!

Indeed every lie is inconsistent with truth.

1 John 2:21b

So what’s your claim to the grail?  God has saved you as a loan?  Got to save you but you are not safe?  Your Love includes no grace to others?  The most dangerous aspect of the Holy Grail chasers is that they will always be turning to something external, or something sensual, something of the body, something temporary, something elementary, to underline their discovery.  On the other hand a cup that is not limited by time and space is available to all.

I shall lift up the cup of salvation And call upon the name of the Lord. (Psalms 116:13, NASB)

Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? (1 Corinthians 10:16, NASB)