No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13 CSB

https://bible.com/bible/1713/jhn.15.13.CSB
While most Christians stand securely on this set of facts, there is a constant erosion of the believer’s confidence. That supreme love sets the tone for the believer’s love life. The corruption in our souls does not allow us to settle for God’s highest expression. We insist on sinking to the sterile lowlands of noncompliance and curse. We equate the cross with the tools of condemnation.

Just the facts

1. No one but Christ has laid down his life for (those destined to be) his friends so they can live
2. There is no reason or logic for all of us to lay down our lives for our friends
3. God has not invited anyone to imitate the Messianic death and resurrection

What love looks like

We can see how the multitude that wants to prove their love by succeeding where no one has is trafficking in oppression and emptiness. We must conclude that a bewitching is responsible for the supposed greatness of obedient love.

The churches in North America need to hum to another tune this weekend. The clap offerings for Christless slogans in the mega churches must be seen as a clanging symbol that is more trash than Saddam Hussein’s statues, more rubbish than Israel’s wailing wall, more useless than the U.K.’s unity, more moronic than the juvenile morality of law-abiding citizenship, and more predatory than any previously known cannibalistic quest.

Trash to be discarded

Most cultures and social norms resist change. They resist growth. We should not need to be reminded that a change of mind became the litmus test for embracing progressive revelation, or that successivee generations have stubbornly inventing standards in order to avoid moving past useless and irrelevant traditions. Paul, the eminent teacher and preacher of the gospel, discared everything his context had fed him. The rubbish that came to light when Christ confronted Paul (Saul of Tarsus) included:

• circumcision on the eighth day,
• belonging to the people of Israel,
• belonging to the tribe of Benjamin,
• a Hebrew of Hebrews;
• as to the law, a Pharisee; Phil 3:5
• as to zeal, a persecutor of the church;
• as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Phil 3:6

Every individual has a pedigree that shrinks on contact with genuine excellence.  We have no leg to stand  on when we find an informed Jew saying “Enough!” to Jewishness.  This is the courage that distinguishes Christian faith, though it may be labelled as unpatriotic.

Rubbish to sober us

When nations rise and fall people think that the international competition has yielded results, but the truth is more that the human race’s follies are being put on display. All the great ones have crashed, and the powers that be are a mere candle compared to the bright stars of the world-ruling powers.  We can only imagine the inner heavings of the Jewish heart to see the temple in ruins or to witness  the violation of the covenants.  I think both Christians and Jews understand that there is practical and eternal value in our painful experiences.  God chastens us by reducing our idols to nothing. Great Britain has shrunk to a great little island and a few friends. The Asian giants are wisps of bird feather floating out of the coop. Israel’s temple mount ought to sober up everyone who wants to play lord of all I survey.

Useless Unity

No nation should be known for its uniting to go to war. War is no-one’s friend. When Americans and First Nations look for greatness it is not in the alliances they have formed. We see a hollow, burned out shell, devastated by tribal oppression.  That is what is left of genuine collective wisdom and shared values. The unity forged between lawyers, constitutional experts, and the religious community, and a home-schooled generation turns out to be the same racist and xenophobic attitudes that caused the civil war.

The unity of patriotism, flag reverence, and honouring civil and military service is not compatible with defending the unborn while resolutely murdering Black and Brown people and doing nothing to stop the mass murder of children in their schools. If you want to see how united the United States are just look at the passion for mistreating foreigners in the border states or the legislation to prevent women from rejecting unsolicited conceptions.

Moronic morality

Who wants a standard of right without a positive example?  Lazy people.  We live in air: we were born into it, and like the fish in the sea, we never need to hear “How’s that air working out for ya?” The morality that tags all the stuff we were born in – or born with- is depressing, not elevating.

Morality needs a dramatic leap because badness comes from within: no devil or enemy of the state is needed

• Evil thoughts
• Adulteries
• fornications
• Murders
• Thefts
• Covetousness
• wickedness
• Deceit
• Lasciviousness
• Evil eye
• Blasphemy
• Pride

One does not need to imagine how effective reciting God’s commands can be for creating moral values.   Neither selftalk nor repeating what God says have proven successful to any of the peoples who have instituted ritual recitation. We are likely to find that there moral or royal value in the holistic lifestyle of First Nations peoples than in the communities that have created ornate buildings and complicated legal systems.

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Predator

Who needs perfection when the chief executive sees his personal goal so close?   Who needs perfection when the evangelical heavyweights turn out to be blind watchmen and barkless dogs? More predatory behaviour is in the works as personal business deals loom on the horizon. His pussy-grabbing, racist, and quasi-patriotic propaganda may excite people in Russia, North Korea, and Israel, even though none of these states see anything but juvenile bully-puppet in the latest bigot of Mar a Lago.

Yes. Go back, Europeans. Go back to Syria and Mesopotamia, Hebrews. Go back, everybody, to where we all mix without feeling we are better than our neighbours. There will be a very loud amen if in every church this weekend the pastoral prayer resolves to end the theft and rape that started when the Pilgrim Fathers landed in Turtle Island.

Well, maybe.

Not one evangelical leader has spoken up against the racism the bigotry that is sweeping across America. The stacking of the courts against women’s rights and the right of people to migrate in search of the common dream may please you today, but they will come for you tomorrow, if you have the guts to say no to the worship of the state under God. Yeshua and Jeremiah are right. The pastors are lying greedy and cowardly noisemakers. They concur with xenophobia and genocide. Racism is in American DNA. The GOP see it like fish see water. They also see the thief coming and flee.

But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep.

John 10:12

The book of ths dead, Numbers, has one occurrence of the word adôn אדון, lord. It comes after the people plot to return to Egypt, and after Joshua and Caleb plead with the Israelites to quit their fear and unbelief. It comes after Moses’ pitch, ” Won’t the neighbors say you, Yahweh, have failed? This is the same intercession that Moses played after the golden calf episode.

It is in this timeframe that Yahweh declared the forty years of wandering and the death of all except Caleb and Joshua.

And now, I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying, 14:17

Except for the crises in this period I do not know why here is the only place where adonai turns up and does so in a diplomatic phrase: “let my lord’s power be great as you said”.

There is no repentance in the approach that says God changes nothing. If God does not change his instructions or introduce a new arrangement then we all should be stoning people for expressing their opinion, destroying our neighbours’ property, putting them to the sword, and taking their land and women.

There was nothing new or extraordinary about the call to repent by John and Yeshua if it was a call to turn from sin. The main thrust of the prophetic ministry had always been to insist that Israel turn (return shub שוב) to Yahweh. The kingdom in ancient history had degraded into naked spiritual adultery.

Impenitence is rampant today. It opposes the gospel and loves the law. It reveres prophets and miracle workers and rejects the cornerstone. Lipservice to Yahweh has been at the centre of Israelite life for most of Israelite history and dominated in New Testament times.

If Yeshua had not said it we would not have realized that little had changed from the days when Isaiah addressed the issue. Observation of the 21st century church shows that lipservice

It is a fallacy to talk about repentance that brings salvation as returning to God. Humans were never in God’s family.

The Jews had tremendous struggles changing their perspective from Moses to God’s Son. How we measure up in our times is to be measured by our eyes for Christ and our eyes for humanity of any standing or rank.

SEVERAL LAYERS OF UNDERSTANDING

1 John 5:20 pins the reader, a believer, to mental and spiritual accuracy with (1) the idea of the Christ Event – “has come” (2) with a gift of thorough thinking and (3) intimacy with Christ.

1. And we know that the Son of God has come. OIDAMEN, we know
2. and has given us understanding, DIANOIA
3. so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. GINOSKOMEN

Now in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees?
Romans 8:24 CSB
https://bible.com/bible/1713/rom.8.24.CSB

The list of virtues (power and qualities) with which the believer has intimate connections is long indeed. The facets of Spirit-fruit are 8. The growth in grace brings us face to face with another 5 as we discover in 2 Peter 1:5-7

• knowledge

• steadfastness

• godliness

• brotherly affection

• love

From Paul in Colossians 3:12-13 we are given more coordinates for virtues

1. compassionate hearts
2. kindness,
3. humility,
4. meekness
5. patience,
6. Tolerance (bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another)
7. forgiviness (forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive)

Obedience is not on any of these lists of nobility because it lends itself to the most famous fables or fibs. God knows what credit does to humans and that is why we (who know the Lord) are better off giving the Heavenly Father all the glory and dominion. Read Genesis 3, Exodus 20, and Deuteronomy 31:19 to, 29 and see why.

“Teach them to observe” is neither salvation nor holiness. It is the mandate relative to contention and security. The sayings of Yeshua are held only by believers, by the elect. So we can drop the Pharisee routine about converting an unbeliever or as in many cases a Christian.

People need something to hope for. People need room to grow. The idea that one can fill up a seeker with all the truth before and thereby make them believers or saints is false and malicious. The church has been there!

“I have been fully compliant” is always a lie