Christian Living
The Ministering Gifts
Christ Fulfilled Them All
Jesus took a sneak peak at eternity and he saw us there and what he saw concerned him so much that he decided he would come and help us to make heaven our home. Now what we have to do is mature in Christ.
Ephesians 4:11-13 and he gave some apostles; and some, prophets; and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers.
For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry and for the edifying of the body of Christ.
Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
Colossians 2:6-10 as ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him
Rooted and built up in Him, and established in the faith as ye have been taught, abounding there in with thanksgiving
Beware any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ.
For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily
And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power.
It was not Jesus’ plan to set forth a complete system of morals, but rather by His character and personality to create an ethical standard. Other philosophers of his day and since were careful to dissociate ethics from religion; Jesus bound moral and religious principles together. In presenting an outline, there, of his ethical teachings, it is impossible to leave out the doctrine of the kingdom of heaven or divine grace and of religion.
Jesus was furnished with most of his moral principles in the Old Testament. He was not original or revolutionary in His teachings as to create a new ethical world; but He did enunciate certain great moral truths which carried with them procreative virtue because of the fact that he made them His own, lived them, and even died for them. His contribution to the ethics of the world can only be obtained by comparing what He taught with what was in His day being taught and practiced by Jewish Rabbis and other ethical non-Jewish sages.
Jesus did not hesitate to assail the representatives of Judaism. Assail means to leap upon, attack violently with blows or words, attempting to break down resistance by repeated blows or shots. Jesus took the initiative to plan in the struggle to work against false teachings and doctrines forcefully with unfriendly or bitter words sometime to affect or act injurious, belligerent and antagonistic. Jesus was an offensive player in the fulfilling of the work of His Father.
On more than one occasion function between himself and His religious environment kindled fire within Him, evoking anger at their profanation of the temple, and indignant criticism of the legal scrupulosity. Above everything else the contract between their lives and their outward appearance evoked such metaphors as that of whiten sepulchers (Matthew 23:27). Heaven denounced their hypocrisy in bold terms, saying that their pharisaic tutelage of a proselyte made him a child of hell (Matthews 23:15). By such indictments and uncompromising verdicts Jesus showed His estimate of the great responsibilities resting upon Jewish leaders. With keen indignation He passes sentence upon the complacent, self seeking priest who on pretext of pastoral zeal and with long prayers, devoured widow’s houses (Mark 12:40). Jesus also reproves most emphatically the scribes for their insensibility to such primary moral sanctions as tithing scrupulously the meanest garden produced but neglected the weightier matters of the law such as justice, mercy and faithfulness (Matthew 23:23).
The teachings of the scribes were good, but their works were evil because they did not practice their own precepts. Jesus was not a Pharisee, nor a scribe, nor a Judean but a son of Galilean peasantry and therefore stood far above many of the pharisaic rules about ritual and purifying.
Jesus criticized the religious authority for being so wedded to certain traditions that they reject, pervert and even made void the commandments of God (Mark 7:8&13). He taught against people robbing God of His tithe, the sacred property of God and the fact that spiritual officials of the Jewish religious establishment should permit such conduct and call it legal. He had a problem with conforming to the injustice and distinguished sharply between the great moral demands of God and any mere ceremonial obligations. Mark 7:15 there is nothing from without a man that entering into him can defile him, but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. He was speaking of clean and unclean meats. He introduced a religious revolution in making all meats clean abolishing the ceremonial distinctions of the Levitical law. He came to set things in order.
Jesus was the Chief Apostle of the Church putting an end to the ceremonial law. Putting an end to it He made way for the true church which he begins with the ceremonial law which men made and added the law of God’s making and discharges His disciples from the obligation of the ceremonial law.
Paul’s attitude to the law is quite as drastic (Colossians 2:4). Jesus specifics is that it is not to dismiss the law but that man realize His conception that man’s relationship to God is an ethical one with responsibilities. Man should not tolerate the thought that God would exclude any one from His presence merely because he had touched a corpse or eaten swine’s flesh. It is the evil will, the impure heart, the false nature that separates men from God.
These things now are more receptive when given that in Jesus day. When he first uttered it and acted upon it he encountered opposition. He ventured also in the realm of the moral law allowing that to perform works of necessity was no violation to the Sabbath, pointing to David as an example (Mark 2:23-26), He was lord of the Sabbath and if He wished He could set his disciples free from the obligation or consequences of guilt of not keeping the Sabbath. This was a declaration of war, when you dare to go against the religious order. This Mosaic law was an end in itself, and obedience to it was the final purpose of human life as opposed to Jesus’ view that the law was given as a means to an end.
Jesus canceled the rigid and doctrinaire aspect of the law and put in its place an entirely new religious conception of duty which was destined to do away altogether as the law as law. What the law exacted, Jesus wished to be done voluntarily. What the law demanded on the penalty of punishment if not obeyed, Jesus wished to be rendered out of love to Him and to righteousness. We learn through the boldness of Jesus in this making a distinction between the law and the gospel between scripture and scripture and His rhythmical repetition of the words that he intended to go far beyond Moses’ reach. He announced to His disciples that God asks for them to do more than merely abstain from murder and adultery. He demands perfect self control or integrity of heart. He expects man to control fits of anger and spasmodic emotions to lust. God brings into judgment not only the completed act of sin but the intentions also.
Gods love transcends human stature and reach human requirements. He asserts the tenth commandment enjoined namely the equivalence of overt acts (doing in open view, manifested deed done, voluntarily really existing in the life of a believer that says they are a Christian, one that impersonates Him) and intention of thought.
His verdict upon divorce points in identically the same direction. He boldly sets Moses legislation on the subject as temporary only due to the hardness of Israel’s heart and indirect antithesis to the statute originally promulgated in paradise. Moses concession Jesus represents as something adventitious and as merely making a stage which was intended to be let behind. His argument is that when a man puts away his wife he places her in a position of moral jeopardy; for should she marry secretly or openly another man she thereby completes the dissolution of her first marriage which is still binding. The first husband of such a wife is morally responsible for her, even after his dismissal of her and accordingly must be as the guilt of her sin. Jesus warned lawyer against exacting oaths. Every oath is an appeal to God; in the sense that it brings God down into the sordid and trivial concerns of the hour, such scenes of rash adjuration is a lack of recognition of God’s majesty and purity in the inmost soul and is loathsome. To honor God best is to plain and simply obey the Word of Truth he set forth.
Nonresistance and love of your enemies (Matthew 5:38-48) Jesus rises to his full ethical stature. Instead of retribution (an eye for an eye) he demands the entire renunciation of self defense or of self vindication. Citizens of Christ’s spiritual kingdom must even be willing to present to his assailant the other cheek and to give even more than asked to surrender the cloak as well as the coat.
Jesus was a Pastor that taught and His teaching requires the Christian to have an attitude of such with no assigned reason to it other than its requirement of Him. Citizens of the spiritual kingdom is different, it is a must and calls of preparation. Some thing in life as Christians we must forebear and evil must be renounced along the way. Whatever it is that will hinder you form entering a higher life of the kingdom of heaven; we must give it up; whether it is fame, wealth, possessions, ease, home, wife, husband, or children. Nothing can be named greater than that of the kingdom of God.
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