Churches of Christ: March 2005
GUILT
Unfortunately many who have obeyed the gospel of Christ have yet to experience the extreme peace that comes from having faith in the faith.
Jesus said that He would forgive you.
Don't you believe Him?
Many of you act as if you don't wish to continue on in your relationship with Christ and to be forgiven.
If you really understood the calm that comes in spirit and mind; you would seek to understand the grace of Jesus Christ.
The problem: Many of you have been ruined by either bad preaching, or the wrong impression from good preaching.
The preacher has a great responsibility to contend for the faith; but many of them do not yet understand that contending for the faith also means that they must include sermons about getting rid of the guilt.
I can assure you that if you have obeyed the gospel of Christ and you are striving your very best to learn and grow in the faith, and you confess any sins and ask God to forgive you; the faith promises that you will be made clean by the blood of Jesus Christ.
If you believe in Christ, you can believe that your soul can be pure and holy in the eyes of God.
See Colossians 1.21-24 please.
Here, the word of God teaches us that Jesus in Heaven presents all that have obeyed him before the Father as Holy, blameless; and then we see that in order for this to be the case that we must continue in the faith grounded and settled; with hope in Christ.
Study the Bible; come to the conclusion once and for all that you can be Holy again just like you wer that day when you were baptized.
Love in Christ,
Joe McClure
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Blood of Jesus
Dear Christian friends,
Have you ever meditated upon the blood of Jesus?
The Bible places much emphasis upon the connection between the blood of Jesus and man's salvation.
When we partake of the communion, we are encouraged to think respectively of the meaning of what we are doing.
What does it mean to drink of the fruit of the vine and eat of the bread?
Of course, the most obvious answer is that we do so in order to remember or memoralize the death of Christ on the cross; but what more?
The Bible teaches us that no person who ever lived would go to Heaven had the blood not been spilled from the body of Jesus Christ.
Have you ever questioned why?
Have you just took it by faith, since God said it?
Or, have you made an attempt to see if God has revealed why the horrible crucifixion of Jesus was necessary to atone for mankind's sins?
Those who are supposed to know about stuff say that the type of death that Jesus endured is the most horrible way to die that has ever been used as a means of the death penalty for public violations of law.
Why was a death necessary? Since we serve an omnipotent, all-powerful God, why did He not just give us a set of laws to observe, and a prayer to pray when we violated those laws, with a promise of Heaven for all who followed the plan?
Have you ever wondered why that almost from the beginning of time, that mankind was required to offer blood to God as a sacrifice upon an altar?
I fear that many who call themselves Christians never think 'outside of the box'.
Most, I fear, just blindly accept what they are told, with very little challenging to the doctrine.
God's Word: Prove all things
God's Word: Prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of Christ
God's word calls each of us to challenge what the preachers tell us.
All that have obeyed the call of the gospel now belong to Christ.
They no longer belong to their mommies and daddies; so they are now under new leadership.
Anytime you hear the preacher say something you do not understand; challenge it. I don't necessarily mean to stand up in the church services and challenge him; but at the very least, make a note of your question.
Go home and try to confirm what the preacher said by what God's Word says on the same issues.
When God created the world, there was a principle established, one among others, that said: 'Without the shedding of blood is no remission of sins.'
It may be easiest for us to understand this on our most basic level of fleshly thinking.
In the ancient times, if a man went into a neighbor's camp and killed a man's son (the sin); then the murdered person's father could go with his evidence to the local judge; and when the judged ruled that the evidenced convicted the murderer, that man's blood was to be spilled in exchange for the life he took.
We call this a life for a life; or in our day we refer to it as capital punishment.
When blood was spilled, it called for the blood of the guilty to be spilled in exchange.
When a man sinned in ancient times, he was instructed to bring the best of his flock of sheep, or cows, or goats to an altar. There he was to kill the animal in sacrifice to God.
Why was this a sacrifice?
Why was this animal's life considered as atonement for the man's sins?
Atonement means 'payment for'. To give up the very best sheep or lamb that a man had was certainly a sacrifice. This was probably the animal he was planning to use in his breeding of a better flock. If he was getting ready to sell, this would have been the animal that would have brought the greatest price.
Until the century in which Jesus lived, God's people had sacrificed animals from the time of Adam; literally for thousands of years.
God's law changed. After the death of Jesus, the animal sacrifice was no longer required.
After the death of Jesus, no shedding of blood is called for in God's law.
Jesus is refer to as a substitutionary sacrifice.
In the place of animals, or of a man himself dying for his sins, the one sacrifice of Jesus was great enough to take care of all sins for all time.
I have more thoughts that I may post later. Anyone who reads this and wishes to ask questions or comments, I would appreciate hearing from you.
Have you ever meditated upon the blood of Jesus?
The Bible places much emphasis upon the connection between the blood of Jesus and man's salvation.
When we partake of the communion, we are encouraged to think respectively of the meaning of what we are doing.
What does it mean to drink of the fruit of the vine and eat of the bread?
Of course, the most obvious answer is that we do so in order to remember or memoralize the death of Christ on the cross; but what more?
The Bible teaches us that no person who ever lived would go to Heaven had the blood not been spilled from the body of Jesus Christ.
Have you ever questioned why?
Have you just took it by faith, since God said it?
Or, have you made an attempt to see if God has revealed why the horrible crucifixion of Jesus was necessary to atone for mankind's sins?
Those who are supposed to know about stuff say that the type of death that Jesus endured is the most horrible way to die that has ever been used as a means of the death penalty for public violations of law.
Why was a death necessary? Since we serve an omnipotent, all-powerful God, why did He not just give us a set of laws to observe, and a prayer to pray when we violated those laws, with a promise of Heaven for all who followed the plan?
Have you ever wondered why that almost from the beginning of time, that mankind was required to offer blood to God as a sacrifice upon an altar?
I fear that many who call themselves Christians never think 'outside of the box'.
Most, I fear, just blindly accept what they are told, with very little challenging to the doctrine.
God's Word: Prove all things
God's Word: Prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of Christ
God's word calls each of us to challenge what the preachers tell us.
All that have obeyed the call of the gospel now belong to Christ.
They no longer belong to their mommies and daddies; so they are now under new leadership.
Anytime you hear the preacher say something you do not understand; challenge it. I don't necessarily mean to stand up in the church services and challenge him; but at the very least, make a note of your question.
Go home and try to confirm what the preacher said by what God's Word says on the same issues.
When God created the world, there was a principle established, one among others, that said: 'Without the shedding of blood is no remission of sins.'
It may be easiest for us to understand this on our most basic level of fleshly thinking.
In the ancient times, if a man went into a neighbor's camp and killed a man's son (the sin); then the murdered person's father could go with his evidence to the local judge; and when the judged ruled that the evidenced convicted the murderer, that man's blood was to be spilled in exchange for the life he took.
We call this a life for a life; or in our day we refer to it as capital punishment.
When blood was spilled, it called for the blood of the guilty to be spilled in exchange.
When a man sinned in ancient times, he was instructed to bring the best of his flock of sheep, or cows, or goats to an altar. There he was to kill the animal in sacrifice to God.
Why was this a sacrifice?
Why was this animal's life considered as atonement for the man's sins?
Atonement means 'payment for'. To give up the very best sheep or lamb that a man had was certainly a sacrifice. This was probably the animal he was planning to use in his breeding of a better flock. If he was getting ready to sell, this would have been the animal that would have brought the greatest price.
Until the century in which Jesus lived, God's people had sacrificed animals from the time of Adam; literally for thousands of years.
God's law changed. After the death of Jesus, the animal sacrifice was no longer required.
After the death of Jesus, no shedding of blood is called for in God's law.
Jesus is refer to as a substitutionary sacrifice.
In the place of animals, or of a man himself dying for his sins, the one sacrifice of Jesus was great enough to take care of all sins for all time.
I have more thoughts that I may post later. Anyone who reads this and wishes to ask questions or comments, I would appreciate hearing from you.
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