Wednesday 21 September 2016

To Learn

1. Be filled with the Spirit and speak with tongues - because then you have the Teacher inside of you, opening your eyes to see wondrous things in the Scriptures

2. Always win more souls, not fewer souls. That's the heart of God. So if our learning makes us better fishers of men, not detached from soul-winning, then we've acquired true wisdom.

3. The Gospel is always with power, not just words. So if the truth we are discovering results in more manifestations of the Spirit, rather than fewer manifestations of power, then it's probably right. If it tends to be all words and less power, then probably not. 

4. Love. Truth embraces and loves. If the knowledge we have divides us, makes you angry, makes you tend to attack persons not just discuss ideas, and you find yourself wanting to censor others rather than dialogue, that's not love, and means our learning is probably not in the spirit of Christ. 


5. Yielding our own will. Accepting the Word meekly. That enhances our judgment.

6. The Apostles' doctrine. Without the Epistles, we wouldn't know how to apply the history in the Gospels, nor the Old Testament, in a way that's applicable for us today. 

7. The Apostles' view was that God promised the Gospel to Abraham; national Israel became the custodians of that Promise; in the mean time they were given a temporary Law; and other promises specific to them; God had fulfilled all of those promises; Jesus came; 

While we still await the second coming and general resurrection and visible and eternal Kingdom in a new earth and heaven, Jesus vouchsafed it to us through the cross, through a new and living way, and through the Holy Spirit brought-forward into the present the experience of that future Kingdom-salvation, in a spiritual way. There is an Already/Not Yet aspect to the fulfilment of Promise.  

The Law merely foreshadowed and predicted this present, spiritual and coming reality. We are now living in the time of Abraham's promise, in an Inaugurated/Not Yet Consummated way: by faith in the Seed, Jesus, without the deeds of the Law. 

8. We only await the second coming, resurrection and eternal kingdom in new heavens and earth.

9. Therefore any Prophecy which was about Levitical worship, must have been fulfilled while the Old Covenant still stood, because God isn't into returning to the shadow.

10. Yet we do experience and carry-out all of the ethics, morals, predictions and spiritual realities that were foreshadowed in the Law and Prophets.

11. It's all about Jesus!

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