Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4)
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The False Filter |
The Biblical Filter |
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The word OR the Word |
The Word THROUGH the word |
Not only
that, but after my time with God I went downstairs to do my exercise routine
and picked up listening to the Scriptures where I left off. As soon as the
reader began speaking from Romans 7, it was another Amen to what I was already
considering from Matthew 12, and another nail in the coffin of BJ’s
Jewish/Christian hybrid from his “different spirit”/BJ hybrid scriptures.
So,
with far more realness and emotion filling me than I can put into words, here
are a few words to invite you to join me on a path from God where “Your word is
a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105). It is like a
surprise gift for the morning as we enjoy a viewpoint set before us by God
before heading out on the garden path set in place by the world, the flesh, and
the devil.
Matthew 12 begins with,
At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12:1-2).
The
characters in the scene are Jesus, his disciples, and the Pharisees. The scene
is a grainfield. The scenario is the disciples doing something the religious
elite considered working on the Sabbath. “Horribly sinful!” they say.
What
stood out is that the religious hypocrites had Jesus the Messiah right there.
But they were blind to who he was and so they appealed to the highest authority
they knew, the law.
HOWEVER!!!
They were
doing the same thing as BJ in his book, they were appealing to THEIR understanding
as the authority over the law, and so demanded that the disciples were expected
to bow to their mindset. I say this because even though they spoke of what was “not
lawful”, it was really what they considered not lawful.
Now,
you may have picked up that I am not a theologian. I can’t keep up to debates
on theological issues. But I love the Scriptures because they attach me to “the
mind of Christ”. They are the means by which the Spirit personally teaches me,
guides me, and reminds me. I can enjoy the sounds of divine harmonies in the
symphony even though I could never play an instrument to enhance the orchestra.
So,
when I come to this Scripture, I am hearing harmonies with what I saw yesterday
about how we are to take up the yoke of Christ, attach to the Savior in
repentance and faith and “learn” from him. And the very next thing God breathes
out through Matthew is a picture of the religious elite who have refused to do
that very thing.
What
stood out the most is the fact that the religious hypocrites had the Messiah,
the Son of God, the Word who became flesh, Immanuel “God with us”, right there
in their midst, and instead of asking him what he thought of his disciples
picking grain on the Sabbath, they appealed to the law as their authority. This
is like so many church folk who put on a show of appealing to Scripture as
their authority when they are really appealing to their own understanding as
the authority over Scripture. And, at the same time, they only ever demand
allegiance to their view of SOME Scriptures but never the ones that would
address their pride, arrogance, immaturity, and self-centeredness!
Now,
where did this scene take me as I saw the religious elite appealing to their
interpretations of the law instead of to the Christ/Messiah who was right there
with them? It took me to where Paul said that the law “was added because of
transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been
made” (Galatians 3:19).
And do
you know what that means? That the “offspring” HAD come, and the “until” was
OVER!
Here’s
how God said it through Paul, “the promises were made to Abraham and to his
offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but
referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ” (Galatians 3:16). So,
if the “law was added… until the ‘offspring’ should come”, and Jesus Christ,
the offspring, had come, the law was finished. It had done its work. It was no
longer needed because Jesus was there!
The
Spirit continues, “Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law,
imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed” (vs 23). Not only was the
law only “until” the coming of Christ with his new covenant, but, because of
sin, we were “held captive” and “imprisoned”, terms that clearly indicate a
negative state.
However, the focus is on “until the coming faith would be revealed.”
That faith, of course, is the faith taught in the gospel of the kingdom, that “by
grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is
the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians
2:8-9). Once Jesus appeared to secure our redemption through his blood, our
captivity and imprisonment under the law because of sin was over. The new
covenant of “grace through faith” had arrived.
“So then,” the Scripture continues, “the law
was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by
faith” (vs 24). Do you see the repetitions of “until”, as in, “UNTIL the
offspring should come” (vs 19); “UNTIL the coming faith” (vs 23), and, “UNTIL
Christ came” (vs 24)?
And
the conclusion is, “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a
guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (vss 25-26).
We are no longer under the guardian of the law because Christ has come, faith
has come, the offspring of Abraham has come.
So,
what were the religious elite missing because they were blind to the gospel?
That the very offspring of Abraham was with them in that grainfield, the law had finished its job because the Christ had come, and they only needed to ask Jesus
his view of the situation to have the Word of God giving them the mind of God
on the matter.
All
that was just part of my daily time with God in his word and prayer, teaching
me something more of how amazing it is when we humble ourselves to take Jesus’
yoke on the neck of our hearts and learn from him how to walk in the new
covenant in his blood. And, at the same time, it made a HUGE clarification that
there is no revised or renewed Jewish covenant in Christ. The old covenant made
through Moses was only designed for the time from Moses to the offspring of
Abraham. It was NEVER INTENDED to go beyond that. There was no law for 400+
years after Abraham. It was not required because Abraham was living by faith.
The law was needed to get Israel as a nation through to the coming of the Christ.
But at the moment Jesus entered the stage, the law’s place in the script
was done. Not needed. The Savior was here.
Now,
let’s have some fun here. When I celebrate what I learn from the word, that is
NOT when inspiration is happening! Inspiration (God breathing out his words)
happened when Matthew was carried along by the Holy Spirit to write down the
words God was giving him. And it happened when Paul was carried along by the
Holy Spirit to write down what God was giving him. The breathing-out of
Scripture (written words) happened when God moved those men to write down what
he said.
What
happened this morning was that the Spirit was doing what John was carried along
by the Spirit to write down as Scripture, “he will teach you all things and
bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). That is
NOT inspiration happening between the Scriptures and me (the reader). It was me
encountering the breathed-out words of God in Scripture and experiencing what
it means to take Jesus’ yoke on the neck of my heart and learn from him as the
Spirit teaches and reminds and the Scriptures “teach, reprove, correct, and
train in righteousness” (II Timothy 3:16-17). It is all such a wonderful
weaving together of the wisdom and knowledge of God that not even the BJs can
steal it from the poor in spirit!
From
there, as I said, I went to try catching up on some exercise, and where I had
left off in the audio Bible was at Romans 7. Since I listened all the way
through to Romans 14, I will just give the gist of this to show how God “just
happened” to have so much to tell me this morning in relation to BJ’s attempt
to combine what was distinctly Jewish about the old covenant with a “renewed
Jewish covenant” of some sort. Paul and the other apostles were already confronting
such a hybrid “gospel” as part of that “another Jesus”, “different spirit”, and
“different gospel” of the first-century false teachers.
Paul’s
point is summarized in Romans 7:6, “But now we are released from the law,
having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of
the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” Again, when God uses
expressions like “released from the law,” and uses a Jewish man who had once
prided himself in keeping the law to teach us this, we not only know what it
means in words, but we see what it means in how clearly Paul broke ties with
that old life. And when Paul uses “died to” the law, picturing the law as what “held
us captive”, it is clearly an end to the old and the fulfillment and beginning of
the new. The “written code” was “the old way”, and the “way of the Spirit” is “the
new way”. Simple.
That
leads through the glorious teachings of Romans 8 where we see how the whole
plan of the new covenant works in our lives, leads us in the life of the
Spirit, guarantees that nothing will separate us from the love of Christ, and
makes us more than conquerors in our Savior. And on things went until a phrase
in Romans 11 stood out to me: “Note then the kindness and the severity of God:
severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you
continue in his kindness” (vs 22).
BJ and
his comrades want us to believe that some of the attributes of God are real,
like kindness, but others are anthropomorphisms (I still don’t know how that
works in their minds) that somehow project human weakness and immorality onto
God, something like the way the Greek and Roman gods were portrayed.
To
help me with this fallacy, God showed me this verse in which the breathed-out
words of God speak of God as both kind and severe. The Bible Sense Lexicon
defines these words as, “kindness (quality) n. — the quality of being
warmhearted, considerate, humane, gentle, and sympathetic”, and, “Severity: harshness
n. — the quality of being rough and severe.”
So,
how is that possible in one God to have both extremes?
Answer: because it is how he relates differently to different hearts.
Hearts that have fallen under judgment of sin receive the severity of his
justice against their crimes. Hearts that hear the gospel and feel the blessing
of the poor in spirit experience the kindness of God because the harshness was
already expressed to the Savior on the cross.
Please
note that this is an apostle writing down the breathed-out words of God on the
matter. They also agree with what Jesus said about eternal life for those who
believe but wrath for those who do not believe (John 3). And it is pictured
brilliantly in the pillar of cloud and fire that led Israel through the
wilderness to the Promised Land. To the people of God, it was the constant
evidence Yahweh was with his people to protect and bless them. To the enemies
of God, it was the constant warning that Yahweh, the Creator, the only true
God, was with the people of Israel, and no one could stand against him in what
he was doing for his people.
This
is why, when Israel sent spies to check out Jericho as the firstfruits of their
campaign to take the Promised Land, Rahab renounced everything she had ever believed
or lived and put her faith in Yahweh as the only true God. She was not
disgusted with him for coming to destroy her evil city. She knew that Yahweh
was the true God and wanted to be with him and his people.
Again,
I am only sharing these things as gifts of God’s grace to me this morning,
taking Jesus’ invitation from yesterday that we come to him for the rest of our
souls and showing how the religious elite needed to take his yoke upon them and
learn from him so they could understand that he was the offspring of Abraham
who fulfilled God’s promise to their forefather. And then to see how
wonderfully God spoke about so many similar things in Romans 7-13, including
the very clear picture that every attribute revealed about him is true and
real, and those who misrepresent him are in a horrible position under a horrible
judgment for leading people astray.
Now
that we have basked in the beauty of this viewpoint scene, we are ready to
travel again down BJ’s garden path and see how much clearer God’s view on this
book becomes. And we do so with a smile of expectation that this viewpoint has prepared
us to discern more of the poison-in-the-pudding as we seek to live instead by
every word that comes from the mouth of God.
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt
Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com
Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the
Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition.
Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible
Systems
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