"You are a king then!" said Pilate.
Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."
-John 18:37
He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.
-1 John 3:8 (emphasis mine)
Seems pretty cut and dry, doesn't it? Jesus says He came to testify to the truth. John testifies that He came to destroy the devil's work, which according to John 8, is lies. What then are we preaching to a lost and dying world? More often then not, they don't understand Jesus' or your faith because they don't understand why He came anyway!
1. If He came simply to carry our burdens, guilt, and shame and nothing else then He's still carrying them and is a burdened, guilty, shamed God. Yes, that is the implications, He did take upon Himself those things, but something had to be done with them if He were to declare victory!
2. Eternal life is the benefit of His work, but I don't think it was the work itself.
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
-Romans 6:22
3 comments:
dude, totally awesome!
This self focus of Christ's purpose of coming is totally central to the selfish attitude of the church today. somehow we have taken God's work and made it, once again, all about us. humans have an annoying habit of doing that, dont they?
stupid sheep
ps
does this have anything to do with your last poll thingy? i noticed it was, like, the first time i had ever seen disagreement on it.
cool
Yes it does.
I think the root of why we are having so much disagreement in the Church is that we don't even all agree on why Jesus came to begin with! We've selected a few pet passages to use for quicky evangelism rather than know the complete story of creation, fall, repentance, redemption, consecration, and sanctification in a life of holy empowerment! Instead we like the heavenbound aspect and miss how Jesus was doing things when He was here Himself. Did He once preach a sermon on Heaven as a place to look forward to? No, He referred to what needed to be done here and now and DID exactly that- know that in time His Father would bring all things to His completion.
We disagree in the church because we disagree about Jesus and don't even realize it. We have to get straight Who it is that we're following before we can begin to wonder why we're not taking the same path.
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