The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary for this week are more in line with what has become usual; for the following will most likely be familiar observations. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection is the foremost commandment.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of June 19, 2010
The person conducting the Sabbath service should open services with two or three hymns, or psalms, followed by an opening prayer acknowledging that two or three (or more) are gathered together in Christ Jesus’ name, and inviting the Lord to be with them.
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For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. / Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through spirit [pneuma], by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.
You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view than mine, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves! / For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. (Gal 5:1–15 emphasis added)
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The key to understanding Paul’s writings is found in “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal 5:13–14). The key to understanding Paul is really in what is absent—the key to unlocking each of Paul’s epistles is in the de-emphasis of the flesh and in this absence.
Literary critics look for a lacunae or gap in a text to open the text up so that its underpinning constructs can be seen. Gaps occur when there are breaks in the narrative or when something is present that shouldn’t be there or when something is absent that should be there. These cracks in the text allow readers to literally tear a text apart—and this is why most Christians fear any deconstruction of Scripture. For them, the text has become a sacred icon, the very Word of God that must be handled as if it were Ming-dynasty porcelain, with great care being undertaken not to drop a single word but to stand spellbound before the text, in awe of the greatness of God.
Endtime disciples come to know God through “text,” the Scriptures. But Scripture is not “God”: it is but the evidence of what God spoke to men through Moses, through the Prophets, and through His Son. Scripture is the recorded earthly shadow of the temple of God in the heavenly realm, with this temple going from being a lifeless structure constructed of the elements of the earth to being the living fractal of Christ. And Scripture is both complete and incomplete, for Scripture exists in the form of the codified linguistic icons [signifiers] separated from their linguistic objects or meanings as the words used by the tribal descendants of Noah were separated by the Lord [YHWH] from the bricks these descendants of Noah had been using to build a tower to heaven so that their one language with the same words (Gen 11:1) became many languages with differing words, each describing the same linguistic objects (i.e., the same bricks).
Scripture is the compilation of linguistic icons sans their objects of God’s utterance to humankind. The linguistic objects for these icons form the icons’ mirror image in the heavenly realm and do not exist in this world; thus, the parakletos was given to Jesus’ disciples to teach them all things and to remind them of what Jesus told them (John 14:26). This parakletos, a holy spirit [pneuma hagion], is the spirit of the truth [pneuma alethia] (John 15:26), with Jesus saying, “‘Everyone who is of the truth [alethia] listens to my voice’” (John 18:37), and saying, “‘But if you do not believe his [Moses’] writings, how will you believe my words’” (John 5:47).
The Christian who does not believe Moses will not believe the words of Jesus even if the person hears these words; the Christian is not of the truth and either has rejected the parakletos or never received the parakletos because the person has not yet been born of God; i.e., born of spirit [pneuma Theon]. And for the person who received the parakletos, rejection of truth is spiritually fatal for rejection is blasphemy against the spirit. In other phrasing, rejection is unbelief, the root of sin as in Paul writing to the saints at Thessalonica, “[B]ecause they refused to love the truth [alethia] and so be saved … God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess 2:10–12).
Again, it is the parakletos, the spirit that comes from the Father, that teaches Jesus’ disciples all things and brings to mind the words that Jesus said—and it is the word [logos], the message, that Jesus spoke that will judge the person who will not receive the words [kogos] of Jesus (John 12:48). This same Jesus was the only Son of Theos (John 3:16), who was the Logos [o logos] that was with the Theon [ton Theon] in the beginning and who was God [theos] (John 1:1) and who created all that has been made (v. 3).
Coming from Judaism, it was difficult for the first disciples who were with the man Jesus to comprehend spiritual birth and the reality that Jesus was, “the Christ the son [of] the God [of] the living” (Matt 16:16), with Jesus telling Peter that this knowledge had come to him from the Father (v. 17). Translators have assigned the limiter theos to God as a quality of His divinity whereas Jesus told Sadducees, “‘And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: “I am the God [o theos] of Abraham, and the God [o theos] of Isaac, and the God [o theos] of Jacob? He is not God of the dead [nekros], but of the living [zao]’” (Matt 22:32) … Jesus also said, “‘Follow me, and leave the dead [thapto heautou nekros] of themselves’” (Matt 8:22). So according to Jesus, the God of Abraham is not the God of the dead but of the living; i.e., of the ones who have been born of God. And this reality is inescapable: Paul writes, “For God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all” (Rom 11:32). If God has consigned all to disobedience, then it is “disobedience” that this all serves, not God. He is not their God. Disobedience in the personage of the Adversary is their god.
Elsewhere Paul writes, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passion of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body [flesh] and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph 2:1–3).
The nature of humankind—because God has consigned all of humankind to disobedience—is that of the prince of this world. This nature desires freedom from constraints of law, and is expressed in variations of the phrase that claims, It is the natural yearning of all men to be free. But free from what and to do what? Free to circumcise the flesh? Does Paul not write that “if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you” (Gal 5:2).
So, does freedom bring to the disciple the liberty of circumcising the flesh? What was among the first things that Paul did after the Jerusalem Conference (Acts chap 15)? Paul went to Derbe and to Lystra, and he had Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3) because he wanted to take Timothy with him.
Was Jesus of no advantage to Timothy because Paul had him circumcised? Or is there more to what Paul writes than the apparent literal or surface meaning of his words?
If God is the God of the living and not of the dead, and if Jesus told the disciple who wanted to first bury his father before following Jesus that the Jews of Judea were counted among the dead of this world, then is God the God [deity] of natural (outwardly circumcised) Israel? Did Jesus not say that the world never knew the Father (John 17:25)? Jesus did not exempt the Jews of Judea from being part of the world. The only exceptions were His disciples to whom He had revealed the Father.
It is always a mistake to say that the People of the Book (i.e., Muslims, Christians, Jews) worship the God of Abraham, who is the God of the living. For only those disciples of Christ Jesus who have truly been born of God are “the living.” Everyone else in this world remains a son of disobedience, the bondservant of the Adversary, and counted among the dead of this world. This includes every Christians who does not love the truth and who will not be taught by the parakletos.
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Whereas Catholic Christians “pray” through icons to Christ or to the Mother of God, Protestant Christians substitute the Bible as “a book” for the icons of the universal church, and give to the Book (not to its contents) the reverence that Catholics give to their icons. But in a world in which meaning must be assigned to words by the reader [auditor] because of what the Lord [YHWH] did at the Tower of Babel, to give reverence to Scripture is as idolatrous as praying through idols to Mary, who is neither able to give eternal life to a Christian nor able to save the Christian when judgments are revealed. Therefore, Christians of all flavors need to repent of the idolatry and read Scripture with respect but not with reverence, being brutally honest with the words on the page for the words will not disappoint even when they say something contrary to what the many false teachers of Israel have said for centuries they say.
What is absent when Paul writes, For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’? … When the lawyer asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life (Luke 10:25), Jesus asked the lawyer how he read the Law (v. 26). The lawyer answered, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself’” (v. 27). And Jesus told the lawyer that he had answered correctly, that he had only to do what he answered and he would live [have eternal life] (v. 28).
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees with His answers to their questions, the Pharisees sought to test [to trap] Jesus with a question: “‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law’” (Matt 22:36). Jesus answered the Pharisee lawyer: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets’” (vv. 37–40).
Thus when Paul writes that the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” Paul omits love for God, which would seem to be a major omission. … How can the whole law be fulfilled in you shall love your neighbor as yourself, when Moses, quoting the Lord, tells the children of Israel, “‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord. You shall love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart’” (Deut 6:4–6).
Paul would seem to be guilty of idolatry if not for what he wrote in his treatise to the Romans:
For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:12–16 emphasis added)
How is the person without the law—who has no knowledge of God—to love God with heart and mind? The person cannot. In this era, that person without the law has not been foreknown by God. And Paul also writes in the same treatise:
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified. (Rom 8:28–30)
The person without the law (i.e., the person has not been called by God) will be saved, according to Paul’s gospel, if this person shows by his or her actions that the work of the law is written on the person’s heart—the work of the law is to cause the Israelite to love God with heart and mind, and to love neighbor as self. If the Father doesn’t, however, choose to call a person in this era, the person bears no fault before God in not loving God with heart and mind. The person is simply not predestined to be resurrected to glory when Jesus returns as the Messiah. The person is not lost if the person loves neighbor as self; for the person will be resurrected in the great White Throne Judgment after the thousand year long reign of Christ as the prince of this world. The person will then be placed under judgment, and according to Paul’s gospel, having the work of the law written on the person’s heart will in the person’s conflicting thoughts accuse (because the person didn’t love God) and excuse (because the person did love neighbor as self) the person when judgments are made or revealed.
But according to Paul, the sinner—the person who doesn’t honor father and mother, who doesn’t love neighbor as self—will perish without the law (Rom 2:12). The person is without excuse; for every child has a father and mother. Every person has a neighbor, or better, neighbors. These every person can love, even when the neighbor makes extending love difficult or when a parent as a parent is an utter failure.
Returning now to Paul’s omission to the Galatians, when Paul doesn’t cite loving God with heart and mind as the great “word” of the law, Paul acknowledges by his omission that those to whom he writes are not foreknown by the Father and predestined in this era to be called, justified, and glorified. Yes, he does! For Paul testifies of himself when on trial, “‘Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I committed any offense’” (Acts 25:8). Omission of the first or greatest of the commandments would have been an offense against the law. But there is no reason to command those who are not under the law and who do not Know the Lord to keep the first or greatest of the commandments, for returning once again to Paul’s treatise to the Romans, we see that Paul says,
For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. / You, however, are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God [pneuma Theon] dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christos] does not belong to him. (Rom 8:3–9 emphasis added)
By accepting outward circumcision (i.e., circumcision of foreskins) the saints at Galatia demonstrate that their minds are set on the flesh and on the things of the flesh. They prove to Paul that they are not foreknown by the Father; that they have not been born of God and do not possess the spirit of God. And this had to be frustrating for Paul, who writes to them, “You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth” (Gal 5:7)?
The person who is not under the law—who has not been truly called by God—has no need to be outwardly circumcised. If this person will make a journey of faith that is equivalent to Abraham’s journey of faith, mentally leaving Babylon [the present kingdom of this world] and mentally journeying across the deserts of western Iraq, then crossing into Judea, represented by Sabbath observance (cf. Ps 95:10–11; Heb 3:16–4:11; Num chap 14), and continuing on to the reconstructed temple in New Jerusalem, the person enters into fellowship with God under the terms of the Moab covenant … this is the course of faith that Paul laid out for those who were not outwardly circumcised on the eighth day.
In his treatise to the Romans, Paul calls the Moab covenant “the righteousness based on faith” (Rom 10:6).
In using the term, the Moab covenant, why do so many Christians who turn first to Paul’s epistle to the Galatians when justifying their lawlessness stare blankly as if they have no idea of what Paul meant when he spoke of the righteousness based on faith? Do these Christians not realize that by their focus on the flesh (especially the politics of this world) and by their disbelief of God, they who may have been running well have been hindered from believing the truth? They are doubly accursed, and before the seven endtime years of tribulation conclude, they will die both physically and spiritually.
Does any Christian seriously believe that after receiving Paul’s rebuke the Galatians repented and returned to what Paul taught? After these Galatians had, as adults, undergone circumcision, why would they return to Paul? … They did not return to the truth. They, like all in Asia, left Paul (2 Tim 1:15) and began to follow others teachers, perhaps ones who started them speaking in bastardized Hebrew, forbidding them to utter Jesus’ name in Greek for Zeus was hiding somewhere within the sound of the Greek name.
May those Christian pastors and ministers today who would teach disciples to transgress the commandments and to mingle the sacred with the profane repent before they cannot escape being doubly accursed—
But they will no more repent than newly circumcised Galatians would have repented … a man doesn’t consent to being circumcised for light or trivial reasons, but only after a sincere conversion to Judaism, or to Islam. Thus, Galatians who felt the need to be circumcised were convinced that Paul wrongly understood the mysteries of God, and that Paul was teaching falsely. They would never return to what Paul taught; for in deciding to be circumcised, they (those who knew what Paul taught) rejected Paul’s gospel and Paul himself.
Consider Paul’s dilemma: Paul would have understood that by placing emphasis on the flesh (on the foreskin of a man), these Galatians were rejecting Christ Jesus and all that went with a new inner self born as a son of God. These Galatians had placed themselves under the law without the covering or mantle or garment of Christ’s righteousness. They would be as Jesus said Pharisees were who said that they saw and understood the mysteries of God: “Jesus said, ‘For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.’ Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, ‘Are we also blind?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, “We see,” your guilt remains’” (John 9:39–41).
Those Christians—1st-Century or 21st-Century—who claim to understand the mysteries of God but who are actually blind spiritually will either take themselves out from under grace through their willful lawlessness (see Rom 6:16) or through their physical-mindedness (Gal 5:2–4).
The righteousness based on faith is a covenant made with Israel that is spiritual, that is a heavenly thing, for it was ratified by a song rather than by blood. It was made with the children of Israel present on the plains of Moab, and with those who were not yet born (Deut 29:14–15), and it is a covenant made in addition to the covenant made at Sinai (v. 1). And Paul was trying to bring converts in Galatia to God under this spiritual covenant that will have Israel, when the blessings and the curses come upon the people and the people are far from God—Gentiles are far from God by the fact that they are Gentiles—turn to God with all their hearts and all their minds and God brings them back to the Promised Land and circumcises their hearts (Deut 30:1–6).
Paul doesn’t know who has been foreknown and called by God when he preaches repentance to whoever will hear him. His assumption has to be that some are foreknown by God. But when disciples demonstrate that their minds remain focused on the flesh as in the case of these Galatians who began circumcising themselves, Paul would have realized that these Galatians were not yet born of spirit. They were not foreknown, called, and justified. Rather, they remained sons of disobedience who had accepted for a season the trappings of righteousness.
Understanding the Jews had “a law that would have lead to righteousness” (Rom 9:31) if it had been pursued by faith rather than by works (v. 33), and that this law was the Moab covenant—the righteousness based on faith (Rom 10:6)—Paul knew that Gentiles who had their belief counted to them as righteousness could come before God under this same spiritual covenant. But John’s vision (i.e., the Book of Revelation) had not yet been given; nor had the visions of Daniel been unsealed. So Paul couldn’t know (except via his visit to the third heaven) that a thousand years would separate when the foreknown saints would be glorified and when the remainder of humankind would come before the Lord in the great White Throne Judgment. Paul preached without knowing what endtime saints now know since the visions of Daniel were unsealed in 2002. But Paul did know that the converts in Galatia erred greatly when they began to circumcise themselves as he, Paul, had Timothy circumcised so as not to cause offense among Jews who placed importance on the flesh.
Did the Galatians begin to circumcise themselves so as not to cause offense when they came among Jews? Were these Galatians preparing to visit Jerusalem and the temple? They would need to be circumcised to enter the temple. Or were these Galatians, like endtime Sacred Name Christians, simply focused on the flesh?
Paul’s epistle to the Galatians has been twisted dry of meaning by lawless teachers of Israel, but those who have done this twisting have failed to realize that Paul knew that these Galatians were not born of God—he discloses that he knows by not citing the foremost of the commandments, disciples are to love God with heart and mind. Paul’s omission of half of the law in his summary of the law is deliberate and not a mistake. However, the Christian convert who has not been born of God cannot love God with heart and mind for this convert remains numbered among the dead of this world.
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The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."