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 forgiving sins.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of July 20, 2013
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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Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith [belief] into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit [that] has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Rom 5:1–11 emphasis and double emphasis added)
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About a year ago, the realization came that Matthew’s Gospel could not be read as an historical document; that the “Jesus” of Matthew’s Gospel was the indwelling Christ Jesus represented by the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou] that all disciples truly born again or born from have in order to be a disciple: “But you are not in flesh but in spirit [pneumati] since spirit of God [pneuma Theou] dwells in you. But if anyone spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] does not have, this one is not of Him [autou] (Rom 8:9 direct translation).
Deep breath or deep breathing as opposed to shallow breathing is represented in Koine Greek by the linguistic icon <pneuma>, the root for English words that pertain to moving air just as pneumatic tools, or pneumonia, a disease of the lungs. Crucifixion killed through shock and suffocation, with the person crucified being unable to breathe when he or she weakened and was no longer able to thrust him or herself upward so the person could breathe. Thus, the beating that Jesus received before being crucified weakened Him to the point that He could not live long on the cross or stake: the beating greatly hastened His death.
If life is in the blood (Gen 9:4), it is the oxygen molecules carried by the blood throughout a living creature’s body that actually sustains the life of the living creature; thus, the breath of a nephesh (a breathing creature) sustains the ready supply of oxygen molecules needed to fuel cellular oxidation, the dark fire that represents the actual life of living creatures, the fleshly bodies of human persons included. Therefore, the breath of the person serves as the metonymic representation of the life of the person, with Koine Greek employing <psuche> to represent the shallow breath or resting breath of a person and with <pneuma> employed to represent the deep breath or heavy breathing of a vigorously exercising person.
Prior to when Jesus received the breath of God [pneuma Theou] when raised from the watery grave of baptism, thereby becoming the second or last Adam, no human person had received a second breath of life: one breath of life—the breath that the first Adam received (Gen 2:7)—was sufficient to sustain physical life, or the life that is in the fleshly body. And the loss of this one breath of life represents [represented] the death of the person.
No human person is humanly born with an immortal soul. There would not need to be any Book of Life (Rev 20:15) or Book of Remembrance (Mal 3:16) kept if people were humanly born with immortal souls; for the immortal soul would go somewhere upon the death of the fleshly body of the person. The concept of a Book of Remembrance precludes humanity from having immortal souls, or indwelling life apart from life sustained by physical breath.
Thus, when Jesus received a second breath of life in the bodily form of a dove that entered into Him [eis auton — from Mark 1:10] about where a whale’s blowhole is located, part of the sign of Jonah—the whale’s fleshly body that entombed Jonah for three days and three nights is analogous to the fleshly body in which a son of God [the formerly dead inner self of a disciple after the person has received a second breath of life] is housed until physical death followed by receipt of a glorified body—Christ Jesus became the second Adam, with the Church as the Body of Christ being constructed from the “life” that the resurrected Jesus received when He was raised from the watery grave of baptism to fulfill all righteousness.
The man Jesus the Nazarene received the breath of God [pneuma Theou] (Matt 3:16) again in the bodily form of a dove so that John the Baptist could be a witness to Jesus having received a second breath of life as the Lamb of God:
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.' I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel." And John bore witness: "I saw the [pneuma] descend like a dove [out of heaven], and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the [pneuma] descend and remain, this is he who baptizes [en pneumatic agion — in spirit holy].' And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God." (John 1:29–34))
John the Baptist claims not to have known Jesus, allegedly his cousin, or claims not to have known that Jesus was the Lamb of God prior to when the breath [pneuma] of God descended out of heaven like a dove … it is extremely unlikely that John didn’t know Jesus if their mothers were related (with Mary staying with Elizabeth for months prior to John’s birth) as the author of Luke’s Gospel contends. But the entirety of Luke’s Gospel is uninspired by the author’s own admission (Luke 1:1–4), and Luke’s Gospel should be treated as a secular text.
Humanity—that is the fleshly bodies of human persons—didn’t receive many breaths of life, but received one breath of life that gives to all human persons, regardless of ethnicity, the breath that the first Adam received when Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into the man of mud’s nostrils and Adam became a breathing creature (Gen 2:7). Elohim didn’t breathe life into Eve’s nostrils, but took life from Adam in the form of his flesh, a rib, and from that fleshly rib constructed Eve. Therefore, the woman had the life of her husband in her and was sustained by the life of her husband, her head. Eve then gave birth to sons that had the life of the man and the woman—one life—in them. Daughters were born to Adam (Gen 5:4) that also is the same life that Adam had received when Elohim breathed into the man of mud’s nostrils. And the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, all having the same life that Adam received when Elohim breathed into his nostrils, then bore grandsons and granddaughters for Adam, with Christ Jesus being to the common pool of humanity as the pile of red clay Elohim used to sculpt Adam was to all clay in the world, with the name <Adam> having significance that hasn’t been well explored, for the linguistic icon discloses that Adam had no hair coat but that the redness of his blood could be seen in his face: prior to being expelled from the Garden of Eden, Adam’s life could be seen in his face. Only with expulsion from Eden came the hiding of life behind a hair coat or coat of hide and hair. Thus, the symbolism of a prophet’s hair coat is much greater than modern Christians comprehend.
Adam and Eve together formed one fleshly entity (Gen 2:24) that is analogous to an inner self of the person [the invisible head of the person] and the outer self of the person [the fleshly body]; hence, in the beginning, there could be no divorce, no separation of head from body. Only later and because of the hardness of human hearts was divorce allowed: Moses permitted divorce, a husband separating from his wife, because of the hardness of Israel’s heart as a foreshadowing of the Tetragrammaton YHWH’s separation because of the softness of Yah’s heart, with Yah entering His creation as His unique son, not to judge Israel and by extension, all of humanity, but to save those human persons who would/will receive the words of God (John 12:47–49).
The Church as the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27) is the Christ Jesus, the second Adam (Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:45), as Eve was to the first Adam; for the “life” of this second Eve comes from God in the form of His breath [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou], analogous to the breath of Elohim in the breath of Adam that gave life to Eve—only none of this is physical …
The first Adam was physical, but the second Adam is a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45) and is not physical; is not the fleshly body of a human person, the reason why Mark begins his Gospel with no history of the man Jesus prior to the beginning of His ministry and the reason why John’s Gospel identifies Jesus as being the Creator of all things physical (John 1:3) and therefore being the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the God of living ones but not the God of dead ones (Matt 22:32). That God is the deity that Jesus came to reveal, the deity that Israel never knew, the deity that Islam doesn’t know, and the deity very few Christians know.
Because the second or last Adam is spiritual, a life-giving spirit, and not a fleshly man, the life that this last Adam gives to the second or last Eve is also spiritual and not physical.
Elohim gave to the first Adam physical breath that Elohim then implanted in the first Eve and that has come to every human person since, regardless of the person’s nationality or ethnicity. But the God of dead ones—the God who raised Jesus from death (see Rom 8:11)—didn’t give to the already physically living man, Jesus the Nazarene, a second physical breath, but His breath, His spiritual breath that gave to Jesus life outside of space-time. And it is this spiritual breath that the glorified Jesus gives to those who are His spiritual Body, with Him being their Head (1 Cor 11:3) as the God who raised Him from death is His head.
But the physical body of a person, sustained by the dark fire of cellular oxidation fueled by the physical breath of the person, has no need for spiritual breath or a second breath of life … the physically living body of a person cannot be “more living” than it already is. A second breath of physical life would only cause the already living person problems of the sort that would cause the person to physically die. Thus receipt of a second breath of life—the spirit of God [pneuma Theou]—is not by the already living physical body, but by the dead inner self; the dead inner self that needs to be resurrected from death in a resurrection like that Jesus experienced when He fulfilled all righteousness.
It is the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou] that enters-into and gives life to the spirit [pneuma] of the disciple (from 1 Cor 2:11) through entering into the foreknown-by-God person’s inner self. A convoluted clause? Certainly. But the reality of spiritual birth is that the Father must first draw a person from this world (John 6:44) by giving to the person the earnest of His spirit [pneuma Theou] in Christ Jesus (from Rom 6:23) while the person is still a sinner, a slave of the Adversary, the property of the Adversary, property that must—until the Second Passover liberation of Israel—be purchased individually from the Adversary through the death of Christ Jesus, not that He dies many times but that He enters the person in the form of His breath or spirit in the spirit of the person prior to when He was crucified, thereby establishing the relationship of the person’s inner self being to Christ as Jesus’ earthly disciples were to the man Jesus.
Today, the Adversary remains the prince of this world—and will remain the prince of the world, the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2–3) until the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and his angels and given to the Son of Man halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation, a one-time event that hasn’t yet occurred and will never occur again. Until then, every person humanly born is born as a son of disobedience, consigned to disobedience so that God can have mercy on all (Rom 11:32), not on “some” but on every person who will manifest genuine love for neighbor and brother, even to laying down the person’s life for another. Therefore, in taking one of the Adversary’s slaves out of the common pool of humanity, God, who gave all humanity to the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh (it is for this reason that Paul writes what he does to the holy ones at Corinth concerning the man with his step-mother — 1 Cor 5:3–5), would steal the person from the Adversary if a price were not paid for the person, with the death of Christ Jesus being of sufficient worth to pay the ransom price of every person.
But the ransom price for a captive is not paid before the person is taken captive. Rather, the purchase of a slave or the ransom price of a captive is paid after—again, not before—the slave is humanly born or the person is taken captive and is a sinner, a son of disobedience. Thus, while the person is still a sinner, not centuries or millennia before the person is conceived, Christ dies for the sinner, the involuntary slave of the Adversary, the involuntary son of disobedience.
The physicality of this world gets in the way when comprehending spiritual matters; i.e., the things of God. Consider what Paul goes on to write in his treatise to the holy ones at Rome:
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died He died to sin, once for all, but the life He lives He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Rom 6:1–11 emphasis and double emphasis added)
Have you been united with Christ Jesus in a death like His? Have you been crucified? Is this the death about which Paul wrote when he spoke of baptism?
In Matthew’s Gospel, what does Jesus tell John the Baptist when John is reluctant to baptize Jesus:
Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented Him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately He went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on Him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." (Matt 3:13–17 double emphasis added)
Jesus was baptized not for the repentance of sin—a cleansing from sin—for Jesus was without sin: He was baptized to fulfill all righteousness, with the fulfilling of all righteousness.
Matthew’s Gospel is the narrative representing the indwelling Jesus that is crucified for the person while the person remains a sinner.
If disciples are both individually and collectively the Body of Christ, what Paul states (again 1 Cor 12:27), then it is reasonable to hold that Jesus was crucified for the collective in 31 CE when all of humanity remained sinners, but is individually crucified for every disciple while the disciple is yet a sinner, meaning that while I was yet a sinner (anytime prior to baptism in 1973) Jesus was crucified for me so that I should experience a resurrection like His resurrection so that I could walk in newness of life, having been set free from sin and disobedience so that I could believe God, believe Christ Jesus, and walk in this world as Jesus walked. I was set free from unbelief and disobedience so that I could keep the commandments of God; for what was it that Paul went on to write?
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? (Rom 6:12–16)
Jesus being crucified for the person while the person remained a sinner, with no person being a sinner before the person is conceived by parents, is a subject that will be developed in forthcoming readings.
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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."