'Why don't you NOT come to church with me'

3 reasons why inviting people to 'church' is not an effective way to introduce them to the gospel:

1- Most contemporary unchurched people are afraid to go to a church meeting, because they perceive it as a gathering of self-holy people, and they know they themselves are not.

2- Most church meetings are characterized by a culture that is strange, and therefore frightening to the unchurched.

3- Inviting an unbeliever to 'church' has the potential of confusing the issue of salvation, because he is likely to think that attending a religious event will help make him acceptable to God.

The Snatching Up

There is in the New Testament something called a ‘snatching up’ of living believers in Jesus, before or during the 70^th period of 7 years that were predicted mainly re: the nation of Israel in world events.  If, as I write this, Betty and I are not being presumptuous to consider ourselves a part of those who have depended on the cross for acceptance by God, then we may have mysteriously disappeared from the planet in this ‘snatching up.’

 

To anyone reading this after such a disappearance, don’t completely despair.  It may not be easy being a ‘believer’ from now to the end of this earth as we know it (in 3-7 years), but it will still be fully worth choosing to cling to Jesus the Messiah, and he will be with you in a special way.  There will be other believers around.

 

And I will be waiting for you at the Eastern gate of Jerusalem.

Why the guilt you feel about Hebrews 10:25 may be false

I just realized: when the Book says to dependers on the cross “don’t give up gathering together,” it does NOT mean ‘keep doing church,’ at least in the popular sense of having a predictable program with certain practiced performers standing (way)up in front of the spectating majority.  It does not even necessarily mean gathering in a regular place at a regular time, though that would be the norm.  What it DOES mean, simply and yet significantly, is to regularly get together for the purpose of relating to each other as believers in Lord Jesus.  This of course requires some intentionality by us as individuals, though that may amount to just seizing opportunities as they arise.

So, if you hate ‘church,’ don’t be too hard on yourself.  And don’t force what you’ve always thought of as ‘church’ into the Book’s statement above.  It is not all about, but certainly profoundly about RELATIONSHIP, with Jesus and your brothers and sisters. Since, unlike in the Old Arrangement, the temple of the God (where he is in a special sense) is now no longer a building, but people (first one, then several or more), this gathering can take place in any building, or not, like under a tree.  And since under the New Arrangement based on Jesus’ death, every believer is a priest with access, rather than there being a special class, gatherings should be widely participatory.  Everyone has that privilege and responsibility, and all present benefit from interacting with all the others.  There is incredible freedom for creativity in the event.

Peter reverts to Old Arrangement living; Paul champions the gospel

How was Peter’s not (i.e. discontinuing from) eating with the Gentiles (Galatians 2:12) a violation of the gospel (Galatians 2:14)?  (Obviously he was eating Gentile food, though for a Jew even to be in the same room was religiously contaminating.)

1)      (It was not directly that he changed his behavior.)   It had to do with WHY he changed his behavior.

2)      The gospel says people become acceptable to God and others within God’s family by one condition alone: dependence on the cross-death of Jesus, which removed our sin-guilt.

3)      By his actions Peter was definitely saying that to be acceptable with God and his people required not eating certain food.  Here’s how:

4)      Now, keeping moral values that were still in effect (truth telling, etc.) would not clearly demonstrate that a person is basing acceptance on rule-keeping.  (He could be doing it to please his Father, whom he knows already accepts him via his dependence on the cross.)

5)      But the dietary rules were no longer in effect by this time (Mk 7; Acts 10).  (They were temporary rules for the Jews, to teach lasting lessons in how sin separates us from God and how much it would cost to bring us to him.)

6)      Also, an individual’s rule-keeping of either ‘real’ rules or ceremonial rules does not demonstrate that the person is doing it in order to be accepted.  He could be keeping ceremonial rules because his conscience is still (wrongly) telling him to keep them (in which case he should, even though his conscience is giving him bad information), or he could be keeping cermonial rules to keep from influencing a new believer from violating his conscience which is still telling him, incorrectly, that some behavior is morally wrong when in fact it is amoral.

7)      But if an individual or group compels others to keep rules that are no longer (or never have been) “in effect,” then this clearly demonstrates an embracing of acceptance by rule-keeping, which is a violation of the gospel.  Because there is only one reason to compel another person to keep non-absolute rules, and that reason is: to make that person acceptable to the enforcer.

So, in this instance, Peter was compromising the gospel by sending a message to the Gentiles that they were, after all, not acceptable simply by depending on the cross, and, by the same token, Peter was de facto saying that the only way he could become acceptable to the Religious Policemen was by discontinuing his eating food with the Gentiles.

The Unforgiveable Sin of the New Arrangement

Sometimes we read New Arrangement statements through Old Arrangement ‘eyes.’  An example of this is the way some in the Early Church understood the statement in Hebrews 10:26, “For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins…”  They understood this to mean that if a believer in Jesus sinned after being baptized, he had no hope of forgiveness or final salvation (Bruce, Hebrews, p 260, 261). 

Admittedly the phrase “sinning willfully” is drawn from the Old Covenant itself, in Numbers 15:30, referring to the fact that the animal sacrifices did not provide forgiveness for intentional or deliberate violations of the Law (such as the cases of the Sabbath breaker in Numbers 15:36, and King David’s adultery with Bathsheba).

But clearly in the context of the letter to the Hebrews, and particularly in the paragraph context of Hebrews 10:26, this Old Testament phrase familiar to the Jews is used to refer to the sin of those who having heard and initially seemingly embraced the gospel then decisively rejected the grace offered via the self-sacrifice of Jesus.

Thus, there is only one unforgiveable sin, and that is regarding the blood of the new covenant, i.e., the death of Jesus, as no different from any other death, instead of regarding it as the basis of the New Arrangement, by which a believer’s sins are remembered no more (cf. Hebrews 10:29).

Jesus' cross death was not plan B for our connecting with the God

“The whole apparatus of worship associated with [the Old Covenant] ritual and priesthood was calculated rather to keep men at a distance from God than to bring them near” (BRUCE, Hebrews, p 149).

For one thing, only the high priest could enter into the God in the holiest place, and he only once a year.

For another thing, the animal sacrifices of the old arrangement were for UNintentional sins, or errors, not for deliberate or premeditated behavior that rejected the God’s commands and authority.  I don't know about you, but my biggest problem with sin isn't unintentional thoughts and acts, but with conscious demos of selfishness.

The point is, we were never intended to get to Abba by keeping rules (neither initially in salvation, not from day to day).  The cross was not plan “B.”  God was not surprised at a failed experiment in the old arrangement.  The old arrangement was intended to demonstrate our moral inability, and served this purpose well.

Sometimes we make it harder than it is.

I just learned today that under the New Arrangement I don't have to confess my sins before I come to God.  Practically speaking, how could I anyway, identify all the substandard attitudes from down deep?  And how would I have time to do anything else all day long?  But more to the point, the statements about "drawing near" say nothing about remembering and confessing my sins, once I've been sprinkled with the blood of Jesus.  This gives me "...a purified conscience...the one indispensable condition for offering God acceptable worship..." (F F Bruce, The Letter to the Hebrews, pxii).