(Matthew 5:10-12) Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. °Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. °Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
The perpetrators of this persecution are those Jesus identifies as those who also persecuted the prophets.
(Acts 7:52) Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers:
Saul, later known as Paul, persecuted the early church at the behest of the Sanhedrin. It was the Administrators of the law that led and directed the persecutions against the church.
After Paul’s conversion, he too experienced the very persecution he leveled upon the church by those same men, and often upon his travels, going to synagogues in order to preach to his kinsmen first wherever he went, even being stoned on occasion.
The perpetrators of persecution felt justified in doing so through the law. Christianity was not just another subset of Judaism; it was a radical departure, going way beyond even what the Helenized Jews were doing, having abandoned much of the law themselves.
Now, the narrative has flipped.
There are those who claim to be Christians, who have embraced the law, and now claim it is those who have abandoned the law that are not Christians. It is no longer the administrators of Judaism versus Christianity, it is a Judaistic Christianity versus a Christianity labeled “antinomian” by them as though the law of faith, the law of the Spirit in Christ Jesus, is no law at all.
One commonality among deceptive people is their use of accusations of sin and the consequences of sin, despite Jesus’ sacrifice.
Today, Sabbatarian groups such as Adventism emphasize the sin of daring to worship God on a “Sunday” without any scriptural authority from God. This distraction is designed to take your attention off of an important fact. The Jewish religious elite; Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees and the Sanhedrin, were all collectively referred to by Jesus as children of the devil, doing the will of their father the devil. What day did they keep? What day did they worship on? And if their father was the devil, who did they really worship?
Recall that the devil dragged down with him a third of the angelic host; angels who had a first hand knowledge of God.
Sabbatarians are quick to claim the devil stole Sundays; the first day of the week in the Roman calendar, from God, right out from under His nose. But stop and consider… one of the basic doctrines of warfare is to know your enemy. The devil would steal Sundays in the Roman calendar, but make no attempt to commandeer the Sabbath?
Let’s take a good, hard look at the situation extant when Jesus walked the earth in the flesh. The religious elite administered the law. They literally controlled life and death over the man in the street, and the people feared them; feared what they could do to them. If you ran afoul of the Sabbath law they administered, you ran afoul of them. It was one of the weapons in their arsenal of control and intimidation, and here was this itinerant, self-appointed Rabbi flaunting the Sabbath openly, in deviance to their positions in the administration of the religion.
I remind the reader that Jesus referred to them as thieves and robbers who preceded Him. They occupied a God-ordained position of administering the law with justice, mercy, and faith, and failed in their God-given duties, despite their condition of authority – and corrupt, evil people, once in positions of power, are difficult to oust, for their society was made up of a people God described as having deceitful and desperately wicked hearts; hearts of stone and as the author of Hebrews declared; evil hearts of unbelief. Ridding yourself of one only lets another like-minded and hearted move up that ladder of power and control.
The Sabbath was but to them a means of control over the masses. Today, Sabbatarian churches aggressively proselytize through accusations of sin and resultant condemnation for those who openly are disobedient to the “law of God” they overlook being a covenant law that had legal parties to it, and ended, legally and prophetically, replaced with a new and better covenant of life.
The children of the devil do not want to see people embrace faith and life. Their desire is to see you join them in their dissimulation, embracing the law of sin and death, where now, to embrace the old, is to also reject Christ’s sacrifice that terminated that covenant law, even as a marriage covenant terminates upon the death of either party, as explained by Paul in Romans 7.
What do you think baptism of water signified to those who were under the law? It was a symbolic death and resurrection for them. They died to the old covenant law so as to be legally acceptable to enter into the new with Christ, where both the old covenant and the new are likened to marriage covenants, where God years earlier divorced Israel, and His death on the cross completing the dissolution of that covenant.
The law is not of faith. You have read this. And whatever is not of faith is sin now, for those living and waling IN faith; that narrow path of life; that law of faith. Turning back to the law is to turn your back on Christ and what His death accomplished on your behalf.
Paul warned his readers of doing this very thing in Galatians 5:1.
(Galatians 5:1) Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Read the narrative leading up to this. It tells you what this yoke of bondage is, and who all it is that persecutes those who God has freed from sin and the condemnation of the law.
Doing so; effectively negating the sacrifice of Christ due to unbelief, has severe consequences, brought out in 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12. The followers of Christ have a love of truth, and Christ Jesus is / was Truth Incarnate.
He broke the Sabbath commandment; trampling all over it in defiance of those religious elite who administered the law for their own selfish motives. One greater than the law stood before them, doing miracles that could only be attributed to God, and they denied Him; hated Him and were going to do whatever it took to subdue Him and those who followed Him, now led by the Holy Spirit.
(Acts 7:52) Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers:
Those led by the law are not led by the Holy Spirit. God is a “jealous” God. He will not permit you to serve two masters; Him and the law He placed the faithless Hebrews under; a law of sin and death they justly deserved… the ‘ministration of condemnation and death, engraved in stones’ as Paul points out in 2 Corinthians chapter 3.
The law does not save. The law condemns. The law produces wrath and makes all guilty before God.
Christ saves, through obedience to the faith. This through the inner working of the Holy Spirit, given to those who believe Him and IN Him, only, solely, and not faith in Him in partnership or association with the law that condemns, or in partnership with you in relation to anything you do outside of strictly faith and trust in Him, all to the glory of God.
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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )
Acts 17:11
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