Thursday, February 20, 2020

Do Evil that Good may come?

Rom 3:7 — Rom 3:8 (KJV)
For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.

This accusation, believe it or not, is still well and alive today! In fact, it was one of the first ideas that I have come across even formerly as an unbeliever. "oh Christians have Jesus what, who forgives anything you do, so you can do anything, just ask for forgiveness"
Brethren, let us be careful not to be sucked into the worldly ideas, so popularized by pulp and celluloid fiction - there is no such thing as "balance" of good and evil! In the eyes of God there is no such concept of a heavenly subject "in charge" evil and hell! Unlike the Grecian concept of multiple gods on a mount olympus and many other world religions with similar ideas.
There is only good. Evil is the absence of good. Goodness from God is absolute. It does not require "evil" as a contrast, to establish goodness.
And that links up to the entire concept up to this point that Paul was trying to explain.
The actions, especially of the old law, were only meaningful in so far as the motivation behind. By themselves, they achieve nothing.
To give a loose analogy, it's like getting a cellphone for the purpose of communication. The cellphone is only useful for that purpose if it is used in the right manner! Merely getting one is useless. Getting one and just playing games on it is useless.
Faith is that "communication" - that underpinning factor. It has not changed since the foundation of the world. Yet the modes have changed as according to the dispensation - from direct communication from God in the patriarchal age, to through the law of Moses, to via the law of Christ.
And when we focus only on the mode and not the foundational purpose, we have made the mode void. We have made "circumcision" as "uncircumcision".
Even today, the liberty in Christ does not make us free to do what we like but on the contrary, make us even more sensitive to what God demands of us. At the same time, that whatever vestisages of ceremony left, as authorized by God, is not abused and reduced to mere ceremony but again established by faith.

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