Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “When Conflicts Arise”. “One of the most difficult tasks of any Christian community is to maintain unity when differences of opinion arise on matters pertaining to the identity and mission of the church” (Quarterly for Sabbath, November 10). And so this week’s lesson starts. We look this week at “how the early church solved the inner conflicts that undermined its unity and threatened its survival” (ibid). There is a common denominator in all of the examples used in this week’s lesson. And if rightly understood, a common denominator in all such disputes. Finding this common denominator helps us see the common solution, too.
Almost all such Christian disputes arise because we do not know our Father. So we misinterpret Him and all His actions. We do not understand Him and His ways. We read His Word and interpret His Word based on our own sinful conceptions. And here is the cause of the disputes we read about in this week’s quarterly lesson. We see all the characters struggling with this new paradigm. The Father is just like Jesus. And so the early church “Fathers” grappled with this new revelation. How to fit the rules of the Old Testament… the God of the Old Testament… into the new paradigm illuminated by Jesus.
Yet this paradigm was not really new. It was as old as Adam and Abraham. For they knew God. Yet the faithful at the time of Jesus were so blinded by the faulty interpretations of the past “experts” that they struggled and struggled with this “new” paradigm. The faulty interpretations had God as an exacting judge. One who counted every sin and exacted a death penalty for even one sin. Yikes! No wonder they were scared stiff of God! And no wonder the faulty interpretations of God’s Word. Because they had a faulty picture of God.
But do we, too, misinterpret God? Today, after all these centuries since the incarnation, do we still misunderstand the Father? We must place the Father and the Son together in all scripture. Especially in the grandest revelation of them all, the cross. We must not have the Son on the cross without the Father’s heart being there, too. For He was. We must not have the Son doing something to change the Father. For they are “one”. The cross is not to change the Father’s attitude toward us, but to change our attitude toward the Trinity.
So today, let us not misinterpret the Father or the Son. They are “one”. And so to understand Scripture, we must place Jesus in every book, every chapter, every verse, every word. Because He is the perfect embodiment of the Godhead. And that is the purpose of Scripture. Not to learn how to live (though that is in there to be sure). Not to learn how to have eternal life (though that is in there, too). But to see God. To see Him, to understand Him, and to know Him. And if you have a different God-the-Father than one that is just like God-the-Son, then you are misreading Scripture, misunderstanding God, and the disputes between Christians will go on.
May we know God as He is… as is our high privilege… is my prayer for us all. Let us study to know Him who alone is life.
With brotherly love,
Jim