Ihedinobi:

About the symbol of water baptism, I'm sorry if I sounded disrespectful or anything like that. My word is not law. One can search the Scriptures for oneself. However, I am interested in that part of your statement about the symbols of a covenant remaining effective until the covenant expires. I'm very interested to study this matter with other believers. It's more than a little scary to make a declaration like I have, but I think that there is Scriptural strength backing it. The prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Hosea seem to revolve about it and much of the prophecies and teachings concerning the times of the end appear to touch upon it. If it suits you and any other interested party, I could start a thread on it, unless room is found for it on this thread.

brainpulse:

I think i like this, but I believe for us to have an indepth understanding we need to probe further into the;

1. The origin of Grace
2. The need of man for Grace
3. The Workings, cost and advantage of Grace
4. The Origin of works
5. The working of Works before Grace
6. The limitation of Works
7. Why we need Grace than works, or do we need the two together, or Can Grace absolutely take the place of Works?

This is the way I enjoy studying the Word of God, and i will be privilegde to learn from the carriers of God's word

Thanks

Ihedinobi: Thank you, Pastor AIO. I'm really glad you joined us. I'll be as honest as possible with the answers you require of me.



I'll take the questions one after the other later.



Yes, I believe it does.



John was the connection between the Old Covenant and the New. His task, as the Scriptures say, was to call for repentance, that is, to fulfil the era of the Law. The Old Testament was all about showing man his incapacity to do right. Because man would not accept its verdict, man took it as a manual that he could interpret anyway he pleased to agree with his own view of righteousness. This was the condition that Jesus would have met and if He had met it, He would have "(struck) the land with a curse and a ban of utter destruction" (Mal 4:6). John's message was "the Law has condemned you, o man, you are without excuse. In all points, even with your great councils to assign meanings to it, your condemnation is certain. Repent or be consumed by the Kingdom of God." This quite agrees with Matt 15:6. The Law had become subject to what interpretation powerful interest groups assigned it and each one defined righteousness by some point of the law that they excelled in while turning a blind eye to the spirit of it. John's work was to show that however pious anyone claimed to be they still stood condemned by the Law. If anyone accepted his message, his baptism of that person said to the Judge of all the earth, "I beg you hold your peace and have mercy. This one yearns for your salvation." That baptism was in preparation for the Savior, the Only One Who could answer fully the Law's Demands and pay the full price that the Perfect Justice of the Most High demanded. It asked Justice to stay its hand and wait just a little bit more for the One Who could pay the debts of the baptized. Please see Isaiah 40:3, Luke 1:17, Mal 4:5-6, and Matt 17:12.

Jesus's baptism might have been done in water as well, but it wasn't, in principle, a baptism of water. It was a spiritual baptism. Fire is a symbol of the Spirit too. To be baptized into Jesus (not necessarily physically with water) is to accept the terms of the New Covenant. It's something like the blood sprinkling that Moses did to bind the people of Israel with God under the Old Covenant (Ex 24:18). Only it's a spiritual baptism. It is the same as the infilling of the Spirit or what we refer to as being born again of the Spirit. This baptism presupposes an acceptance of the verdict of the Law on the part of the baptized that they have completely failed the Righteous and Just requirements of God and stand in need of His Mercy or else they must face His Justice. In fact, that baptism is impossible without that consciousness, but since any one can masquerade as anything, it's impossible to tell sometimes that such and such are not truly born of the Spirit.

I must say that God uses symbols a great deal to communicate things to us so at the beginning, this baptism of Jesus's was physical. It was done with water to represent what had happened spiritually but symbols pass. God does not fail to change symbols because of our aptitude for making idols out of them, remember the bronze snake in the wilderness that King Josiah had to destroy centuries later because the children of Judah had been worshipping it or the very temple of God in Jerusalem that turned into a site for all kinds of worship and in Jesus's day had become something in itself apart from the One for Whom it was built etc etc. God's Way has always been to start out with symbols so as to educate us as to His Meanings with respect to things but eventually He removes the symbol so that we don't lose the Meanings and turn the symbol into an idol. The same thing happened to the baptism of water. Today, being baptized in water with the words, "I baptize you, so and so, in the Name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost" means nothing.
. . .

Mr_Anony:
Been following this thread and enjoying it so far. I have found as I keep reading through that I don't have much to add due to the quality of the thread.

One thing I want to point to is the part I have highlighted. Though I quite understand the context in which that statement seats and what you are trying to say, I must point to you that the highlighted is a wrong statement. Water baptism is a symbol quite alright (as it is not the physical water that saves) but to say that the symbol means nothing is to say that there is no salvation really for which the ritual would be pointing to. Remember Jesus Christ Himself commanded us to be baptized. What you should be against is people making water baptism to mean more than it really means i.e. where people go and have a shower without a transformed heart.

I hope you get my point. It is almost like saying the communion means nothing, or Jesus dying on the cross means nothing (perhaps He could have still died of a heart attack and still achieved His purpose).

While we must be careful not to commit idolatry by ascribing more meaning than intended to bible events, we must also be careful not to commit heresy by writing off the same bible events as meaningless.

Ihedinobi:

I'm satisfied with the way in which you put it. Once I said to you that it is in the midst of my brethren that I see the Lord. It is very true. Everything that I'm taught or shown is in part and shadowy until I have shared it with my family and heard what they have to say about it. The Spirit is One and will not conflict Himself.

I was baptized a few months before I was born again. It was still part of my wrestle to convince God that I was worthy to be saved. If I could, everytime a person trusts the Lord by the message that I bring, I would baptize them too. However, there is the problem that this thing can be divorced from the spiritual backstory it lends reality to.

I don't want to add anything further to what I have said there because what I'm seeing is still not very clear yet. I think that it is in order to consider setting up a new thread to study it. My stand right now is that everyone getting saved should be baptized.

Ubenedictus: beautiful way to put it, but oga i never reach 'field marshall'.

Ihedinobi:
John was the connection between the Old Covenant and the New. His task, as the Scriptures say, was to call for repentance, that is, to fulfil the era of the Law. The Old Testament was all about showing man his incapacity to do right. Because man would not accept its verdict, man took it as a manual that he could interpret anyway he pleased to agree with his own view of righteousness. This was the condition that Jesus would have met and if He had met it, He would have "(struck) the land with a curse and a ban of utter destruction" (Mal 4:6). John's message was "the Law has condemned you, o man, you are without excuse. In all points, even with your great councils to assign meanings to it, your condemnation is certain. Repent or be consumed by the Kingdom of God." This quite agrees with Matt 15:6. The Law had become subject to what interpretation powerful interest groups assigned it and each one defined righteousness by some point of the law that they excelled in while turning a blind eye to the spirit of it. John's work was to show that however pious anyone claimed to be they still stood condemned by the Law. If anyone accepted his message, his baptism of that person said to the Judge of all the earth, "I beg you hold your peace and have mercy. This one yearns for your salvation." That baptism was in preparation for the Savior, the Only One Who could answer fully the Law's Demands and pay the full price that the Perfect Justice of the Most High demanded. It asked Justice to stay its hand and wait just a little bit more for the One Who could pay the debts of the baptized. Please see Isaiah 40:3, Luke 1:17, Mal 4:5-6, and Matt 17:12.

Jesus's baptism might have been done in water as well, but it wasn't, in principle, a baptism of water. It was a spiritual baptism. Fire is a symbol of the Spirit too. To be baptized into Jesus (not necessarily physically with water) is to accept the terms of the New Covenant. It's something like the blood sprinkling that Moses did to bind the people of Israel with God under the Old Covenant (Ex 24:18). Only it's a spiritual baptism. It is the same as the infilling of the Spirit or what we refer to as being born again of the Spirit. This baptism presupposes an acceptance of the verdict of the Law on the part of the baptized that they have completely failed the Righteous and Just requirements of God and stand in need of His Mercy or else they must face His Justice. In fact, that baptism is impossible without that consciousness, but since any one can masquerade as anything, it's impossible to tell sometimes that such and such are not truly born of the Spirit.

I must say that God uses symbols a great deal to communicate things to us so at the beginning, this baptism of Jesus's was physical. It was done with water to represent what had happened spiritually but symbols pass. God does not fail to change symbols because of our aptitude for making idols out of them, remember the bronze snake in the wilderness that King Josiah had to destroy centuries later because the children of Judah had been worshipping it or the very temple of God in Jerusalem that turned into a site for all kinds of worship and in Jesus's day had become something in itself apart from the One for Whom it was built etc etc. God's Way has always been to start out with symbols so as to educate us as to His Meanings with respect to things but eventually He removes the symbol so that we don't lose the Meanings and turn the symbol into an idol. The same thing happened to the baptism of water. Today, being baptized in water with the words, "I baptize you, so and so, in the Name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost" means nothing.
. . .

Ubenedictus: wow! Way to go, so becos simbols are removed you think that the simbol of baptism 'water' is no more effective. Now i doubt that that symbols of initiation into a covenant cannot expire and die wen d covenant is still functioning, and baptism only loses its meaning when d spiritual perspective is shaded.

Mr_Anony:
One thing I want to point to is the part I have highlighted. Though I quite understand the context in which that statement seats and what you are trying to say, I must point to you that the highlighted is a wrong statement.[b] Water baptism is a symbol quite alright (as it is not the physical water that saves) but to say that the symbol means nothing is to say that there is no salvation really for which the ritual would be pointing to. [/b]Remember Jesus Christ Himself commanded us to be baptized. What you should be against is people making water baptism to mean more than it really means i.e. where people go and have a shower without a transformed heart.

I hope you get my point. It is almost like saying the communion means nothing, or Jesus dying on the cross means nothing (perhaps He could have still died of a heart attack and still achieved His purpose).

While we must be careful not to commit idolatry by ascribing more meaning than intended to bible events, we must also be careful not to commit heresy by writing off the same bible events as meaningless.

Pastor AIO:
I'm interested in Iconoclasm. Those periods of history when a society or a cult actively destroys the images and symbols that it has used to articulate it's beliefs. Is it a necessary part of history that we must go through periods of iconoclasm?

buzugee: i guess 'Major General' will suffice

Pastor AIO: I fear it would derail the thread. I have tried opening threads to discuss it but no one seemed interested in the discussion.

anyway, no biggie.

But it might help to consider what Jesus says here:



Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved."
Matt 9:17

Was Jesus talking about a one time event in history or was he suggesting that the wine was always new and so the wineskins need to always be renewed continually?

If symbols (and rituals) carry and convey truths . . . then must they constantly be revised and renewed in order to effectively convey these Truths? Or will yesterday's symbols suffice for all time?

(I am assuming that baptism is merely symbolic).

Pastor AIO: I fear it would derail the thread. I have tried opening threads to discuss it but no one seemed interested in the discussion.

anyway, no biggie.

But it might help to consider what Jesus says here:

Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved."
Matt 9:17

Was Jesus talking about a one time event in history or was he suggesting that the wine was always new and so the wineskins need to always be renewed continually?

If symbols (and rituals) carry and convey truths . . . then must they constantly be revised and renewed in order to effectively convey these Truths? Or will yesterday's symbols suffice for all time?
(I am assuming that baptism is merely symbolic).

Mr_Anony:
Well, I think what Jesus is pointing at is having a proper understanding of who God is (the wine) is more important than mere tradition (the wineskin). As for constantly renewing the wineskin, Jesus didn't talk about that. What he talked about was that the old traditions have lost the understanding of God. We must be careful not to read too much into the expression and imply what Jesus didn't necessarily imply. Jesus said nothing about constantly reviewing traditions.

For me, I believe that as a christian, we should from time to time examine our lives and ensure that we are truly following Christ and not merely going through the motions. Rituals are just rituals, the main point is to ensure that the way we are carrying out the ritual always points to our faith in Christ

Ihedinobi:

I spent much of today thinking about this. I seriously thought of starting a thread on it. I have been very concerned about rituals and the value placed on them apart from what they mean to God. I have also been much taken with the meaning of Heb 12:26,27. The pattern, if I may use the word, that I have seen in the Scriptures is usually of God using something that we could relate to to embody some spiritual principle, and then we abuse it and make it something in itself, then God abandons it looking for only that which is in the good of the deeper meaning of that thing. But this is the last I intend to speak of it here on this thread.

And I am completely satisfied with the bolded part of your comment, my brother. Until we are taught otherwise of God Himself in the inner man, nothing should be disregarded that Jesus instituted, whether water baptism, communion, or gathering with other believers. And, like you said, to stay rightly related to the Lord in these things and not isolate them from Him.

Ihedinobi: I hope we can get back to the subject under study now What is your take on the matter about works before we move on to the rewards, my brother @Mr Anony? Shall we dial things back to proceed in the order that brainpulse suggested? Or proceed in the current manner?

PS. I'm choosing not to edit out that statement of mine that started the examination of rituals, because I think that later readers of the thread can learn from snares and traps like that and see what follows from falling into them.

Mr_Anony:
No need to edit it out. let it be there for our education.

For me as for the issue of works, to be honest I am quite ignorant on the matter and part of why I opened the thread was so that I could learn.
I consider it a great privilege to be born-again in the first place. It confuses me how God will love a filthy sinner like me and then after loving me so much in a way that I don't even deserve, He still rewards me for work which in truth we are merely vessels and it is Him that is actually doing. He gives me so much more for nothing. That's why I say He is a crazy crazy God.

The part I am confused about is how the verse I used in 1 Cor 3 reads and other parables (which you cited) where we are rewarded according to our works i.e. more work, more reward. It bothers me because they seem to paint Christianity as a hierarchy and sort of a competition for power. Perhaps you've heard those that claim they will have more stars on their crown than others or more mansions while some will be houseboy [/i]and [i]gateman [/i]in Heaven.

But I know that this power tussle and christian competition isn't encouraged by Christ - remember when the mother of James and John was trying to hustle Heavenly seats for her sons. Also there is the parable of laborers in Matthew 20 where the Master rewards all the laborers equally even though some came early and some came late and the early ones started complaining because they had done more work. The reply the Master gave them paints one of the best pictures of grace for me. The Master said;

[i].......Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?’ Matt 20:15

Here He made it very clear that grace is a gift given as He wills and it is not by our effort. All that matters is that we have received the reward He has promised.

God's grace is beyond my understanding. The more I think of it, the more bewildered I get. I still can't get my head around how God can possibly put up with us in all our iniquity. The fact that He then goes on to bless us for work that we didn't do - that actually the Holy Spirit has been doing in us and through us - helps to crank up my confusion a few notches. God's love is just Crazy Crazy and even more CRAZZZZZZZZY!!!

Now this brings me to the same question Pastor AIO asked. "What is the Loss that such a man suffers?" remember that the work for which he was going to be rewarded sef is not even really his work in the first place but God's work. I have tried reading 1Corinthians 3 over and over again and I still don't get it.
I know you answered that it is a loss of reward, but my point is that you can't lose what you never had in the first place, we don't deserve the reward, we don't even deserve the right to work not to talk of the reward.
Perhaps the topic of this thread should have been GRACE: Why Not Work? (my musings) but then the question still stares at me.

What is the loss such a man suffers?

I am hoping that as we study the scripture, perhaps God willing it will be revealed to us.