I often watch a podcast called “Thinking Biblically” with Mike Winger. To be honest, it’s one of my favorites, because he gets not only into the language, but the historical content. He also challenges his viewership to stop inserting their viewpoints into Scripture, but allow scripture to shape our viewpoints. That’s radical in many ways, isn’t it? All too often, Bible teachers, preachers, and even your average church goer desires to craft and create a version of “Christianity” that suits their desires, and, unfortunately, the god we end up following is ourselves. Every Christian, whether or not they watch that podcast, ought to be trying to think biblically.
Loved ones, God is the same yesterday as He is today as He will be tomorrow. We are arrogant if we assume that we can insert our current social climates and norms, or allow for our personal situations, to inform our viewpoint. We are extremely broken and living in a world consumed by darkness. Why would we trust ourselves to view ANYTHING accurately? IF we’re not bible-thinkers, we will either justify ourselves continually by our own standards, or create a legalism that is on par with, if not worse than, the Pharisees. Jesus recognized this. He didn’t trust the motivations of the crowds that followed Him, He challenged social norms, and sought to draw people back to God on His terms, and to leave their own proclivities and thoughts behind. He lived perfectly according to the standard He claimed to have taught, and died in our place for breaking the righteous requirements of God. He rose again to reconcile us to the Father, and calls all of us to follow Him. Shouldn’t we strive to do just that? So here’s the challenge: let go of your ideas. Let go of your grasp on society. Seek Christ. Let go of yourself.
Ephesians 2
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
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