steve.c

Obviously each of the three elements relate to each other but I would like to think of my unrighteousness. Sometimes I think, Why did He bother? What do I add up to and what real worth did I display? Fairly pitiful. But God's love transcends this. Unworthy as I am and deserving condemnation for how I lived my life in the world without Jesus, He still cared. He still loved me deeply and His Spirit worked to bring me to see Him and accept Him. He looked beyond my unrighteousness, my present condition. He showed me a way out of the kingdom of the world. He is absolutely righteous and holy. He is the perfect role model and teacher. In Him I have become a new creation. Unrighteousness does not have to be a permanent, ultimately deadly, condition. His conquest of sin means that I can be released from the shackles of unrighteousness.

Jesus is referring to the sacrifice He is going to make with His body. The perfect sinless sacrificial offering through which sinful man will be forgiven His sins and through which he will gain eternal life; that is the life of the world which Jesus promises. I think the Words of Institution refer to exactly the same matter: Jesus's body given for us. His body, His sacrifice, is our salvation. It is the greatest gift ever given and each of us can share in it. In the Words of Institution Jesus goes further and institutes a remembrance of His sacrifice so that it is regularly renewed in us and draws us closer to Him.

Eating the Bread of Life means to me in spiritual terms that Jesus is the sustinence of my life here and for ever. It means being fully committed to Him and obeying His teaching. It means being absorbed by Him and becoming closer each day to Him. He is my purpose in life. Nibbling at the Bread of Life shows a lack of full commitment. Yes, I go to church on Sunday but that is where it ends. A disciple dedicates his life to His Saviour and Lord. It is everyday and ever waking moment. Making a meal of the Bread of Life is to make Jesus the centre of your life. To do His bidding always.

When we witness in hostile circumstances, I think we try to rely on ourselves rather than putting our trust in Jesus; putting Him first. If we do he will give us the wisdom and the arguments. Our witness is ineffective if we ignor the Holy Spirit within us and rely on ourselves. When persecuted we lack confidence and when we lack confidence we lack conviction and cannot convince. In tough places the quality I most lack is the preparedness to give an answer. It is easy to avoid the situation by saying nothing and turning away from the subject (and the opportunity). But I should be prepared to give an answer always. I should not fear because fear challenges my belief in Jesus and the trust I should place unconditionally in Him. In tough places giving an answer to why I have faith may be the start of the most effective witness.

I think the quality that is most evident in our congregation is compassion. When hardship or tradegy strikes one of its members then the congregation rallies round to do all in its power to help. A crisis seems to bring out the best of us. However, I think this quality should extend to times when there is no crisis. I think that we should improve the affection we have for our brothers and sisters; we should encourage greater harmony. Somehow we gather for services and most of the congregation then dispurses. Only a few go to Bible study or prayer meetings. I think we should make greater efforts to be a more cohesive community. Perhaps we should worship in each others homes more often; pray together more often. Plan charitable work that involves everyone so that the church is living everyday and becomes the centre of our daily lives.

This is a very difficult issue. As Christians we must make every effort to seek the truth and to follow the teaching of Jesus and His apostles strictly as it is the truth. When belief deviates from this, we cannot condone it. Paul certaily does not. Peter is positively damning of false teachers. There are many things on which we cannot agree. Compromise undermines belief. However, so much of other denominations is common to all of us: why, because it comes from the New Testament which on so many matters leaves little room for different interpretations. For example, I was surprised how familiar the Pope's encyclical "Deus est caritas" was. Apart from references to Mary, it could have been written by an evangelical Christian. It was entirely Bible based. The central theme is God's love which is at the heart of our belief and the teaching of Jesus. Therefore, I think while not moving away from the Biblical truth we should look at the similarities with other Christians and not the differences. I think we woiuld be surprised how much common ground there is. We should also, as with unbelievers, love everyone. Doctrinal differences are not an excuse to cease loving one another.

There are divisions in my church with the failt line being between those who wish to follow strictly the teaching of the Bible - the Word of God - and those who want to make accommodations to the 21st. century, as they put it. I think these are irreconcileable differences. I believe a strict interpretation of the Bible is essential and that the teaching of Christianity is timeless and for all time until the Second Coming. All sorts of insidious ideas are being promoted which are unBiblical and to my belief false and dangerous, because they serve to undermine God's Word and to turn believers away from God and towards the devil. There are so many issues: such as women priests or pastors, homosexuality and same sex unions, the introduction of secular music in the guise of hymns, the theory evolution and so-called science which challenges the truth God's creation of everything in six days. I don't think any church should countenance such ideas and those who espouse them should not be made welcome since they are not true belivers. Without strict adherence to God's Word unity and correct teaching is not possible. Jesus and His apostles recognised from the outset how dangerous false teachers were and they are as dangerous now as they were then. Paul also writes about the sinfulness of dissention, malice, foolish talk, gossiping, lies and slander. This is another potent cause of bickering. Dissention is an evil which must be rooted out. A church which is riven with dissention is dysfunctional and its members cannot properly partake of the Lord's Supper.

Unity is an essential condition for the true church with Jesus at its head. This is why the study of the Bible is so important. We must understand God's Word and put it into practice. Everything as the Bereans did must be tested against His Word. Proper study will distinquish between the truth and false teaching. But the unity of a church goes further than agreement as to belief and behaviour. We must love each other and be united so that we can work as a body. Emnity must not be allowed to take hold. For that to be the case we must not leave differences between ourselves unresolved or hurts for which no apology has been made. If we have been wronged we must forgive the wrongdoer or else we cannot expect God to forgive us. Conversely we must acknowledge and make amends for our wrongdoing to others. This is part of the Lord's prayer and it is central to the teaching of Jesus. We must come to the Lord's Supper properly prepared with a clear conscience and our relationships with other believers in good order.

The "cup of blessing" or "thanksgiving" is a thanksgiving to God for the gifts He has bestowed on us. We thank Him from His loving act of sending His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. This teaches us that the first focus of the Lord's Supper is to God; thanking and praising Him for His gifts to us. Although we share in the Blood of Jesus during the Lord's Supper which focuses us on His personal sacrifice for each of us and His forgiveness of our sins, when the cup is raised heavenwards we are thanking God for His great blessing and grace.

The Lord's Table is a time when I feel personally very close to Jesus as I share His sacrifice for me. That sacrifice is personal, as I have already described. He died for my sins. It is His body and blood I share spiritually. Sadly in the Uk fewer and fewer homes have a dinning table and families seldom sit around the table to share a meal. A shared meal is one of the best ways of getting to know someone. It is relaxed and there is an emphasis on shared conversation as well as a shared meal. The two distinctive features of a memorable meal are the effort that went into the preparation and the company. Both seem to be necessary for a truly memorable occasion: A well laid table with carefully chosen and well cooked food. Guests make a special effort to dress for the occasion so it is not just tee shirts and jeans like everyday. But the preparation is not enough. The most important ingredient is the company. Applying this to the Lord's Supper suggests that I must make serious preparation for the communion. I must examine myself and my conduct and repent of any short comings. I must not come to the Lord's table in a state of unforgiven sin; I must spiritually be properly dressed. I must also refelct seriously on what we are celebrating so that I am in a proper frame of mind to share God's great gift to me. But most important it is the company. This is first a sharing of Jesus' sacrifice. This is a moment when I am very close and in the company of Jesus. No company could be better than that. But the Lord's Supper is also a collective event. I am in the company of members of my church. Together we share Jesus' atoning sacrifice and this shared experience helps to bind us into one body to do the Lord's work.

It is clear from Peter 3:1-7 how a husband must treat his wife and a wife, her husband. This follows and is consistent with the teaching of our Lord as we would expect. If we stray from this we are ignoring the teaching of Scripture. When we do this we are sinning against God by turning away from His teaching, turning away from the kingdom of heaven. Rebelliousness against God is a sin; a very dangerous sin which leads us away from Him and into the clutches of Satan. It was the cause of sin coming into the world and our being in a state of sin before we were born again in Jesus. As James says, "the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." [James 5:16] Righteousness is a condition of effective prayer. Conversely unrighteousness thwarts or hinders prayer. Another condition of effective prayer is not to be in a state of sin. "If I have cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened." [Psalm 66:18] The proper behaviour of a husband towards his wife is a requirement of Christian living.

I prefer Peter's word "consideration" or "understanding" rather than knowledge, which gives the impression of imparting knowledge to someone who has not reeceived it yet. Consideration means not taking for granted, thinking and viewing matters from someone's perspective, being alive to their sensibilities and needs. A husband who loves his wife puts her wishes and feelings ahead of his. It is self-interest to the extent that a happy marriage is a much more enjoyable experience than an unhappy one. God wants us to have a happy marriage and lays down rules to strengthen marriage. One spouse trying to dominate another is an act of selfishness, putting their interests first. The kingdom of heaven requires the first to be last and for the master to be the servant. We are treat others, everybody, as we would wish to be treated. That is what Jesus taught. We love Jesus not because we have to but because we dearly want to. There is no coercion in the relationship. Love is a giving of ourselves and an obedience to the object of our love. We should love our wives in the same way so the we are really partners as God wishes and co-inheritors of His Kingdom.

The significance of the disciples drinking from the Cup of the Covenant is that they were sealing the covenant by participating in it just as the seventy elders did after the covenant described in Exodus 24. In this case as surrogates of the Israelite nation. When we drink from the Cup of the Covenant we renew that covenant and bind ourselves to it as if we had been present at the Last Supper when the covenant was first sealed. It makes everyone of us a personal covenantee with Jesus. A covenant which we cannot break. The covenant, while general to mankind, is also personal to us and Jesus. He covenants with me.

God will put his Word into our hearts and minds. This will not be taught by men but by God himself. The promise is that He will be known by us and that He will forgive our sins. This passage from Jeremiah prophesies Jesus, the Son of God, as the teacher of the new covenant. Our responsibility is to hear the Word and to obey it and never, unlike Israel, backslide.

The covenant was ratified by the sacrifice of young bulls. The people of Israel promised twice to obey the Lord. Young bulls were slaughtered and some of their blood was sprinkled on the people to seal the covenant and some sprinkled on teh altar. Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and the seventy elders "ate and drank". While it is not specified here, undoubtedly they shared in the cooked meat of the sacrificial animals.

We cultivate inner baeuty by accepting the ways of the kingdom of heaven and turning away from the kingdom of the world. If we follow the attitudes Jesus taught us to adopt we will cultivate inner beauty. We will become righteous and God's love will shine through us. The application of God's Word in our lives builds up our character. Following His Word is an act of worship every waking second and as we obey we are moulded by Him so our characters improve and become more Christ-like. The goodness that comes from Jesus when the Holy Spirit shows itself within us will earn the respect and admiration of a husband. A righteous wife, I have a righteous, Christian, loving wife, strengthens a marriage and binds a husband closer to her. It is a wonderful experience to have a wife through whom God is so obviously working and who gives such praise to God.

This is a man answering but I think what I am going to write applies equally to men. Jesus told us, "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?" [Matthew 6:25] Clearly Jesus did not mean that we should go around in rags or be unkempt and unwashed. He meant that dress is not a priority of life. Fashion is not important. If we are too fashion conscious, we are not putting Jesus at the centre of everything we do. Peter follows this teaching but also says that we should not use dress or adornment to draw attention to ourselves. Men and women should be appropriately dressed for the occasion but not too fashionably dressed which might draw attention to them. So you would wear much smarter clothes to church than, say, for a barbecue. Obviously we should be clean and neat. If a woman wears cosmetics, it should not be very noticable. Personally, I think greater emphasis should be on a woman's modesty and her inner beauty and so her clothing and hairstyle should be simple, plain and not revealing and little, and preferably no, jewellry should be worn. Men should have simple cropped hair and clothes that are the same as everyone else's so that clothing is not an issue. Man should have no adornments; rings, braclets or chains.

We are naturally self-centred and self-willed. We like to do what pleases us. However, the Christian life is different. We must submit totally to the teaching of Jesus and His apostles. Instead of a life centred on self we must have a life centred on Jesus. Submission is not natural. Like breaking in a horse we have to overcome its natural instincts of preservation so that the horse can become under the control of the bit and obedient to the rider's aids. Our conversion and growth in Jesus is the same process. Yes, submission means accepting your status in the world without complaint. This is silent submission. Grumbling, nagging. gesturing or grimacing is not submission at all but a way of fighting back, a way to protest. In the kingdom of heaven we are to be last, serving, meek and humble and, in being so, submissive. The only time we do not submit is when submission requires breaking God's law. He is our ultimate authority in life and death and nothing must cause us to disobey Him.

Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins and to bear our sins. He takes the burden of sin off us the moment we accept Him in our hearts and as we live our lives thereafter. His death and resurrection means that we know that Satan has been defeated but he still conducts a rear guard action in the world. So the Devil still exists and is active in trying to turn man away from God. We must in our lives turn away from sin actively. We know there will be temptations and the Devil will use every deceptive art he has to break down our defenses and sow doubts in our minds. We must actively put our lives in control of Jesus. We must obey His commandments and the teaching of the apostles faithfully and diligently. We must actively cultivate a godly and righteous life by living completely through the Word of God. Following what it says in every aspect of our lives. In the Scriptures it gives us all the techniques and methods to keep steadfast in our faith and when we slip or lose ground to get back up on our feet and to regain territory. We must keep the Scriptures in mind by regular study and mediation. We must put its teaching into practice so that we become completely trained in the Scriptures. We must use prayer in our fight against the sinfulness we have rejected. The support of fellow believers, the pastor and elders helps to focus on what we should be doing and away from worldly, fleshly things. Prayer meetings and communual worship support this. We must in our daily lives become citizens of the kingdom of heaven and strangers to the kindom of the world. To live for righteous means to live, as far as is possible like Jesus. That is what He wanted his disciples to be.

It is not a simplistic question at all; it goes to the heart of my belief. When I contemplate the cross and the enormous suffering of Jesus, I then have to reflect why He suffered. He suffered for me and for my sinfulness. The sacrifice is personal. It is an act of grace because it is undeserved as much as the forgiveness of my sins is undeserved. He volunteered to substitute Himself, He who is sinless and pure, for the sinner in me. It is by His body I am forgiven and, through my rebirth in Him, it is in my body that He now lives. The personal sacrifice for me on the cross, the body which suffered for me in such an excruciating pain, which He shares with me through the Lord's Supper, shows His love for me and God's love for mankind. Through that mutilated body comes salvation and an escape from sin and death. It is an amazing gift; an amazing sacrifice. I must never forget this for a minute.

The sinlessness of Jesus is essential to an understanding of salvation through Him. He was God made man. Only God is sinless. By leading a sinless life as a man, tempted like a man, He proved His divinity. Only a sinless intermediary could mediate between sinful man and sinless, perfectly holy God. Only Jesus can fulfil that role. Jesus was perfectly pure, righteous, holy and good. Everything about Him has not the slightest taint of sin. This embodiment of spiritual perfection, this shining pure being, has to confront our sinful natures with every kind of wickedness and depravity. Each sinful act of man must strike His perfection and He must feel it acutely given the contrast between His character and ours. Your commentary makes a very ggod analogy. It is as if the foulest, most putrid sewage was being poured into the clearest, cleanest water. Our natures compare so unfavourably with His. Yet He loves us despite our manifest shortcomings. It says everything about the extent of His love for us and tells us much about how we should love others.

Jesus must have known the sins, my sins included, that He was dying for. This must be so because His was not a generalised sacrifice but one that is personal to me. He died for my sins. He knew the grief it causes His Father for us to be separated from Him by sin. The torments, the insults and the unthinking cruelty of His trial and execution have a spiritual parallel. This is where Jesus suffers for each of us personally. It is why we cannot, having turned to Him, turn back. We cannot add new grief to that which He has already suffered.

"This is my blood...which has been poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." The words say that the atoning sacrife of Jesus, the shedding of His blood, was for the forgiveness of the sins of all that turned to Him. Forgiveness is absolute. It is not partial. Without it would could not be justified with God. Sin is what blocked our relationship with God. There was no way of bridging the gulf between sinful man and God without this sacrifice. Every sin works to turn us away from Jesus. The devil works to do just that. Sin is the barrier and sin is the threat to our life in Jesus and our eternity with Him. When we remember the blood of the sacrifice by partaking of it at the Lord's Supper, we must confess and repent all our sins so that we are purified by His blood and brought into complete community with Jesus.

In part I think it was to point to the fulfillment of the prophecy, the Scriptures which told about Him. He was the suffering and righteous servant. He was to bear the inquities of others. It sresses His innocence and the voluntary nature of His sacrifice. It is not an accident, a confluence of unexpected or unfortunate events. He pours out His life. He makes an intercession for transgressors. He offers Himself willingly as the sacrifice so that He can bear the sins of many.

Jesus refers to the violent nature of His impending death because His death was not just a sacrifice (a lamb is sacrificed but not necessarily tortured and brutalised) but it was also a martyrdom of a most violent kind. I think, notwithstanding what Jesus had said beforehand predicting His death, the disciples thought somehow it could be avoided or was not necessarily imminent. Even when He was arrested Peter thought that he could fight their way out of the situation. Had the disciples known that the night at Gethsemane was the last time they would be together before His arrest, they may not have slept but have stayed close to Hm. The significance of what Jesus was saying was probably only fully understood when they met the resurrected Jesus. Then they understood the nature and implications of His sacrifice and His conquest of death. They realised the purpose and culmination of His ministry and its implications for mankind.