Can you imagine that they had no knowledge of the Book of the
Law? The people of God have not only
forgotten who they are and whose they are, they have forgotten their own
history. It is impossible to imagine a
nation that exists only because of the action of God in delivering them,
constituting them and sovereignly giving them the land in which they dwell has completely
forgotten that they were in a covenant with Him. Nonetheless, that is the situation Josiah
found himself in when he began to restore the temple of the Lord. It seems no one was aware of the Law, which
we think was the book we know as Deuteronomy, until this restoration work was
underway and the priest said, "Oh, by the by, I found something I think
may be important." The messenger
Josiah sent came back and said, "Oh, the priest gave me this
book." Only Josiah, it seems, felt
the need to read this book and realize that it meant that the nation was out of
covenant with their God and that this meant that terrible things were about to
happen, God's judgment was going to be executed against them. Could that happen in the church? It is happening in some parts of the church
now as it walks away from the Word of God in favor of the spirit of the age.
The people of the Decapolis feared Jesus because of His
power and begged Him to leave. The people
back home called Him a blasphemer and wanted to put Him on trial. He saw the faith of the men who brought their
paralyzed friend to Him and spoke a word that didn't quite fit the situation,
"Your sins are forgiven." The religious
leaders took offense to that, only God can forgive. A priest could pronounce forgiveness over a
penitent sinner, but only once a sacrifice had been brought and inspected by a
priest who, after ensuring the sacrifice was acceptable in type and perfection,
would offer it on the altar and then its consumption would be proof that it was
acceptable to the Lord. None of that was
here. Jesus simply proclaimed
forgiveness without confession or sacrifice.
Only Jesus can do that. It was
based on faith, that He was able to do anything. The proof that He was able to forgive sins was
in the harder thing of healing the man. He
believed Jesus could forgive and that forgiveness was necessary and that it was
connected with the paralysis. Jesus not
only healed, He knew the deeper truth of why there was paralysis at all.
(We skip the passage about women covering their heads not
only because the issue of covering the head is cultural but because there are
some other things in that passage that make things a bit sticky. Paul certainly seems to be saying that there
is a male dominated hierarchical relationship where the man is the authority of
woman and also that the woman was made for man.
Both these ideas clearly go back to Genesis and our culture no longer
believes such things. Never mind that
there is no hint of inferiority in Paul's language, we just don't like it in
our modern society. Paul's argument is
biblical and he does not suggest anything that is out of line with a biblical
understanding of the sexes. It is not
hierarchy he argues for but difference.)
It seems that there were divisions among the people of
Corinth. The richer members of the church
and the poorer were keeping separate from one another and there was no real fellowship. Paul saw the image of the body as more than
just a nice metaphor, it was real. There
is no room for such divisions in the body of Christ, it fails to function
properly. What he had heard was that
when they came together for a meal it wasn't a potluck, it was everyone keeping
their food for themselves and some among them were going hungry, there was a
complete failure of love. We are called
together to form a body of Christ and when one suffers we all suffer and do
what we can to assist. We are called to
truly love, extending ourselves for one another, even when it costs us
something. As the people had lost the book
of the Law, sometimes it seems we in 21st century America have lost
some sense of this as well with the prosperity Gospel, forgetting that our
prosperity is to be shared with those who are trying and struggling.
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