Jesus Christ's Salvation – Biblical Teachings for Abundant Life by Gregory S. Supina - HTML preview

27. The context of Rom. 7:25 refers to the whole Old Covenant law, all that is written in the Bible by Moses and the prophets. But this law is called a “law of sin” when men strive to obey it through the mind of flesh. The “law of God” is one and the same as this written law, this “law of sin.” And it is only called the “law of God” when it is worked through the minds of our spirits, as Jesus' Holy Spirit teaches it to our spirits, causing us to “delight” in it “according to the inner man” (Rom. 7:22). “For God [i.e., the Spirit of Jesus] has done what the [whole Old Covenant written] law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the [human] spirit” (Rom. 8:3-4, ESV). Paul defined this “law,” throughout the book of Romans, as the whole Old Covenant written law. And that whole law is fully represented by the Ten Commandments. For instance, in Rom. 2:21-22, he spoke about eighth-order sins of theft, seventh-order sins of sexual immorality and second-order sins of idolatry. In that passage, he was commenting on how the teachers of the Old Covenant law, the rabbis, broke all these authoritative precepts of the written law although they thought themselves to be very righteous regarding their actions of their flesh, because they only broke these Ten Commandments inwardly, not in ways that could be seen by men. For, although they were outwardly religious, through a religion worked solely by their flesh, they were inwardly lawless, in their spirits. So they were not truly worshipping God. Thus, Paul concluded: “So, if a man who is uncircumcised [in the flesh] keeps the precepts of the law, will not his [physical] uncircumcision be regarded as [spiritual] circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and [physical] circumcision but break the law” (Rom. 2:26-27, ESV). (Note: In Gen. 17:11, physical circumcision was to be merely a “sign” of a covenant made by man's spirit to God, who is a Spirit, because it symbolically cut away, exposed and limited the strong desires of the flesh. So the real circumcision is not this mere “sign,” but an actual covenant of one's spirit, which was called the “circumcision of the heart” performed by God Himself upon the hearts of His people, as we see in Deut. 30:6.) Paul's conclusion indicates that the written law of the Old Testament means nothing, if it merely involves religious acts done through the mind and body of flesh, for the purpose of trying to manipulate God and man into falsely perceiving them to be righteous. Only if we actually act spontaneously in doing the precepts of God's law, straight from the spirit in the heart, can the real and full precepts of God's law, found in God's heart, ever be expressed in a way that truly pleases God. We do God's will and ways from the inside out, through the minds and wills of our spirits that have been renewed and reborn through God's act of writing His new and complete “law” upon our hearts. Moving on to chapter seven, Paul is still speaking of the whole Old Covenant “written law,” summarized by the archetypal Ten Commandments, since his examples of this “law of sin” refer to the seventh-order sins of sexual immorality (7:3) and the tenth-order sins of covetousness (7:7). Then he concludes: “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the [Old Covenant written] law, were at work in our members [i.e., in the brain and other parts of the body] to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the [Old Covenant written] law,  having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the [human] spirit” (Rom. 7:5-6, ESV). So the Ten Commandments, and all the Old Covenant laws it represents, produce sin and sin's wages of death, whenever we attempt to obey them through the mind and body of flesh, as Paul illustrated with his example of how the tenth-order commands against covetousness affected him (7:7-11). For the mind and body of flesh are incapable of truly obeying and pleasing God. Instead, the flesh will always strive to find “loopholes” in God's law, ways to gratify its lust, unjust anger, prejudice, irrational hatred, pride and so on. But we died in the flesh with Jesus' death on the cross, and are not under an obligation to obey God's written law through the mind and body of flesh. We no longer need to obey the symbolic laws for physical circumcision, eating Kosher foods or performing physical rituals. Nor do we live by moral laws which tell us not to murder, not to be sexually immoral, not to steal and so on. For we now live by much higher moral standards worked through our very spirits, moral standards that: never murder, but always create a better life for all; never commit sexual immorality, but free souls to live for God instead of for the lusts of their flesh; never steal or covet, but give freely to all in the same way God freely gives to us. Now we learn a new law from Jesus, a law which does not nullify the old “written law,” but rather fulfils and completes the very limited, shadowy outline of God's law in the “written code.” This new law extends far beyond what is called the Old Testament law. Now Jesus is personally training our very spirits, in our hearts, to guard and express the whole and real “law of God,” all that truly reveals and represents the very nature of God. “For the death [Jesus] died He died to sin, once for all, but the life He lives He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:10-11, ESV). And “now, apart from the [written] law, a righteousness originating from God has been manifested and currently remains [note the perfect passive indicative form of φανερόω used here, indicating a manifestation in the past with current, ongoing effects], although the [Old Testament books of the], [now] being testified by means of Law and the Prophets—but a righteousness [originating from] God through faith in Jesus Christ for all the believing ones, for there is no distinction [between those who know the written law and those who do not know it]” (Rom. 3:21-22, ALT). First notice the genitives of origin in these verses, that is, the repeated expression, δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ. In context, this phrase refers to the “righteousness originating from God.” All honest translators must admit that there are many genitives of source or origin in the New Testament, especially the genitives referring to God. For the global context (the whole Bible) portrays God as the source of all things. Therefore, the writers of the New Testament commonly used the genitive form of words pertaining to God to indicate that God was the source or origin of the word modified by that genitive. (Scholastic biases cause many to refuse to admit this, but overwhelming evidence proves them wrong.) This “righteousness originating from God” is the foremost promise of the New Covenant's salvation through the Messiah, Jesus. For it refers to God's promise to write His law upon our hearts. So our righteousness can only come directly from God, from the Spirit of Jesus. Righteousness can never come from interpreting and doing the written law of the Old Covenant through our minds and bodies of flesh. As Paul stated, “Yet if it had not been for the [Old Testament written] law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.' But sin, seizing an opportunity through the [tenth] commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the [Old Covenant written] law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the [Old Covenant written] law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died” (Rom. 7:7-9, ESV). Sin came alive in Paul when he read the Old Covenant law, because it denied the gratification of the lusts of the flesh, yet left the flesh to police itself and obey the law. That is like giving a dog a training manual to read, so the dog will stop excreting and urinating on the floors in the house. Unless the dog’s master reads that manual and performs the kinds of physical training it tells the master to perform for the dog, the manual is useless. Letting the dog read it just ain’t going to do anything useful! Like a dog, the flesh does whatever it feels like doing. The flesh cannot ever really understand what God wrote in His law, no better than a dog can understand what is written in a dog- training manual. But your human spirit can be the master of your flesh. So, unless your spirit learns God’s law from God Himself, from Jesus, then trains your flesh to heed God’s Word, with urgency, just like a dog’s master must physically train that dog to recognize and heed his verbal commands, your flesh simply will never truly heed anything written in God’s law. To the flesh, the Bible is about as meaningful as written words are to a dog. All a dog will do with a training manual is chew it to pieces. And churches do the same with God’s Word. They mangle God’s law into a form that their flesh can use to gratify its own lusts and superstitions. This is why Paul called God's written law the “law of sin,” since men used it to gratify their desire to oppress and exploit others, to glorify themselves in pride, and generally appease their flesh. So, yes, the Ten Commandments and the whole Old Covenant law are indeed called the “law of sin” in Rom. 7:25, but only when God's law is left to be interpreted by the mind of flesh, and obeyed as an outward show of religion through the flesh. Yet the new and fulfilled law, originating from God—the new law Jesus writes on our hearts—includes, encompasses and expounds upon that Old Covenant law. So the new law, that Jesus teaches our hearts for the new life of our spirits, does not nullify the old law. Rather, Jesus' new law fulfils the old written law, making it truly effective.

28. By the way, the Bible defines an “elder” as a mature disciple of Jesus. And elders include all the older men who help the younger disciples in any way. Some are called to help with general physical tasks while others are specifically called to serve Jesus as teachers, judges, guides, counsellors and administrators in His church. Also, the term “priest” was never used to refer to an elder of any kind in the true, apostolic church, since all members of a church were considered to be “priests” of the “royal priesthood.” In Old Testament times, the priesthood included the young and the old, males and females, those who worked at farming, carpentry and other tasks, as well as the older men who served as teachers and judges. So, in the New Testament, the teacher-judges were called elders. Then terms like “pastor” (shepherd), “bishop” (overseer), “father” (or “pope”) and so on, were all synonyms, where all these terms equally referred to male elders, particularly to teaching elders, to a men who taught and judged according to the doctrines that were personally taught to them by Jesus. Terms like “bishop” never referred to a higher ranking elder. Of course, there were many other kinds of elders, older men who did not teach doctrine but helped with physical tasks, such as experts in various kinds of secular knowledge, elders who apprenticed the youth in trades, elders serving as church administrators or deacons in distributing goods and services to the needy, elders who were counsellors of various kinds, and so on. And the above terms simply emphasized different aspects of an elder's character. Some elders acted more like truly loving fathers, some acted more like caring shepherds (i.e., “pastor” is a Latin translation of ποιμήν and both mean “shepherd”), while some merely served as overseers (i.e., the term “bishop” is from ἐπισκοπή and means “overseer,” where it originally seemed to refer to novice teaching elder, one who performed the most basic job of a “doctrine inspector,” one who generally ensured that the people received real truth and that bad doctrine was kept out of the church, but did not ever seem to refer to a more advanced or higher ranking teacher-judge). Regardless of their God-appointed roles, all the elders had basically an equal status as older brothers to their younger siblings in the church. They were all treated as fellow disciples and were never addressed with titles of esteem. That is, a teaching elder like Timothy, which false churches would now call “Pastor Timothy,” was always called simply Timothy in the real church, since Jesus forbade the use of all titles (Mat. 23:8-11). Even his younger brothers and sisters would simply called him “Timothy.” Even the most respected apostles, like Peter and Paul, were never called by any title like “Pastor Peter” or “Father Paul,” just “Peter” and “Paul.” Elders were all simply older brothers who had more experience than the other, experience which was used to help other or to build up faith in the real God and His genuine truth. Also note how God always raised up several teaching elders in each local church in apostolic times, where each elder was granted a different speciality in his ministry for Jesus. And teaching elders were simply recognized or “ordained” by other elders and the people, never elected. They were “ordained” with letters of approval by trusted people who recognized that God Himself granted these elders to the people. The larger a local church would be, the more teaching elders God would grant them. And, for the universal church, Eph. 4:11-16 defines four basic kinds of teaching elders that God Himself “gave” the people:

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(1) Apostles (called “missionaries” in Latin) – The secular meaning of the word “apostle” (ἀπόστολος) referred to a slave or servant sent out on a mission by his lord. The ecclesiastical meaning refers to a servant of Jesus who is sent out on a mission by Jesus. These had to be the most skilled of all teaching elders, since Jesus sent them out to gather disciple for Him and to start new churches. Since they started new churches, their doctrines had to be the best and most complete, in order to start those new churches on a right footing from the start. Jesus also had to grant most of them a full variety of supernatural gifts, to be used to express His love and to sustain the new church until it could stand on its own feet. God especially gave all the apostles the gift of prophecy because, in a new church, there would not be any other members who would have yet been granted the gift of prophecy. So a new church would not be able to hear messages directly from God, exposing the secrets of their hearts and turning them to repentance, unless the apostles themselves had the gift of prophecy.

(2) Prophets – We must remember that, in the Bible, prophecy was defined as simply uttering what God commanded one to say. And we must also remember that, in Eph. 4:11, it is speaking about prophets who were also teaching elders. So it refers to mature, male teaching elders who not only taught doctrine, but were also granted the gift of prophecy. Such elders were very valuable, since they could be used by God to speak to men.

(3) Evangelists – These were teaching elders who preached the Gospel (i.e., εὐαγγέλιον refers to the Gospel and εὐαγγελιστής refers to one who proclaims the Gospel). Thus, evangelists were, like the apostles, granted an exceptional knowledge and wisdom regarding teachings from Jesus, so they could gather new disciples for Jesus and teach them correct doctrine from the start. But evangelists gathered Jesus' disciples into existing local churches, and likely did not create new churches. Therefore, they did not need as many supernatural spiritual gifts, since many of the disciples in those existing churches already had supernatural spiritual gifts. By the order presented in Eph. 4:11, we can assume that the gift of prophecy was not necessary for evangelists.

(4) Pastors who are teachers – (Note: There is a TSKS construction in the phrase, τοὺς ποιμένας καὶ διδασκάλους, in the original Greek of Eph. 4:11, and this TSKS construction indicates that this whole phrase referred to one category of teaching elders, not to two categories, not to “pastors and teachers.”) These were teaching elders who acted like “pastors” (i.e., like “shepherds”) in the church, feeding and guiding, older men who personally loved and cared for the people, involving themselves in the everyday lives of the people. But there were several kinds of “shepherds,” and not all kinds taught biblical doctrines in a local church. Some were counsellors, administrators, trainers of apprentices in various trades, helpers with various physical tasks performed by the church and so on. However, the ones Paul is referring to here (in Eph. 4:11), were teaching elders, which is why he used the phrase, τοὺς ποιμένας καὶ διδασκάλους. And they were the most common kind. There were almost always several of these shepherd-like teaching elders in every local church.

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So these are the four basic kinds of teaching elders that Jesus Himself “gives” to every local church. Yet each individual teaching elder of each kind was also granted a different speciality and a unique ministry. Each possessed a unique body of knowledge and a different expertise in a particular subject, or a different way of teaching. No two were alike. And each elder's weaknesses were covered by another elder's strengths, causing all the elders to rely on each other, and ultimately upon Jesus, to provide all the truth and wisdom that the people required. This disabled any elder from claiming to be the head over any of the others. For the risen and living Jesus remained the only Head Teacher and Judge in His whole church, regarding all matters of life and faith.

29. A careful reading of the early church fathers, along with any good history of the early church, will clearly reveal how the pagan philosophies of Middle Platonism (various blends of early Platonism, Stoicism, Aristotelianism and other pagan philosophies), and the interpolation of latter Neoplatonic concepts, eventually replaced and nullified literally all the core biblical teachings originally proclaimed by Jesus and His apostles in the church. History also exposes the “fruits” of those pagan corruptions—their incessant, ongoing injustice and terrible effects, an evil that has endured throughout the ensuing centuries to this very day. Of course, most theologians and church historians are actually proud that their religion (which is a form of theistic humanism) is built upon a foundation of teachings from those so-called “great” pagan philosophies of Greece and Rome. Thus, they write glowing praise for the early church apologists and teachers who cast aside Christ's true, rational, beneficial, effective biblical doctrines of pure theism—in order to replace true Christianity with a modified version of pagan Platonism, shaping Platonic teachings into a religious system that merely used Christian terms as a veneer to improve outward appearances. And these theologians also relish in pontificating about how the church developed and improved through great debates between its radically Aristotelian and Platonic factions. They don't even seem to notice how pure Christian teaching were corrupted or expunged from the church. If you want good resources which illuminate the stark contrast between humanistic church doctrines and genuine biblical teachings (God's intended meaning of His words in the Bible), such literature is scarce and suppressed. I find this troubling. Of course, you can consult a reputable book explaining the development of church doctrine, such as the previously mentioned A History of Christian Thought by Justo Gonzalez. I also recommend the other previously mentioned short book: The Discarded Image by C.S. Lewis, which is about medieval literature, but reveals the extent to which Platonism affected church teachings and popular literature, and discusses some contradictions between the church's Platonism in the Middle Ages and biblical teachings, even how Platonism still affects literature and churches today. But the fact is that few have seemed to actually examine the real teachings of the Bible and its good effects throughout history, and honestly compare these to the principles taught by Platonism in the church, or candidly evaluate the numerous terrible effects of humanism in the church and in the world throughout history. Few seem to want to make an unbiased, objective, informative, honest evaluation, one which can only come to the conclusion that the church must return to the true, original teachings of God's Word. In m