Friends; Jesus spoke with authority that infuriated some and stunned everyone else. It was amazing.  Have a super week … Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #952

February 11, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Amazing Authority

By Bob Walters

“When Jesus finished … the crowds were amazed at his teaching …because he taught with authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” – Matthew 7:28-29

At our E91 Christian Church, adult Sunday school classes are aptly called “Adult Bible Fellowships” – ABFs – because their reach far exceeds Sunday mornings.

Larger churches, generally, need to build in the smallness of tight communities of Bible study with intimate knowledge and caring for each other.  Our Logos class, which I’ve been a part of since 2002 (I was baptized in late 2001), 53 years ago started as a group of young parents. Today we are all grand- and even great-grand parents. Anyone not yet on Medicare would be considered the youth group.

While there are strong social and service aspects in all our ABFs, teaching and amplifying scripture to deepen relationship with Jesus and each other is our core objective; our mission being to constantly mature in faith in Christ as Lord and Savior.

That’s something that requires fellowship to accomplish. “Small Groups” often emanate from larger ABF relationships, as we “do life together” sharing joys and challenges. Small groups of 10-12 are common features of any vibrant, Jesus-focused, Bible-based church.  Everybody gets in the act of study, sharing, serving, and teaching.

Anyway, we had a good session in Logos ABF last Sunday discussing the familiar Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13. It is part of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-6-7 and recast in Luke 6:17-49). The prayer appears again, shortened, in Luke 11:2-4

Logos had a guest teacher, Andy Baker, a missions leader at E91, filling in for regular teacher Dave Schlueter (a retired physician who is warming up in southern Florida for a couple of these winter months). Like Dave, Andy is one of those guys who gets everyone thinking and (especially me) talking, and noticing fresh dimensions of even the most familiar passages.

The authority Jesus invoked in his teaching – as noted in Matthew 7:28-29 above – would truly have been amazing to his first-century listeners.  We recite the prayer now as Christians almost by rote. Jews would have been shocked by the whole sermon.

Practically everything Jesus said was virtually opposite the demands of the Law. Reading the Gospels today as a believing Christian is an exercise in affirming what we generally already know.  A pious, Law-obedient Jew, then, would never turn the other cheek, love or forgive an enemy (Matthew 5:38-47), or bless the poor, the mourner, the meek, the hungry, or the persecuted (Beatitudes, Matthew 5:2-11).

The merciful, pure of heart, and peacemakers (Matthew 5:7-9) would envisage Jesus, but be antithetical to the Law’s insistence on righteousness and vengeance.

Does that mean God changed when Jesus arrived?  No, the Covenant changed. The Law, God always knew, was what man could not do.  Jesus, God knew, replaced the non-saving obedience of Law with salvation by faith.  Man could not recover his lost relationship with God through the Law; God’s loving perseverance – in Jesus, His Son – now invited and demanded man’s faith. The Law was true, but Jesus was the truth.

Did Jews have faith?  Absolutely. Could they save themselves through works?  No. And neither can we.  Salvation is in the gracious and amazing authority of Jesus.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that Jesus’s parables typically undo the Law.

 I am thankful to be forgiven in Christ, but I’m not sure what forgiveness feels like.  Plus, I know there is something more.  See the column below.  Bob

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Spirituality Column #847

February 7, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Forgive the Feeling

By Bob Walters

“…forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you …” – Jesus, Mark 11:25

We have a lively, mature Sunday school class full of prudent, Bible-savvy, loving, life-long believers and church leaders.  And then there is me.

I’m a late-to-the-faith guy who talks too much, but 21-years in (baptized at age 47 in 2001) I have pretty much merged into the life-affirming surety and joy in Christ these folks – and many others I’ve met – have known most of their lives.  Theirs is a weekly fellowship and witness I have been taught, and encouraged by, for more than 20 years.

A few weeks back I said something I believe fully but that obviously shocked the class; at least, it shocked Sandy.  I don’t remember what we were discussing but I made the sincere point that I can’t really “feel” forgiveness, even though I know I am forgiven.

Sandy – that’s her real name – is a caring, Bible-bearing servant of God who almost immediately, lovingly, responded (approximately), “You can’t feel forgiveness?  I think that makes me very sad.”  And I knew exactly what she meant – it was care, not criticism – but I could also sense the room’s general agreement with her and didn’t want to pull the discussion off in another direction … which I have been known to do. 

But it is true.  I think of my life given over to Jesus – I’m still a fallen sinner – and I can’t for the life of me figure out what forgiveness is supposed to feel like.  Further, I’ve come to believe that forgiveness, great as it is, is not the main point of our life in Christ.

God’s glory and our place in it, I am convinced, is the point of our life in Christ.

Jesus came to fight a very unusual war: to show us God is worth it, and we are worth it.  That was His mission.  Jesus’s emphasis more critically was our knowing that He is the Son of God, part of which is our knowing that only God can forgive, and our knowing we need forgiveness.  But salvation is a faith test, not a forgiveness test.

What I can feel, and what makes me rejoice, is the truth I know through the Holy Spirit: that the life, teaching, sacrifice, and resurrection of Jesus Christ tells humans we are created to be part of God’s glory. That’s what Jesus came to tell us, and to rectify.

It’s our faith in Jesus, not our having been forgiven, that truly opens the gate into the Kingdom of God.  No, we can’t enter the Kingdom as sinners because of God’s righteousness, and the sacrifice of perfect Jesus covers our sins; it’s His righteousness through which we enter the Kingdom.  I think our goal is entering the Kingdom, not “me being forgiven” so I can feel better about my life.  Life’s not about me; that’s not love.

What I am is thankful, grateful, humble, and utterly awed by the rescue mission Jesus undertook to bring believers back into relationship with God; I feel that love.

I don’t feel the forgiveness; I feel the relationship.  Because of Christ I don’t have to strain and fuzzily look through a glass darkly at a distant, mysterious hope.  In the living truth of Jesus, I live within the reality of God’s purpose: glory.  That truth is clear.

God created us in His own image – “God is love” (1 John 4:8) – to be part of His eternal glory, not so He could come forgive us at some later date by killing His son. 

Our greatest joy in this life, then, should model the life of Jesus by sharing with others God’s love and mercy for us … by forgiving them in obedience to God.

I may not know what God’s forgiveness feels like, but I surely feel the peace of knowing Heaven awaits, God is real, Jesus can be trusted, and the Holy Spirit abides.

Forgiveness, like love, is a divine joy when it is about others.  

Thank you, Jesus, and that’s all I have to say about that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) loves Sandy and the entire E91 Logos ABF class.