Is It Commanded?

I believe that we are to obey the commands of Christ found in the Bible for reasons below. This means we should get involved in divine healing. Here is what someone wrote in response to this:

John wrote:

I said that Mark 16 doesn't neccessarily prove that those signs would continue because words spoken to the eleven are not neccessarily spoken directly to us. For us, yes. To us, not neccessarily.

My reponse

This of course would leave us free to pick and choose which of the commandments of Christ are written "to us", and not merely "for us". This is what many do anyway of course.

Jesus said to his disciples "Teach them to OBEY ALL that I commanded you." (Mt 28:20) That includes this command! It applies recursively. Every generation of disciple is therefore commanded to do all the things in the gospel that Jesus commanded, including Mk 16:15, unless those instructions were mission-specific and abrogated later on - e.g. Go only to Jews Mt. 10 was updated in Mark 16:15, Mt 28:19.

I've noticed that in some quarters the church treats the Words of Jesus as having no practical authority for us today. The epistles are seen as having authority - but only to exhort really. However we are supposed to OBEY the gospel (2 Thes. 1:7-9). We will be judged by the words of Jesus one day (Jn 12:47-50).

Its not going to do us any good to believe in a sissified Jesus of our own imagination. I've met so many people who "believe in Jesus" but live for themselves or pick and choose which of His instructions they will apply to their life. It doesn't really matter whether they are Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant or Pentecostal. Living faith works by love and acts on the promises of a LIVING God.

How do you decide which NT Scriptures are written "to us" - for obedience, rather than "for us", or for our theological mind games?

Michael

Copyright: Copyright (c) 1996-2005 Michael Fackerell · · Generator: TopicTree 0.8 · Generated: 08 Aug 2008, 01:40 pm AEST · Last modified: 2005-05-22 08:08:02 · 85 ms · Think eternal, act temporal