#New Testament Church

[pastorjeremynorton]

Lessons from the Philippian Church

Discover the remarkable qualities of the Philippian church—unity, prominence of women, education, and generosity. Learn how this early Christian community set a model for us today. Link in bio:

A Model of Early Christian Living How Did the Philippian Church Live Out the Gospel? The Philippian church was the first Christian church in Europe, located in what is now northeastern Greece. Before the Roman occupation, the city was the capital of the Greek Empire. Under Roman rule, Philippi became a melting pot of race and culture. “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in…

[lionofchaeronea]

Golgotha, Anthony van Dyck, 1630

[tomato-bird-art]

you can take Me hot to go

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Tenderhearted and Humble

Now to sum up, all of you be like-minded, sympathetic, brotherly, tender-hearted, and humble in spirit; — 1 Peter 3:8 | Legacy Standard Bible (LSB) Legacy Standard Bible Copyright ©2021 by The Lockman Foundation. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. Cross References: Romans 12:16; Ephesians 4:2; Ephesians 4:32; Philippians 2:3; 1 Peter 1:22; 1 Peter 5:5

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1 Peter 3:8 - Bible Verse Meaning and Commentary

[heathersdesk]

Holy Week: The Cleansing of the Temple

I have seen multiple people on Instagram talking about Jesus cleansing the temple in the final week of his ministry and misinterpreting the motive Jesus had for doing it. So let's talk about the details we can glean from Scripture to better understanding this story.

The temple complex had merchants who would sell animals to people they could use for sacrifices. The law of Moses in Leviticus 5 (see also Leviticus 14-15) talks about how the sin offering involves sacrificing a lamb or a kid goat. In the case of extreme poverty, two doves were the acceptable alternatives. These offerings would be bled on the Temple altar and burned.

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves. —Matt 21:13

The act of selling these animals was not the problem. It was a necessary part of the temple functioning, especially as people traveled from far distances to participate in temple worship.

The problem that caused Jesus to walk through the stalls turning over tables brandishing a whip was price gouging. Theft, of both money and access to God.

Everything that happened in the temple complex was under the direction of the high priest, the most important figure in Judaism at the time. The animals provided would've been inspected and assured that they would meet the requirements of the law. In a world where various monies were in use, weighed with scales to meet the established exchange rates, nothing would've prevented the high priest from requiring bribes from the privilege of operating in the temple market. Nothing would've prevented the scales from being turned against those who price gouged the public to provide for those bribes, as well as to line their own pockets. All of this happened at the expense of the people who were required by divine law to make these sacrifices to achieve forgiveness of their sins.

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus repeatedly demonstrates his disdain for the senior-most leadership of Judaism in his day. He had condemned the love of money and status over people so many times. He had disrupted ceremonies and insulted the priests to their faces. He had criticized their poor understanding of the law and their duties to others in their community. He had called them hypocrites, a den of vipers, vessels that were clean on the outside but filthy within, whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones, predators akin to wolves in sheep's clothing, and unprofitable servants. And here, he engages in his most pointed and unapologetic criticism yet for those in power:

And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. —Matt 21:13

The agitation of Jesus Christ culminated in this exact moment, where he struck back against the Establishment not only in thought, but in their pocketbooks. In the destruction of the temple market, he restored access to the ordinances for all by front the animals to those who were present. He liberated the money to the oppressed in society by flinging it outside the reach of those who had taken it from them. He upturned the power structure and social order which placed the high priest as a wealthy superior over, rather than a humble servant to, the Jewish community.

Make no mistake: Jesus was a Jew. He loved his community and his faith. He loved God. He respected the law, which called his people to be the best versions of themselves to serve God. But this love didn't stop him from publicly criticizing and condemning moral failure in the leadership around him. Love does not enable abuse. And it was abuse that allowed Jewish leadership at the time to limit access to the most important, the most sacred ordinances in Judaism only to those who were willing and able to pay enough money.

What do we learn from Jesus from the destruction of the temple market?

That some evil forces in society cannot be reformed. Reasoning with abusers in ways they don't have to acknowledge, that doesn't cost them anything, isn't a solution for the powerless. That people are more important than money and the economy. That there is restorative justice waiting for the oppressed, in the form of destruction for their oppressors. And when this happens, a greater increase of faith, healing, and power from heaven will follow.

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them. Matt. 21:14

This Easter season, this is the hope and prayer for many: that God will remember those who have been shut out of their communities because of the exorbitant prices set by their leadership for their participation. That God will restore access to the holiness and forgiveness that has been stolen from them. That there is still a Savior, a Deliverer from the greed and pride that drives this world. And most of all, that there is healing and rest for those who have been exploited against their will, that all that has been stolen will be restored to them one day.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[artandthebible]

The Blind Leading the Blind

Artist: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1530)

Genre: Religious Art

Date: 1568

Medium: Distemper on Linen Canvas

Collection: Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy

The Blind Leading the Blind, Blind, or The Parable of the Blind (Dutch: De parabel der blinden) is a painting by the Netherlandish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, completed in 1568.

The painting depicts a procession of six blind, disfigured men. They pass along a path bordered by a river on one side and a village with a church on the other. The leader of the group has fallen on his back into a ditch and, because they are all linked by their staffs, seems about to drag his companions down with him. A cowherd stands in the background.

Bruegel based the work on the Biblical parable of the blind leading the blind from Matthew 15:14, in which Christ refers to the Pharisees. Bruegel expands the two blind men in the parable to six; they are well dressed, rather than wearing the peasant clothing that typifies his late work. The first blind man's face is not visible; the second twists his head as he falls, perhaps to avoid landing face-first. The shinguard-clad third man, on his toes with knees bent and face to the sky, shares a staff with the second, by which he is being pulled down. The others have yet to stumble, but the same fate seems implied.

The faces and bodies of the blind men, and background detail including the church, are rendered in exceptionally fine detail. The backward-falling posture of the guide demonstrates Bruegel's mastery of foreshortening.

"Let them alone: they are blind guides. And if the blind guide the blind, both shall fall into a pit." ~ Matthew 15:14

[paraskevaaa]

August 1, 2024: The stench of sin

St. Gerasimos of the Jordan with his lion Jordanes.

The stench of sin. All humans sin and all humans have the stench of sin. Those who deal with dark entities have reported for hundreds of years the manifestation of horrid smells accompanying the enemy and his allies. It seems that the good are accompanied by good smells and the evil are accompanied by foul ones in the plane of the soul.

We know that sin, straying from God’s light, is equivalent to death. We were not created to experience physical death, we were created with free will and not blessed with the power to heal our bodies beyond natural laws. Free will and the enemy’s temptations of the flesh culminated in the first sin, and started Adam and Eve’s bodily clock of decay.

God loves and cares for all His creation. We could not wander the Garden with decaying bodies and naïve souls. We were sent to Earth to live as both body and soul, and are given the chance to die daily to the flesh, repent and rebuke sin and the passions, and live for God by serving his children in compassionate love and forgiveness.

Orthodox monastics are monks and nuns who seek refuge from the sickness of the world and the human condition to live for God entirely. It is written that

He who seeks to save his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

We will all lose our lives at the end of our time on Earth. The treasures you toil to build up here on Earth will become lost to you and to future generations in time. What about the soul? To comfort the soul with eternal life after death and reunion with the source of all universal power, monastics leave their entire Earthly lives to know, love, and serve God in this life. As a result of this, many monastics become extremely good and pure, and some become holy, of which God is the Most Holy. They become saints for having a heart so completely dedicated to God with no space at all for the passions.

These individuals, such as St. Gerasimos of the Jordan, became so free from Earthly sin that they began to lose the stench of their sins. A stench that we humans cannot sense, because with our bodies grounding our souls to the Earth, we cannot perceive things in our spirit. A stench, however, that animals can pick up on. With every sin we gain a blemish on our souls that takes it further away from its original state… a childlike state of innocence, blamelessness, love, and friendship.

Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

St. Gerasimos encountered a fierce lion in the desert and the lion, sensing he was not like other humans because of the scentlessness and cleanliness of his soul, did not attack Father Gerasimos and instead became obedient to him. Father Gerasimos and his monastery’s brothers named the lion Jordanes and they lived in peace, until Father Gerasimos fell asleep in the Lord and Jordanes followed him to his grave the minute he realized Gerasimos’ death.

As Orthodox Christians, we strive to die daily to the flesh and lead our lives both in Christlikeness and in the spirit of His perfect love. We serve the King of the Universe, and all human hearts already know His law, though they may be lost. We are called to love all people as they are all beloved by God and made in His own image, though God is not an old man with a beard in a flowy white robe. He is woven into the very fabric of the universe, He is the nighttime wind ripping through the leaves of an oak tree, He is the warm heart of a stranger caring for you for seemingly no reason.

If you know a very good and loving person who seems to attract and be loved by animals, you might very well know why. God bless and keep you and your loved ones❤️‍🔥 Glory be to Jesus Christ.

[durn3h]

One of the most interesting things about religion to me is that so many people don’t even see the mental gymnastics they are doing to try and shape the biblical texts into a framework that is acceptable in the modern day and it comes out looking like something that none of the authors would have approved of.

[personal-blog243]

Thoughts on a particular brand of Christian interpretation of the Bible that grooms them to support authoritarianism…

(Disclaimer: I am not an expert please don’t use me as your only source on this topic)

in my experience most Christians have an extremely hyper-literal interpretation of the Bible that I don’t necessarily agree with, particularly not when combined with the doctrine that the Bible is completely 100% inerrant and infallible and is the absolute highest authority and is the one and only completely true word of God in a very strict literal sense.

It’s a very brutally honest “facts don’t care about your feelings” way to view God and the violence of the Old Testament.

This means that most Christians really DO believe that all of the rape, slavery, war, genocide, etc. in the Bible is totally 100% genuinely perfectly fine with God and that that must be what God himself actually wants to this day in a modern context as well!

Your personal morals be damned. Your feelings about all of this are irrelevant because it is what the book says. Most Christians really believe that if you want to identity as a Christian or a follower of Jesus in any way, you must accept and be perfectly okay with all of the bad things in the Old Testament as well. It’s all or nothing, take it or leave it. You can’t pick and choose. Facts don’t care about your feelings. This is what it means to be a real Christian whether you like it or not.

If you don’t like hearing any of that, or interpret the Bible differently, you clearly disagree with God himself about rape, slavery, homophobia, and genocide and that is all your fault. If you’ve got a problem with God then that’s on you. Surely God believes that you are wrong about these things and you are the problem. Do you think you are smarter than God???? Who are you to complain and question?

Christians are used to hearing these bad things and putting aside their own feelings and basic morals for the sake of the truth (or what they believe is true whether they like it or not 🤷🏼‍♀️). They are used to doing this for the sake of respecting tradition and authority and thinking their emotions and ethical philosophy doesn’t matter when there is a higher authority.

Just keep in mind that this is how most conservative Christians view both the Bible AND the U.S. Constitution! 😳! They are authoritative texts that can’t and shouldn’t be changed and to have an ethical philosophy that is different from the men who wrote these texts is an attack on the abstract concept of truth and authority itself.

This is why they are primed for authoritarianism. They think that having a different understanding of the role of these texts and how to interpret them means you think you are smarter or better than the the founding fathers (in the case of the constitution) and of God himself (in the case of the Bible).

Obviously not ALL Christians necessarily think this way I’m just cautioning against this mentality of having to accept terrible things in the name of truth and authority.

[tittyinfinity]

I left Christianity quite a while back, but honestly, I still kinda do believe in "Jesus." Not in the sense that he was actually the son of god or came back from the dead. But a guy getting publicly executed for shaming those in power? Yeah, happens all the time. This guy just happened to have a popular book written (mistranslated several times & exaggerated) about it

[ofpolitics]

me desiring to be a smol menace on the dash vs the fear of accidentally being mean instead of funny: a constant battle.

[thesobsister]

Fascinating article on the role that enslaved people had in facilitating the literary work of the "Fathers" of the Christian system, from Paul through Origen to Gregory I and beyond. The role of the enslaved in other aspects of Christian cultural work, such as art, is also discussed. Great links to scholarship on the topic are included.

tl;dr Christianity isn't so much a slave religion as a religion built on the enslaved.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Do All Things in Love

Let all that you do be done in love. — 1 Corinthians 16:14 | New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. All rights reserved. Cross References: 1 Corinthians 14:1; 1 Corinthians 16:15

[heathersdesk]

Holy Week: The Sacrament

Where is the exact moment Jesus Christ stopped being a Jew and became the founder of a new and separate religion?

Was it when the Sanhedrin rejected him? When enough other Jews decided he was a heretic, rather than a teacher? Was it the first time he claimed to be the Son of God? When he called his Twelve Apostles, and called Peter the rock upon which he would build his church?

Personally, I think it was the last time he celebrated Passover with his disciples. I'm switching over to Luke 22 for this one.

The celebration of Passover included the eating of unleavened bread and drinking wine. But what Jesus does with them here is where I think the break between Judaism and Christianity begins:

19 And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. 20 Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.

To have a new testament signifies the formation of a new covenant. This is the moment where Jesus uses the authority he has from God to form a new community with a religious identity separate and distinct from Judaism. While Jesus was a Jew, followed Jewish law, observed Jewish customs and holidays, and worshiped the same God as the Jews, he intended to create a church and a community that would break from Jewish traditions. The institution of the Sacrament (our terminology for Holy Communion or the Eucharist in other traditions) was the initiation of this break.

Because Latter-day Saints haven’t celebrated Holy Week historically, and this is something our currently leadership is inviting us to change, it’s been really special to see what other Christians do to make this time special. It has been a great reminder that Easter is the opportunity for all Christians, including us, to celebrate the relationships we've personally developed with Jesus Christ. We have more in common with other Christians than we might think we do, and it’s because we all have this common belief in how much Jesus Christ and his ministry changed the world.

I’m still contemplating what it means for me to celebrate Holy Week. I’ve thought about the choice I made at Easter time many years ago to be baptized. I went to the temple yesterday. I’ve been studying scriptures for these daily meditations, which I’ve enjoyed very much. And tomorrow, my husband and I are going to an orchestral performance of Rob Gardner's Lamb of God. There isn’t really an established program for any of this for our people now, and we’re each contemplating how to do this and make it personally meaningful.

My favorite part of sharing these has been the ways you all have shared how my thoughts are helping you to develop your own Holy Week messages and traditions with your own families. I’ve deeply enjoyed  those messages, and I think this was the wisdom in having us begin participating in these traditions: the way we would help each other and celebrate our faith in Christ together. It truly doesn’t get better than that. And I hope that becomes a key feature of what Latter-day Saints celebrating Holy Week looks like going forward.