[aron]

Originally Posted by Trapped

Adam and Eve disobeyed and were punished with death. Same with us. That is why Jesus had to come, obeying the Father, to take our death punishment upon Himself.

..The first Adam was disobedient. The last Adam was obedient. We were punished with death for our sins. He had to die; He had to take our punishment.

Because of his obedience, his righteousness in death was imputed as our propitiation. We believe this: we believe in his experience of obedience, not in our experience of eating.

Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!

I suspect this may be a Calvinism/Armenian type thing where there are at least two valid aspects of the same thing . . .

The original post asked a straightforward question:

Originally Posted by DistantStar

Simple question: What does the Local Church mean with the Lord's [sic] Economy?

In reviving this question on post #308, I tried to explain what the Local Church means with God's economy, why I find it unsatisfying, and I proposed an alternate reading. Then Awoken came in with Lee's Two Trees theory, which is part of it, and you've addressed the "eating" part.

Yet StG you never acknowledge my repeated remarks on what Jesus termed his "eating", and the accompanying NT texts stressing Jesus' obedience, and it seems you're trying to do an end-around back to Lee's pray-reading and "enjoyment" leading to some kind of metabolic transformation. Am I right?

But nowhere does Paul write, "I hope that when I return to Ephesus (or Laodicea or Thessalonika) I'll find you pray-reading scriptures". Instead he says, "Lay aside some money for the poor of Jerusalem", and he repeatedly points to other churches doing the same thing, or he says that other churches are noting the letter's recipients as an example of diligence in this matter. This, says Paul, is love, this is the giving as in Jesus' "Do unto others", this is our faith in action. This is fellowship with one another, this is what it means with remembrance of the hungry and weak and sick.

So I asked, if Paul is repeatedly teaching this in all the other churches, what's he asking Timothy to focus on as he remains in Ephesus? Something like "masticating God to become God [in life and nature]? Where is the connection of that, to any teaching or act of Paul?

Conversely, if his idea of metabolic transformation follows his idea of eating and organic assimilation, why did WL repeatedly place his ne'er-do-well sons where they could prey on the flock? Where's evidence of his own transformation? Instead, we see an untransformed man still in his fallen human culture - family (sinful or not) comes first. And closer to home, why did Bill Freeman's "Christ" allow Patsy Freeman to bulldoze the lives of the various church couples in their captive assemblies? How can we think that some kind of "enjoyment" trumps all that? Just because the Bible has food in it?

And then, saying that there are different equally valid aspects is another way of brushing it all off.

But the unrighteousness that we all repeatedly saw should not be brushed off. And many of us here have said that the failure of theology led to pretending that we didn't care for righteousness, only "enjoyment'' and "eating" and "exercising our spirit" and so forth. This is mere noisemaking, and suppression of thought, and eventually suppression of conscience, when evil is ignored. "Just be simple, drop your concepts, eat that tree." To me, you're perilously close to that world, if not still fully ensconced within it.