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Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!
I asked for feedback (see my post #59) regarding my commentary on that original posting of the TAS devotional - again ...
If that is acknowledged (finally) I'd like to move on, as this thread is about posting inspirational devotionals, and I have one for today that hopefully won't start another of these divergent discussions.
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This is patently untrue. I answered your request in my post #63. If you ignore it, fine. But don't then say that nobody answers you!
TAS makes Paul his paragon of apprehending Christ. This is flawed on its premise. Surely Christ
is above our ability to see in full, the breadth and depth and height. But why key in on Paul? John said, "We beheld his glory" and Peter repeated that in his epistle. Is John our paragon? Or Peter? Does John have the "greatest appreciation of Christ"?
No, they (Paul, John, Peter, James, Jude, Luke etc) provide a composite and thus comprehensive view of the man Jesus, both before his crucifixion, and after.
Rather than keying in on Paul's attempts to apprehend Christ as our benchmark, I suggest keying in on Jesus Christ. Don't let another believer's "experience and enjoyment" be our metric. Rather, we have Jesus before us in the gospels. He said, "I always see the Father". Does Jesus here apprehend the Father? Yes, clearly, and in full. So why key in on Paul's partial apprehension of Jesus Christ? It is a fundamental mis-aiming in focus.
Jesus clearly taught, that we should obey him, as he obeyed the Father. We live by him, as he lived by the Father. Our relationship with him is set in balance, with his and the Father's opposite, as the template. Notice that he repeatedly says "even as" - don't you think this (e.g., John 15:10; 1 John 2:6) should be our focus, instead? If you want to apprehend Christ, then watch Christ apprehend the Father. Don't watch anything else. Don't key in on Paul as if somehow his "lofty" position were your express elevator to the top. Nee made this mistake with the mystics and Lee made it with Nee and we made it with Lee. No, focus on Jesus Christ, and if you do, you'll notice his unswerving focus on the Father.
Now, you can wave all this off, and that's fine, really. But don't say that nobody addresses your daily devotionals. And btw this is not a "divergent discussion". TAS made a fundamental error in focus - Paul's apprehension of Christ - and then made this flawed premise the basis of his ruminations. He mis-aimed. I repeatedly have made this point. There is no divergence, here. And yes, we know that you want to move on - whenever someone points out the basis of your thinking, and addresses the actual contents of the material, you decide that it's time to move on. Forgive us if we notice the obvious pattern, here.
Of course Paul is hugely important in the NT narrative. But so is John, James, Peter etc. None of them are the "greatest" that we can hang our hat on. Only Jesus gets this appellation. To attempt anything otherwise is to fail at the basics, at Christianity 101. No devotional can make up for that error, in fact if that kind of thinking becomes entrenched then it's fatally flawed in scope.