Quote:
Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!
This seems like a false dilemma to me . . . does it mean if I accept John 4:24 that it negates something else?
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A philosophical or theological world-view must be coherent, i.e. internally consistent, and must engage all the data/input/experiences [i.e. scripture] available. We were talking about "God's economy" as expounded by WL, and someone raised Lee's Two Trees idea, which you seem to consistently affirm. The Two Trees theorem holds that it's not about doing but about eating. Not outward action but inner life, life-union, and life-supply.
(Yet this misses the outer actions of Jesus. He told the Baptizer's followers to go back and tell John what they saw Jesus doing unto others.)
StG, do you remember the songs by which we learned the WL theorems? I do.
I’m walking down the road
That leads to glory.
I’m pressing toward the mark
By enjoying God!
I don’t know so much,
Just to love Him.
I’m walking down the road,
Glory, here I come.
"I don't know so much" - negation of knowledge = enforced ignorance. Only a few select "crucial" verses are enough. "Get out of your mind, brother!" Cult-speak 101
With the brothers and the sisters,
We enjoy Him day by day.
It’s so simple and easy,
Our worries flee away.
Now we’re growing together,
As one big family,
Abiding in the joy of the Lord
"It's so simple and easy" - an oversimplified world-view in which any difficult reconciliations of various creative tensions in the scripture, e.g., faith v/v works, are dismissed out of hand. Just eat the Tree of Life - yell more, yell louder.
We enjoy You, Lord Jesus,
In our experience.
We’re getting to know You—
It’s making us leap and dance.
Just eating and drinking,
It’s what we do the best,
Delighting in the love of the Lord.
"Just eating and drinking." - don't worry about doing, just get filled with the Triune God, and get conformed, transformed, and transfigured. This is God's economy, in verse, for the masses. (Yet look at behaviours of the leaders - where's evidence of transformation?) The word "just" is key - anything but "eating and drinking" is categorically rejected as TOKOGAE.
I could cite a dozen other songs I learned in my first few months, as I was programmed with the WL world-view. Today I don't think this world-view is either self-consistent or matches the span of NT scripture. So when you presented a seemingly-simple verse, where Jesus tells us to "eat him" in John 6, I showed what Jesus meant by his food in John 4, and later (John 14:15,21,23; 15:10) that his "eating" of obedience to God's word must be matched by our experience of obedience to him. This, per Jesus, is our eating of him. There is a clear and consistent line in John's gospel, and John 6 must stay in this line. If you go, "Genesis 3, John 6, Revelation 22" you create a truncated and oversimplified scriptural narrative.
(I may not be reacting to StG's ideas as much as they seem to be at least partly aligned with the WL world-view, which I do negate on its face.)
Jesus continually lived in the Father's presence. The fall and the curse didn't catch him. He always did the Father's will, saw the Father's face. The Father's word was not disobeyed, to bring judgment and condemnation, but was obeyed, to become approval and eternal life. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I delight; you must hear him."
So Jesus, via obedience, continually lived at the TOL and "ate" via following God's word. Now to his disciples, he's Word incarnate, the Logos of God. He is our very life. Again, we obey him as he obeyed the Father, and he is indeed our life supply. We live by him. But it's doing. Not yelling slogans.
Again, I may not overlap fully with
StG world-view, and apologize if I've dragged it afield. I'm just reacting to what I've read, and how it apparently matches the WL world-view that I was once immersed in.
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Suppose the Jerusalem brothers had said, "only remember the poor" and Paul had replied, "No, I'm not here for that - I just want to enjoy Christ!" Then you'd have a case. But he didn't say that and there's no case, but simply a very deep read-between-the-lines by the self-proclaimed Seer of the Divine Revelation, who happened to self-publish and sell his books to a captive, stupefied audience.
No, Paul was eager to remember the poor, and we repeatedly see him doing this in epistle and in Acts. I've gone over this in detail. And this is a continuation of Jesus' command to Peter - "Feed my sheep" - which Peter and the Twelve did with real, actual physical food, in the early chapters of Acts, and which Paul and Barnabas also did in Acts 12:25, and now Paul was traveling and doing with the gentile churches.
With this view of God's economy, we don't have a two-tiered NT, but rather a self-consistent reading that covers all the available scriptures, not just a few so-called crucial verses.