Chapter 3 More on Understanding Jesus
The true power of Jesus lies in the way of living He teaches us.
Jesus’ power will only be present in our lives to the extent that we live as Jesus teaches us to live. The more often we follow Jesus teachings the more we will benefit from knowing Jesus, and the less often we follow Jesus’ teachings the less we will benefit from knowing Jesus.
Because God has created us, we can only find joy and contentment by doing what God wants us to do.
God has already given us
all we need to find joy and contentment.
Because God is our creator we can only find contentment and joy by doing what God wants us to do. Knowing this, and knowing what Jesus teaches us God wants us to do are the only things we can know about God that will help us find joy. Knowing whether or not God controls everything in our world will not help us at all. Because Jesus knows this, Jesus never tells us whether or not God controls everything in our world. Jesus only tells us that God is our lord and master and that if we do not please God we will suffer greatly: As Jesus puts it, “There will be great wailing and gnashing of teeth.” If we do not please our Heavenly Father. As Jesus said to Peter when Peter tried to judge another disciple, “What concern is it of yours if I will that he tarry till I come? You follow me. (Jn21:21-24). Jesus is telling Peter that his own actions should be his only concern. And that he should not try to judge anyone else or anything else.
The reason that it would not help us to know whether or not God controls everything in our world, is that God has already done everything we need him to do for us. There is nothing that we could want God to give us, that God has not already given us. If we have not received a thing that we need, this is so only because we have not yet learned how to receive what God has given us. The way in which we can receive gifts that God has given us, is by doing what God wants us to do. We can learn how to do what God wants us to do from Jesus.
We cannot influence what God will do, and if we are wise we will not want to influence what God will do. This is so because if we are wise, we will know that in comparison to God all people are fools. God knows what He should do far better than any person could ever know what God should do. If we do sometimes ask God to do anything for us, we should not actually hope to influence God’s actions. We should instead ask God to do things for us, so that we can better understand ourselves. Asking God to do things for us can help us see things that we are lacking, and asking God to do things for us can help us see our desires more clearly. The more clearly we can see our desires, the more accurately we can determine if our desires are sometimes the same as God’s desires for us, and the more clearly we can see how our desires differ from God’s desires for us.
Jesus tells us that God already knows what we need when He says, “Take no thought, for what you will eat, or for what you will drink, or for what you will wear. “Your heavenly father knows that you need these things.” Jesus then tells us how we can receive all of these things when He says, “First seek God’s righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” (Mt 6:25-33 & Lk 12:22-34).
Why it is dangerous to think we know more about God than what Jesus tells us about God
1.)
Jesus tells us very little about how God will reward us for doing His will.
Jesus does tell us that if we follow Him we will often suffer, but that God will more than make up for our suffering with rewards He will give us. Because of this we never know whether we should expect rewards or suffering at any particular time.
All that Jesus tells us about God’s rewards is that one of God’s rewards is eternal life. Jesus does not describe this life though.
One reason for this is that we will only desire the life that God will give us for eternity when we have been transformed by following Jesus. In our current state the life that we would know in the kingdom of heaven would probably not appeal to us very much.
Jesus also does not tell us that God intervenes in the world to reward people who do His will. God may not have to intervene to reward people who do His will. God may instead have created the world in such a way that people who do His will are rewarded without His needing to intervene. Just as on our planet water always flows downhill, so also do rewards always flow to people who do God’s will. Both of these things might happen without God having to intervene each time they happen.
Both the exact nature of the rewards God will give to people who follow Jesus and whether or not God intervenes in the world He has created to reward people who follow Jesus are not things that we need to know about God. Knowing these things would not help us to do God’s will. This is why Jesus does not tell us these things.
Any thing about God other than the actions that He will reward and the actions that He will punish are things that we do not need to know about God.
2.)
Believing that we know anything that we don’t know only makes it harder for us to follow Jesus. This is so because following Jesus requires that we see ourselves as we are: weak limited beings who desperately need Our Creator’s forgiveness. Imagining ourselves to be greater than we are leads to destructive pride that encourages us to do our will instead of God’s will.
Jesus tells us that to follow Him each of us must, “Deny himself and take up his cross daily.” People who think that they are greater than they are will not deny themselves, will not take up their crosses, and will not follow Jesus.
How seeing that everything Jesus tells us to do is part of forgiving other people as we need God to forgive us, will strengthen our faith.
Unless we see that all of Jesus’ commands are part of one great command, we will think that Jesus is correct when He tells us that God wants us to do some things, and that Jesus is incorrect when He tells us that God wants us to do other things. If we see that Jesus actually tells us that God wants us to do one thing that has many parts, then strong faith in any particular thing that Jesus tells us to do, will strengthen our faith in all things that Jesus tells us to do. This strengthening of faith will happen for most of us, because most of us do have strong faith in some things that Jesus tells us to do. Most of us have strong faith in some things that Jesus tells us to do, because most of us have seen some things that Jesus tells us to do help us or help people close to us, when either we, or people close to us have done those things.
The more any person has learned from Jesus, the easier it will be for that person to resist temptation.
If we sometimes follow Jesus when other people do not follow Jesus, we must realize that we are only following Jesus because we are being tempted less strongly than other people are being tempted.
Part of the reason that some people are sometimes tempted less strongly than other people are tempted, is because those people have been taught, by wise teachers, that following Jesus will lead to rewards that will be far greater than any suffering they will know because they follow Jesus, While other people have not been taught this.
The more clearly and more fully we have been taught Jesus’ truth, the easier it will be for us to follow Jesus.
This will be so because, the more clearly and more fully we understand Jesus’ teachings, the more often we will be able to see what action following Jesus would lead a person to take in different situations, And because the more often we can see what action following Jesus would lead a person to take, the more often we will be able to tell whether or not a particular person is following Jesus, and the more often we will be able to see that God truly does reward people who follow Jesus.
When we must act in situations that Jesus did not speak of, we can still know how following Jesus would lead us to act in these situations. We can know this if we have learned the general principle that lies underneath all that Jesus says to us, and that binds all of Jesus’ teachings into one great lesson. We can know this if we understand that all that Jesus tells us to do is a part of forgiving other people their evil, as we want God to forgive us our evil.
Only in the name of a disciple
It can take a long time for any person to learn that Jesus truly does teach God’s will, and to learn that he or she needs to follow Jesus’ teachings.
We all enter this world not knowing what God wants us to do and not knowing how we can learn what God wants us to do. We all start trying to learn what God wants us to do from people who are close to us and most of us continue trying to learn what God wants us to do from people who are close to us, throughout our lives. If people who are close to us do not follow Jesus then it may be a long time before we even hear Jesus’ teachings, and even when we do hear Jesus’ teachings we will probably not hear them taught in Jesus’ name.
This does not matter to Jesus, though, and it also does not matter to God. Jesus tells us this when He tells us that if a person does God’s will that person’s, reward will “In no way be less because he does so only in the name of a disciple.” (Mt 10:42), And Jesus tells us this again when he says, “Whoever speaks against the Son of Man, will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Ghost, will not be forgiven.”(Mt 12:32 & Lk 12:10)
The Holy Ghost is Jesus’ teachings, and the help that God gives to people who follow Jesus’ teachings. Jesus cares much more about what we say about His teachings, than He cares, about what we say about Him. If we learn how to forgive people who do us evil, and if we do forgive people who do us evil, then Jesus doesn’t care whether we learn how to do these things in His name, or in someone else’s name.
Jesus only wants us to follow Him if following Him leads us to do the will of His Father. Jesus only wants us to follow Him because following Him is the best way we have of learning How to do the will of His father.
Why some people follow Jesus’ teachings more closely than other people follow Jesus’ teachings.
Jesus tells us that we all do evil when we are led into temptation, and that we only do good when God gives us gifts that allow us to do good. The greatest of the gifts that God gives is the understanding of the true value of Jesus’ teachings. Some people follow Jesus more closely than other people follow Jesus because those people understand that Jesus truly does teach us what God wants us to do, and truly does teach us what actions God will reward. If all people understood this about Jesus, then all people would be equally eager to follow Jesus’ teachings.
If we were all led to the same temptations, and if we were all given the same strengths and abilities by God, then we would all follow Jesus equally closely.
Though Jesus preached only to the Jewish people, Jesus wants His light to fill the entire world.
Jesus tells us this when He says “I am sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Mt 15:29), and when He also says, “I came that I might save the world.” (Jn12:47). Jesus spoke directly only to the children of Israel, and to a few other people who were in the land of Israel when He preached, But Jesus knew that all who are lost would be able to read His words, or hear His words, and would be able to learn from His words, how they could be saved. The Jews were Jesus’ people. Jesus was a Jew, and that is how He was sent to the Jewish people.
Like a Lord and His slaves (A note on translation)
Throughout this guide to following Jesus I often quote Jesus. When I do this the quotes I use are based on the interlinear translation from the nestle Greek text, directed by Alfred Marshall. For the most part the meaning of Jesus’ sayings is the same in this interlinear translation as it is in most other widely used translations. I have found only one recurring difference in meaning between these translations. Whenever most translations tell us that Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is like a Lord and His servants or that all people are servants of God, the authoritative interlinear translation tells us that Jesus actually said that the kingdom of heaven is like a Lord and His slaves, and that all people are slaves of God.
It is easy to see at least one persuasive reason that many translators say servant where Jesus said slave. This reason is that reading that we are all slaves to God has probably encouraged many people to treat other people like slaves. Though it is good to discourage people from treating other people like slaves, It is wrong to misunderstand our true relation to God in our attempt to do this.
Jesus discourages people from treating other people like slaves in a way that is both more effective than changing His words is, and that does not misrepresent our true relation to God. Jesus does this by telling us that we should never put any person in God’s place, and by telling us that we should never treat any person as we treat God or as we treat Him. Jesus tells us these things when He says, “Be not you called Rabbi, for Christ is your master and you are all brothers. And call no man father, for you have a Father who is in heaven. Neither be you called master, for Christ is your master.” (Mt 23: 5-12 & Lk 20: 45-47)
Jesus tells us that we are like slaves to God, but Jesus also makes it clear that no person should ever be either a slave or a master to any other person. Instead we should all treat each other as brothers and sisters. Seeing that that we are slaves to God should discourage us from trying to put ourselves in God’s place and should discourage us from trying to make other people our slaves.
We are all like slaves to God, because God has given us all that we have, including every ability we possess, and including our lives themselves. Because God has given us all that we have, we should use what God has given us, as God wants us to use wants us to use what He has given us. This is why we should be like slaves to God.
No person has given us all that we have. No person has given us every ability we possess, and no person has given us our lives. This is why no person should ever call another person slave, and this is why no person should ever call another person master.
Our earthly parents, brought together materials that God created in them, and when these materials came together God created us out of these materials. God gave us life. Our earthly parents were merely labourers who carried God’s supplies. This is God’s way of allowing people to play a small role in His creation. We must never forget that people only assist in the small details of creation, and that God is the Master and the Creator who makes creation happen.
Jesus tells us that God will punish us if we claim to have more faith than we have.
If we say that we have faith in more than a small portion of what Jesus tells us, then Jesus will know we are lying. A person who lies about his or her faith in Jesus, will offend Jesus, because this person will be making Jesus the cause of an evil lie. If we try to follow Jesus then all that we can honestly say about our faith is that our faith can be measured by how closely we follow Jesus’ teachings.
When we say that we have more faith than we actually have, we do so because we are trying to make ourselves look good. Jesus never wants us to try to make ourselves look good. Jesus never wants us to do this because people who try to make themselves look good, often come to believe that they are good, and then often reject God’s mercy, because they think that they don’t need God’s mercy.
People who try to make themselves look good, will also commit acts of great evil in order to silence anyone who shows that they are not good: Just as the scribes and pharisees of Jerusalem had Jesus killed because Jesus showed that they were not good.
Jesus tells us that God will punish people who try to make themselves look good, when he says to the Pharisees of the temple of Jerusalem, “You devour widow’s houses, and make pretence of long prayer. For this you will receive greater damnation.” (Mt 23:14 & Lk 20:47). These Pharisees said long prayers to try to make themselves look good to people who heard these prayers, and to try to make themselves look good to God. And by doing this, they increased the punishment that God gave them.
Jesus doesn’t want us to talk or think at all, about how much or how little faith we have, and Jesus doesn’t want us to talk or think at all, about how much good or how much evil we will do. Jesus tells us this when He tells us to “Judge not.” (Mt 7:1, Lk 6:37). When Jesus tells us to “Judge not”, He is telling us both not to judge other people, and not to judge ourselves. Instead, Jesus wants us to see that however much faith we have, our faith will always be small, that however much good we do, we will always do little good, and, that however much evil we do, we will always do great evil.
Jesus wants us to see these things so we will ask for God’s mercy, and so we will forgive as we need be forgiven.
Jesus tells us that God will reward us if we are humble and that God will punish us if we are proud.
Jesus tells us this when He says, “Whoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Mt 18:4)
Jesus tells us this again, when He says to His disciples, “The greater of you shall be your servant. (Mt 20:26-27, Mt 23:11, Lk 22:25-27), Whoever wishes to be great among you, he will be your servant. And whoever wishes to be first among you, he will be you slave.” and when He says to His disciples, “He who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and He who is chief, let him be your servant. For who is greater the servant or the one who is served. Isn’t the person who is served greater? But I am with you as a servant. (Lk 22:26-27).
Jesus tells us again that God will reward humble people and will punish proud people when He says, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted (Mt 23:12, Lk 14:11, Lk 18:14).
If we say we have faith in Jesus then we are lying. Our actions show that we all doubt Jesus greatly, when Jesus tells us what Our Creator wants us to do, because we all often do not follow Jesus’ teachings, and because when we fail to follow Jesus’ teachings, then we do not believe that following those teachings at that time will bring us rewards that will outweigh suffering that will come from following Jesus, as Jesus tells us following will do.
We will all lose faith in Jesus, whenever we are led to great temptation. This is why Jesus tells us to pray to Our Father, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4). Temptation will challenge any faith we have in Jesus. The only way we can strengthen our faith is by honestly admitting the doubt that becomes obvious to all when we are tempted, before temptation comes. If we constantly challenge our faith, by constantly trying to test what new doubt, before we are tempted, then we will be better prepared when temptation comes. We must question whether Jesus is right or wrong in everything that He teaches us. We can strengthen our faith by doing this, because there is an answer to every question we can ask: both in Jesus’ words (if we understand His teachings correctly), and in the results we see in our lives when we try to follow Jesus, and the results we see when we do not try to follow Jesus.
For example we will all often doubt that Our Creator wants us to always turn the other cheek, when a person strikes us, and we will all often doubt that Our Creator will always give us rewards for turning the other cheek, that will be greater than the physical pain we will suffer from doing so. We must remember that Jesus does not tell us to only turn the other cheek once. If a person continues to strike us, then we are commanded to turn the other cheek again, and again, even if doing so leads us to be badly beaten. This experience would break the faith of most of us. If we believe Jesus’ promises that we will suffer greatly, but that if we continue to follow Jesus, we will be given rewards that will more than make up for our suffering, though. If we believe these promises then we will follow Jesus.
The Hypothesis
Human knowledge can only advance through conjecture, hypothesis, and testing. The most valuable thing in the world is a person who puts forth testable hypotheses. Many people test, few people hypothesize. Most people not only fail to put forth testable hypotheses, most people fail to put forth any hypotheses. When we find a person who does put forth hypotheses, we should treat that person as a rare jewel of great value. Especially if that person puts forth hypotheses about what moral actions will work for us: hypotheses about what moral actions will bring us things that we want and things that we need; because people who put forth moral hypotheses are especially rare.
The most detailed statement ever put forth about what moral actions will bring us things that we want and things that we need, is the statement put forth by Jesus of Nazareth. To Jesus, His statement is not a hypothesis to be tested, but is instead a fact He knows to be true. To us though Jesus’ statement, like all statements is, a hypothesis we will only believe if we test it. This is a part of our natures that Jesus’ tells us of every time He calls us “you of little faith”. Jesus tells us how much easier our lives would be if we could believe without testing our beliefs anew each time we think of them, and at the same time Jesus tells us how impossible it is for us to believe without testing our beliefs anew each time we think of them. Jesus tells us these things when He says to his disciples, “If your faith were as a grain of mustard seed, you could tell that mountain to move, and it would move.” (Mt 17:20). This tells us that unless a person can make a mountain move by telling it to move, that person does not have enough faith to fill the smallest seed Jesus knew of.
When we do what Jesus tells us to do. At that moment we believe what Jesus tells us. Most of the time, though, we do not do what Jesus tells us to do.
Jesus tells us that each of us needs more forgiveness from Our Creator, than any other person will ever need from us, and that Our Creator will only shield us from the punishment we deserve for evil we have done to Him, if we try to shield other people from the punishment they deserve for evil they have done to us: that Our Creator will only show us mercy instead of justice, if we show mercy instead of justice to people who do evil to us. Everything Jesus tells us to do is a part of showing mercy instead of justice to people who do evil to us.
Thankfully for us, Jesus’ statement about what moral actions will work for us, can be tested. If we show mercy instead of justice, to people who do evil to us, and if we then observe what happens in our lives, we will be testing Jesus’ statement. The complete results of this test may never come in, because Our Creator’s actions towards us may never end, but if we observe our lives closely, then we will see some of the effects of our actions very soon. Jesus tells us that this will be so when He says, “There is no man, who has left house or parents, or wife or children for the kingdom of God’s sake, who will not receive many times more in the present time, and in the world to come, life everlasting” (Lk 18:29-30). Some of Our Creator’s rewards will come to us immediately, while some of Our Creator’s rewards will take longer to develop and come to fruition.
We can only test Jesus’ teachings in our own lives because our own lives are the only lives we can observe completely. We can only observe small parts of other people’s lives. Because of this it is much harder to test all hypotheses in human affairs than it is to test hypotheses in the physical sciences. It is worth the effort though, because it is in human affairs that we will benefit most if we are able to gain accurate knowledge. Every time we act, we are forced to make decisions about what moral actions we believe will bring us things that we want and thing that we need, and we will only be able to act wisely if our beliefs about these things are correct.
Jesus encourages us to test what he teaches us, by showing us that He is so sincere in His teachings that He was willing to die so that His teachings would come to as many people as possible, and so that those people would take His teachings seriously.
If Jesus had not died on the Cross we would not take His words seriously. We would say that talk is cheap, and we would think that Jesus was asking us to do things that He wouldn’t do. In fact, because we all would have felt this way about Jesus, people who lived when Jesus preached, would not have preserved and passed on Jesus’ words, and people alive today, would not even be able to hear or read Jesus’ words.
Jesus tells us to eat His body and to drink His blood, and Jesus tells us that we cannot live unless we eat his body and drink His blood. “Truly, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you have no life in you.”
When Jesus died, His blood flowed down from the cross to form the words of His gospels. Every time we read these words, and live by them, we are drinking Jesus’ blood. Every time we read these words, and live by them, we are eating Jesus’ body.
We human beings are naturally vicious and cruel
We are quick to fight with each other, to war on each other, and to do harm to each other. Our belligerence comes from our fear: which is naturally great, and is made still greater when we add irrational fears to the fears that all people naturally have. Though we are naturally vicious and cruel, we should not remain this way. We should transform our cruelty and viciousness into kindness and brotherhood. Jesus tells us we should do this in everything He tells us to do, and Jesus tells us how we can do this. We can only transform cruelty and viciousness into kindness and brotherhood by following Jesus’ command to “forgive men when they trespass against you”, and we will only follow this command if we remember Jesus’ teaching that, “If you do not forgive men who trespass against you, then you father will not forgive you.” This is how the forgiveness Jesus teaches us can transform each of us into human beings, and can heal the wounds of our world.
Words that do not lead us to do God’s will are meaningless to Jesus. Jesus told us that doing the will of God is the only thing that matters to Him when, as He stood at a podium before a large crowd, He was told that His mother and brothers were outside the building He was speaking in and wished to see Him. Jesus then asked the crowd of people who waited to hear Him speak, “Who is my mother?, Who are my brothers?”, then Jesus stretched forth his hands to his disciples and said, “Behold my mother and my brothers . Whoever shall do the will of my Father in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother. (Mt 12:46-50), My mother and brethren are these who hear the word of God and do it. (Lk 8:19-21)
Jesus tells us again that saying good things to God will not help us gain God’s favor if we do not also do God’s will when He says to the chief priests and elders of Jerusalem, “A certain man had two sons. This man said to the his first son, “Go work in my vineyard.” This son said, “I will not”, but later repented and went. This man then said the same thing to his second son, and that son said, “I go sir”, but went not.” Jesus then asked, “Which of these two did the will of their father?” After a person answered, “The first”, Jesus said, “Truly, I tell you the publicans and the harlots will enter the kingdom of God before you will. For John came to you, in the way of righteousness, and you believed him not; But the publicans and the harlots believed him; And you still have not repented, that you might believe him. (Mt 21:28-32)
Jesus is telling the chief priests and elders of Jerusalem that, like the son who said that he would work in his father’s field but who did not do what he had said he would do, They had spoken the words that God wanted to hear when they said that they would do God’s will, but they did not then do God’s will. Jesus then tells these priest and elders that people who had done great evil (Publicans, who by working for the Roman government had helped to steal the land of Israel, and Harlots, who had been with many men instead of cleaving to one man as they should have done), but who had confessed their evil, would win God’s favor before people who tried to make God think that they were good, as the chief priests and elders had tried to make God think that they were good, would win God’s favor.
Jesus tells us that words that we say about Him and about God, words that we say to Him and to God, and rituals that we perform in churches, only matter to Him, and to God if they lead us to do God’s will. Any words and rituals only matter to Jesus, and to God if they lead people to do God’s will. If words and rituals do not lead people to do God’s will, then they are worthless to Jesus, and to God.
Jesus tells us that rituals that do not lead people to do God’s will are worthless to Him and to God, when he says to the Pharisees of Jerusalem, “Woe to you Pharisees. You pay tithe of mint, thyme, anise, and cumin, but omit weightier matters of law, judgment, mercy and faith.” (Mt 23:23 & Lk 11:42 ). Mint, thyme, anise, and cumin can be good things, if they lead people to think about law, judgment, mercy, and faith, and if they lead people to try to follow the law, to try to have faith, and to show other people mercy. If they do not lead people to do these things, then mint, thyme, anise, cumin, or any other ceremonial scent or material, are distractions, that keep people from seeing God’s will, and that bring people only woe.
The only way in which we can follow the law, have faith, or show mercy, is by doing what Jesus has told us to do, (by obeying Jesus’ commands).
Rituals and ceremonies are tools.
Do not make false idols of them.
Churches, temples, synagogues, and mosques are all things of man. Jesus only wants us to value things of man if they help us do God’s will. Often these things of man do help us do God’s will, but often they do not help us do God’s will. Rituals, ceremonies, and sermons in churches, often help people who take part in them do God’s will by helping those people learn what Jesus taught, But rituals, ceremonies, and sermons in churches, also often keep people who take part in them from doing God’s will by keeping those people from learning what Jesus taught.
Nearly all rituals and ceremonies, of nearly all Churches can help people learn Jesus’ teachings, and nearly all rituals and ceremonies, of nearly all churches can keep people from learning Jesus’ teachings. Which of these things they do, depends on how people in a particular church use them. For example, people in most churches sing songs that help them feel that God will do great things for them, and that help them feel happy about the things that God will do for them. If these songs are combined with sermons or with other songs that show people who hear them that they will have to do many difficult things, and that they will have to suffer greatly, to get God to do great things for them, then these songs will help people who sing them understand that their pain can lead to great joy.
Often, though, songs that make people feel happy about what Jesus will do for them, are combined only with other songs that also make people feel happy about what Jesus will do for them, And with sermons that preach that God will do great things for people who follow Jesus, but that do not tell people who hear these sermons, how they can follow Jesus, Or with sermons that tell people that all they have to do to get God to do great things for them, is to say that they believe in Jesus, Or with sermons that tell people that all they have to do to get God to do great things for them, is to perform the rituals of the church they are in. When songs and sermons are used in this way, they keep people who sing them from learning the good news that Jesus taught.
Another ritual that often helps people learn about Jesus, and that also, often keeps people from learning about Jesus, is the ritual of baptism. This is true, regardless of the age at which a person is baptized. Baptism can help us learn about Jesus by reminding us, that we need to be washed clean of our sin, And by leading us to learn what we must do to be washed clean of our sin. In the case of infant baptism, baptism can help a person by reminding his or her parents of this fact, and by leading them to become people who can help him or learn, what he or she must do to wash away his or her sins. Too often, though, people, who are baptized, are taught that the ritual of baptism itself washes away their sins. The ritual of baptism itself cannot do this. Our sins will only be washed away if forgive other people, as we need God to forgive us, And we can only forgive other people, as we need God to forgive us, by treating other people, as Jesus told us to treat them. If we do not do this, then the ritual of baptism is meaningless.
We all want to believe that we can gain God’s favor by performing certain rituals, or by saying certain words. We want to believe this because it is easier for us to do these things, than it is for us to forgive other people. If we do not follow Jesus’ teachings, though, then God will punish us for our sins.
The only way in which we can eat Jesus’ body, and drink Jesus’ blood, is by living by Jesus’ teachings. Jesus’ blood flowed down from the cross to form the words of His gospels, and Jesus’ flesh gave these words substance.” Jesus died so that we would believe His words.
If Jesus had not died on the cross, Jesus’ followers would have concluded that Jesus had not believed His own teachings, and that Jesus was asking them to do things that He was not willing to do. Because of this, these followers would have forgotten Jesus, and we, who are alive today, would never have heard Jesus’ name, or heard Jesus’ teachings.
Jesus tells us to drink His blood, and to eat His body, so we will know we are so sinful we can only live because of his death. (“Truly, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” Jn 6:53). So that, finally, we will admit we cannot be good, and will, in doing so, accept God’s mercy.
Chapter 4 Violence
Violence is the red badge of shame that is worn by the human race. It is our greatest crime against God and it is our greatest crime against our fellow humans. The only way in which we can start to pay God back for all we have done to Him is by decreasing the violence in our world.
Everyone involved in a fight tries to say that the fight was all the other person’s fault, just as everyone involved in a war tries to say that the war is all the other side’s fault. The truth is that both sides in a fight and in a war are always partially to blame, and that both sides in a fight or in a war must take responsibility for making sure that fights and wars don’t happen. Every fight and every war happen for the same reason: because one person or one group of people want or need something that another person or group of people do not want to share. Both the desire to take and the desire to keep are natural human desires that we will never be able to rid ourselves of. We should not try to rid ourselves of these desires and we should not try to pretend that these desires do not control most of our actions. Instead, we should accept these desires and we should try to control them so that they do not lead us into violence. People who want to take should often resist their desire to take and people who want to keep should often resist their desire to keep.
Jesus tells us to sell all that we have and give to the poor. (Lk 18:22, Lk 12:33, & Mt 19:21). This requires us to resist our desire to keep. Jesus tells us to resist all of our desires when He says, “If any one will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.” (Lk 9:23 & Mt 16:24)
More than anything else Jesus does not want us to think we are better than we actually are. Jesus wants us to admit our true motivations. Jesus wants us to do this because when we admit our true motivations, then we will see how much we need God’s forgiveness, and then we will then forgive other people as we need God to forgive us, and because when we admit our true motivations, then we will do a better job of controlling our desires, and of resisting our desires when we must resist them. It is when we tell ourselves that the reason we fight is not to try to either keep or take something that another person also wants that we do the least to resist our desires. We love to create abstract concepts that sound noble to us and to then say that when we fight we are fighting for those concepts. When we do this we often stop trying to resist our desires at all: and then the powers of darkness have their day.
Jesus tells us not to think we are better than we are and Jesus tells us not to think we are better than other people are. These two thoughts are actually two parts of one thought that is more dangerous to us than any other thought we could think. Jesus tells us not to think we are better than we are, and not to think we are better than other people are when He says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a Lord who forgave one of his slaves a great debt, and who later learned that, that slave had refused to forgive another slave a much smaller debt. That Lord then said to that slave, ‘O you wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you asked me to: Shouldn’t you also have pitied your fellow slave, as I pitied you?’ Then his Lord delivered this slave to his tormentors, till he had paid all that he owed. So also will my Heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you, from your heart, forgives your brother.” (Mt 18:23-35)
Resist Not Evil
Jesus tells us to, “Resist not evil.”
It’s hard for us not to resist evil, and often we won’t be able to follow this command. Still, we must always try to do this if we hope to receive the rewards that Jesus tells us of.
In order not to resist evil we must forgive, as we need be forgiven. If we resist the evil that other people do to us, then God will resist the evil that we do to Him, and we will be doomed by God’s resistance.
It is possible to resist evil, and to later repent our resistance, and to then forgive as we need to be forgiven, But it is very hard for us to do this. Resisting evil is a habit that grows stronger and stronger, each time we do it, And that makes it harder and harder for us to forgive, as we need be forgiven, each time we do it. Resisting evil makes it hard for us to forgive other people as we need God to forgive us because resisting evil leads us to think that we are better than the people who we are resisting. We convince ourselves that we are better than people who we choose to resist in order to make ourselves feel that our resistance is justified. We see that people who we resist are evil, but we refuse to see that we are evil as they are evil. When we refuse to see our evil then we do not think that we need God’s forgiveness, and when we do not think that we need God’s forgiveness then we will not forgive other people, and when we do not forgive other people then we will not receive God’s forgiveness.
Resisting evil is one of the many ways in which we reject the mercy that God offers us.
If we forgive as we need be forgiven, then we will do everything that Jesus tells us to do.
Jesus tells us to love our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us. Jesus tells us to sell all that we have and give to the poor. Jesus tells us to give to every one who asks of us, and not to ask for anything back from one who takes from us. Jesus tells us to give to people who will not be able to give us anything back, and to give without hoping for anything in return. And Jesus tells us to take no thought for our life. Jesus tells us to humble ourselves, as little children, and to serve, as the younger serves the older. And Jesus tells us to love each other, as He has loved us.
All of these things will be very hard for us to do. Still, we must always try to do all of these things if we hope to receive the rewards that Jesus tells us of.
When our faith in Jesus is weak we will all resist evil.
Still we must always remember that Jesus told us not to resist evil. We must remember this so that when we resist evil, we will see our resistance as proof that we cannot follow Jesus, so that we will see our evil, and so that we will see that we need God’s forgiveness. If we see how much we need God’s forgiveness, then we may later repent having resisted evil, and then we may then forgive as we need be forgiven.
2.) What Jesus teaches us to do when evil is done to us.
While Jesus tells us not to resist evil (Mt 5:39), Jesus does tell us how we can often avoid being victims of evil. One way in which we can do this is by showing other people that we do not have anything they could take from us by doing evil to us, or that if we do have anything they could take from us by doing evil to us, they could get whatever they want from us more easily if they simply ask us to give them what they want. Jesus tells us to do this when He says, “Give to every one who asks of you, and do not ask one who takes from you to give anything back.” (Lk 6:30), and Jesus tells us this again when he says, “Sell all that you have and give to the poor” (Lk 18:22, & Lk 12:33, & Mt 19:21)
If we try to resist evil, then people who are trying to do evil to us will try harder to do evil to us and often our resistance will fail. If on the other hand we show other people that doing evil to us will not help them get anything that they want, then other people will stop trying to do evil to us.
It is when we try to resist evil and succeed, though, that we become enslaved by evil. If we do this then we stoke the evil that exists in our selves and we turn that evil into a raging fire that consumes us. As Jesus says to us, “Everyone who sins is a slave of sin” (Jn 08:34)
Jesus also tells us how we can talk to people who do evil to us in a way that will often get them to stop doing evil to us. Jesus tells us how to do this when He says, “If your brother trespasses against you, first tell him his fault in private. If he will not hear you, then go to him again and bring some witnesses with you. If he still will not hear you, then tell it to the church. If he will not hear the church, then let him be as a stranger to you.” (Mt 18:15-17).
We know that this command applies to all people because Jesus tells us that all people are our brother’s and sisters. Jesus tells us this when He tells us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and when He then answers a man who asks, “who is my neighbour?” by telling of a Samaritan who helped an injured Jew when other Jews would not help him, and then asking, “Who was this injured man’s neighbour?” When the man, Jesus had asked this of, answered, “He who showed mercy on the injured man”, Jesus replied, “You go and do likewise.”(Lk 10:25-37). All people need our help, therefore all people are our neighbors, and in the same way all people are also brothers and sisters.
Jesus teaches that we should be as strangers to people who will not stop trespassing against us when we ask them to, but that we should never try to resist evil they do to us. This tells us to never try to force anyone to do anything other than what he or she chooses to do, even if that person is trespassing against us: even if a person strikes us on the right cheek: even if a person takes our coat, or even if a person forces us to walk a mile with him. (Mt 5:39-48 & Lk 6:27-38).
Whenever any person forces any other person to do any thing, then that person does more harm than good: no matter what he or she forces one of his or her brothers or sisters to do. Even an action that would be a good action if it were done voluntarily, will be an evil action if a person performs that action because he or she is forced to perform that action. This will be so because when one person forces another person to do what he or she wants that person to do, then that person turns a human being into a machine. A person who coerces another person turns the other person into a machine at least temporarily because without choice and freedom we are no more than machines, and a person who coerces another person also turns him or herself into a machine because without compassion for our brothers and sisters, we are no more than heartless, soulless machines. Whenever we try to do anything to one of our brothers or sisters, that we would not want done to us, we lose our compassion, and we lose our hearts and our souls.
We will only do this to one of our brothers or sisters if we have failed to forgive our victim either for something they have done to us or for something they have not done for us that we feel they should have done for us. When we fail to forgive one of our brothers or sisters, then we harden our hearts toward that person, then we fail to show that person compassion, and then we lose our hearts and our souls and become empty, hollow machines that are cruel perversions of the human beings we once were.
If we later repent and forgive as we need be forgiven, then we can regain our hearts, our souls, and our humanity. Once we have forced other people to do what we want them to do, though, it is very hard for us to repent and to forgive as we need be forgiven, and few people who have coerced other people will be able to forgive as they need be forgiven.
Speaking out against evil
Many people think that speaking out against evil is a form of resisting evil.
Jesus tells us to speak out against evil, and Jesus also tells not to resist evil. It is clear that in Jesus’ eyes we can speak out against evil, without resisting evil. Otherwise Jesus never would have told us to do both of those things.
Sometimes, though, speaking out against evil can be a form of resisting evil. This is so because words that we speak can sometimes lead other people to try to force people who are doing evil to us to stop doing evil to us. If we are trying to get other people to force people who are doing evil to stop doing evil to us, then speaking out against evil is a form of resisting evil. When we speak out against evil we must be trying to get a person who is doing evil to us to see the evil that he or she does, and to ask for God’s forgiveness. If we do this, then speaking out against evil is not a form of resisting evil, but is instead our sacred duty.
If we want a person who is doing evil to us to ask for God’s forgiveness, we must convince that person that God will show mercy to him or her if he or she asks for God’s mercy. Most people believe that they must be good in order to gain God’s favor. People who believe this will never admit that they are evil, and will never admit that they need God’s forgiveness.
2.) Because most people do not believe that God will show mercy to them if they are evil, most people will try to silence anyone who shows them their evil. Because the scribes and pharisees of Jerusalem did not believe that God would show them mercy if they were evil, the scribes and pharisees of Jerusalem tried to silence Jesus by having Jesus killed.
Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem that this was the reason they would have him killed when he said to them,
“You say, ‘If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have partaken in the blood of the prophets.’ By saying this, you show that you are sons of those who killed the prophets.” (Mt 23:29-31).
By saying this. By saying they would not have killed the prophets, these scribes and pharisees showed how they were like their fathers who killed the prophets. They were like their fathers who killed the prophets, in that they wanted to see themselves as people who wouldn’t kill prophets, in that they wanted to see themselves as people who were good.
It was the desire to believe they were good, that had led their fathers to kill the prophets: because the prophets had shown their fathers they were not good. It was the desire to believe they were good, that led these scribes and pharisees to kill the greatest prophet: because the greatest prophet showed them they were not good. And it is the desire to believe that we are good, that leads all of us to our greatest acts of evil, and that would probably lead all of us to reject Jesus, as these scribes and pharisees rejected Jesus, if Jesus were to come to us as he came to them, and if Jesus were to preach to us as he preached to them. Jesus told these scribes and Pharisees about great evil they had committed, and these scribes and pharisees didn’t want to hear Jesus. If Jesus came today and told us about great evil we have committed, we wouldn’t want to hear Jesus either.
“The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, rather than light, because their works were evil. Everyone who does evil, hates the light, and stays away from the light for fear his works will be reproved” (Jn 3:19-21).
“Blessed be you poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now: for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now: for you will laugh. Blessed are you when men will hate you, and when they will separate you from their company, and will reproach you, and cast out your name as evil for the son of man’s sake.
Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy: for behold your reward is great in heaven, for their fathers did Likewise to the prophets.
But woe to you who are rich: for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full: for you will hunger. Woe to you who laugh now: for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men will speak well of you: for so did their fathers to the false prophets.” (Lk 6:20-26).
4.) Because the world will hate anyone who testifies that it is evil, and will oppose anyone who testifies that it is evil, speaking out against evil requires great courage and requires great faith.
People who want to resist evil try to glorify resisting evil by pretending that resisting evil also requires great courage. In truth it is the lack of courage that leads people to resist evil. People who resist evil are lashing out in terror at a world that they can’t understand.
5.) If I and people I cared about were forced to choose between resisting evil and dying, I would try to remember that God’s forgiveness is more valuable to us than our lives are, and I would try to remember that not resisting evil is a part of forgiving people who do us evil, as we need God to forgive us.
Jesus says that, “Not all who say ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven. But only those who do the will of my father.” (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46)
Every thing that Jesus tells us to do is the will of His Father, including Jesus’ command that we not resist evil.
If we resist evil that other people do to us, then God will resist evil that we do to Him, and than we will be doomed by God’s resistance.
Everything Jesus tells us to do is a part of forgiving other people, as we need God to forgive us.
If we have forgiven other people as we need God to forgive us, then we will be merciful toward other people as we need God to be merciful towards us.
If we have forgiven other people as we need God to forgive us, then we will be meek toward all people, as we pray that God will be meek when He judges us, and then we will humble ourselves as children.
If we have forgiven other people as we need God to forgive us, then we will serve other people as the younger serves the older, as we know that all that we have comes to us because of God’s service to us.
If we have forgiven other people as we need God to forgive us, then we will help everyone who needs our help, as we need God to help us.
If we have forgiven other people as we need God to forgive us then we will sell all that we have and give to the poor, for we will know that without gifts God has given to us we would be so poor that we would have nothing.
If we have forgiven other people as we need God to forgive us, then we will give to all who ask of us, and we will not ask people who take from us to give us anything back, as we pray that God will give to us even though we seldom give anything back to God.
If we have forgiven other people as we need God to forgive us then we will love our enemies, and we will pray for those who persecute us, as we pray that God will love us even though we fight against God and make ourselves God’s enemies.
And if we have forgiven other people as we need God to forgive us then we will not resist evil, as we pray that God will not resist evil that we do to Him.
If we have forgiven other people as we need God to forgive us, then we will do all that Jesus tells us to do. Following Jesus and forgiving other people as we need God to forgive us are the same thing.
Jesus’ command to forgive if we would be forgiven applies to all that we do. All of Jesus’ more specific commands are descriptions of how we will treat other people if we have forgiven them.
Jesus command that we love our God with all our mind, all our soul and all our heart, and that we love our neighbour as ourselves (Mt 22:37-40), and his definition of our neighbor as anyone who needs our help (Lk 10:25-37), also applies to all that we do. This command is another way of telling us to forgive our neighbour for any evil that our neighbour does to us; as we forgive ourselves for any evil that we do to ourselves.
If we feel anger toward any person, then we have not forgiven that person as we need God to forgive us, and as we feel anger toward that person, God will feel anger toward us.
All who wander in dark valleys and founder in currentless shallows
Arise and take the place that has been prepared for you
Walk in the light to the highest peak and ride the swell of the fullest wave
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I can be reached at gpelly.bosela@gmail.com . I may also be able to be reached at (440) 647-5182. If you get an answering machine with my voice on it, try leaving a message. I may get it, but I may not be able to get it. I may also have to go for weeks at a time without getting to a computer to check my email, but I will probably will be able to check my email every day or every few days. One way or another I will probably receive all emails sent to this address within a few weeks. The full speech that I am sending you the beginning of, can be found
Refer everyone you know who might want to help heal our world, to this web page. http://churchofhumanweakness.blogspot.com,. When you want to print this speech you may have to press the paper feed button on your printer periodically.
Chapter 5 We should not be surprised that a cloud of confusion meant to shield us from Jesus, has risen around Jesus’ teachings. The reason this should not surprise us is that Jesus tells us to do many things that we don’t want to do.
When we read Jesus’ words we do not want to understand what Jesus means by them; because if we understand what Jesus means, then we will feel obligated to do what Jesus tells us to do. We will feel this way because, If we learn Jesus’ true teachings it will become clear to us that Jesus is teaching us what Our Creator wants us to do. Because we do not want to feel obligated to follow Jesus, we have surrounded Jesus‘ teachings with a tradition of errors that makes it hard for us to understand Jesus.
Because we all fear Jesus, a part of each of us will always cling to this tradition of errors. Our better selves, though, (the parts of us that must control our lives if we hope to receive good things from Our Creator). These parts of us want to understand Jesus. And all parts of us will suffer greatly if we fail to understand Jesus or if we misunderstand Jesus. By misunderstanding Jesus we avoid the immediate discomfort we would feel from seeing how far we all fall short of truly following Jesus, but by misunderstanding Jesus we also condemn ourselves to suffer pains that are much greater than the discomfort we avoid when misunderstand what Jesus teaches.
Thankfully, some of the same people who have helped to create the tradition of errors that makes it hard for us to understand Jesus, have also preserved Jesus’ words. By reading Jesus’ words, while, at the same time, surrounding Jesus’ words with a cloud of confusion, these people have convinced themselves that they were following Jesus, without having to do the hard work that must be done by any person who truly follows Jesus.
If we can see through the cloud of confusion that surrounds them, Jesus’ teachings are clearer and easier to understand than any other teachings, and no one else teaches all that Jesus teaches us. We can see through the cloud of confusion that surrounds Jesus’ teachings, by paying close attention to what Jesus says to us.
It is often hard for us to follow Jesus’ teachings. Doing so is well worth our effort, though, because following Jesus’ teachings, is the only way we can receive God’s rewards, and avoid God’s punishments. We can sometimes learn some of Jesus’ teachings from sources other than Jesus. Because of this, learning from sources other than Jesus can sometimes lead to great good, but learning from sources other than Jesus can also sometimes lead to great evil. We need Jesus because only Jesus teaches us the importance of forgiving other people as we need God to forgive us, and because Jesus teaches us how we can forgive other people when they do evil to us.
How calling Jesus, ‘Christ’ distracts many people from doing what God wants them to do, and, by doing this, keeps many people from receiving God’s rewards.
Calling Jesus, ‘Christ’ focuses our attention on things that Jesus does for us, and causes us to ignore things that we must do for ourselves. Calling Jesus, ‘Christ leads many people to think only about what Jesus does for us, and to completely forget about things that we must do for ourselves. These people then come to believe that Jesus will give us all that we need if we only praise his name. Believing this leads these people to become the people Jesus tells us of when He says, “Not all who say, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father.”
“On the day of judgement, Many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name?, and in your name cast out demons?, and in your name done many wonderful works? And I will say to them, “I never knew you, leave me, you workers of iniquity.” (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46)
Jesus does great things for us: things that no one else has ever done for us. Jesus teaches us what Our Creator wants us to do, and Jesus teaches us how we can do what Our Creator wants us to do, and Jesus sacrificed His life so that His teachings would come to many people, and so that all people would take His teachings seriously.
Sinners that we are, if Jesus had preached just as He preached, but had not died on the cross, we would not take His words seriously. We would say that talk is cheap, and we would think that Jesus was asking us to do something that He wouldn’t do. In fact, because we all would have felt this way about Jesus, people who lived when Jesus preached, would not have preserved and passed on Jesus’ words, and people alive today, would not even be able to hear, or read Jesus’ words.
When Jesus died, His blood flowed down from the cross to form the words of His gospels. Every time we read these words, and live by them, we are drinking Jesus’ blood. Every time we read these words, and live by them, we are eating Jesus’ body.
Jesus tells us to drink His blood, and to eat His body, so we will know we are so sinful we can only live because of his death. (“Truly, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” Jn 6:53). So that, finally, we will admit we cannot be good, and will, in doing so, accept God’s mercy.
These are the things that Jesus has done for us that make Him, “Christ.” These things will only help us, though, if we follow what Jesus has taught us: They will only help us if we drink Jesus’ blood and if we eat Jesus body. If we do not do these things, then all that Jesus has done for us will not help us at all. If we do not do these things, then we will be throwing away all the gifts that Jesus has given to us.
Why Jesus tells us not to judge.
a.)
One reason Jesus tells us to, “Judge not” (Mt 7:1 & Lk 6:37), is that judging often leads us to think we are better than other people are, and that thinking that one’s self is better than other people’s selves, is one of the most common ways in which people come to believe they are good.
If we do not judge other people, and do not judge ourselves, then we will not think we are better than other people are.
b.)
Another reason that Jesus tells us not to judge is that our judgement is very poor.
Jesus tells how poor our judgement is when He says, “The stone that the builders refuse, will be the head cornerstone.” (Lk 20:17). Jesus tells us of our poor judgement, again, when he asks, “Why do you see the mote in your brother’s eye, but ignore the beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me pull the mote out of your eye’, when you have a beam in your own? You hypocrite, first pull the beam out of your eye, then you will see clearly to take the mote out of your brothers eye.” (Mt 7:3-5, & Lk 6:41-42). Jesus tells us that our judgement will not be the same as God’s judgement, when He says, “The last will be first, and the first last.” (Mt 20:16). This tells us that people whom we would put last, are people whom God will put first, and that people whom we would put first, are people whom God will put last.
Often we judge that God favors people who have what we think is ‘good fortune’, and that God opposes people who have what we think is ‘bad fortune’. Jesus told us that when we do this, we will not judge as God judges. Jesus told us this when His disciples saw a man who had been blind from birth, and asked Jesus, “Who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus then answered, “Neither this man sinned, nor his parents. He is blind so that the works of God may be made manifest in him.” (Jn 9:1-3). What Jesus’ disciples had thought was a punishment, was actually a preparation for a reward.
Jesus also tells us that even when we are correct in thinking a certain thing is bad, we will still be in error if we judge that people who have ‘bad fortune’, have done more evil than people who have good fortune. Jesus tells us this when He says to people who had told him about some Galileans whom the Roman government had killed, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were sinners above all other Galileans, because they suffered these things? I tell you they were not; Unless you repent, you will all perish as they perished. Or do you suppose that those eighteen people in Siloam who died when a tower fell on them, were debtors above all men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you they were not; Unless you repent, you will all perish as they perished.” (Lk 13:1-5).
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon. (Mt 6:24, & Lk 16:13,
Chapter 6 Becoming One in Jesus
Jesus tells us to become as one with all people, when He tells us to love all people who need our help as we love ourselves. Jesus tells us to do this when He tells us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and when He then answers a man who asks, “who is my neighbour?” by telling of a Samaritan who helped an injured Jew when other Jews would not help, and then asking, “Who was this injured man’s neighbour?” When the man, Jesus had asked this of, answered, “He who showed mercy on the injured man”, Jesus replied, “Go and do likewise.”(Lk 10:25-37).
This is why Jesus tells us not to think of things of man, but to instead think of things of God. (Mt 16:23).
While God is far from us, and often seems to be hard to understand, other people are close to us, and often seem to be easier to understand. This often leads us to think we can know how other people will respond to our actions, and to think we cannot know how God will respond to our actions.
When we doubt God, and when we think we can know other people better than we can know God, then we will try to get things that we need, from people instead of from God.
When we try to get things we need or things we want from people, we will try to do so by joining groups of people, and by allying ourselves with these groups in opposition to other people.
2.) Another reason we all often cling to groups we belong to, and often use these groups to separate ourselves from other people, is that belonging to groups helps us pretend that we are good by allowing us to pretend that people in groups that we consider ourselves to be parts of are better than other people are.
We often use our attachment to groups we belong to shut ourselves of from other people, by using groups we belong to, to help us refuse to forgive other people.
Because God wants us to forgive people who need our forgiveness, He rewards people who forgive other people who need their forgiveness, and He punishes people who refuse to forgive other people who need their forgiveness.
In order to try to receive the rewards that God gives, we all often forgive people who seem to be close to us, But because we still want to pretend that we are better than people who are not close to us, we all often refuse to forgive people who are not close to us.
Forgiving some people who need our forgiveness, but not forgiving all people who need our forgiveness, can help us if we see the forgiving we do as practice that must prepare us to later forgive all people. Often, though, we act as if forgiving people who are close to us is an end in itself, and often we think that forgiving these people will be good enough for God. If we do this, then forgiving some people, but refusing to forgive other people, will just be our way of pushing Jesus away from us, and will just be our way of rejecting the mercy that God offers us.
2.) Just as Jesus wants us to call no man Rabbi, Father or Master, Jesus wants us not to call any person by any name that might lead us to follow that person instead of following Him. It is clear that Rabbi, Father, and Master are the first three names in a list that includes any name that puts people in places that we should reserve for Jesus and for God. Jesus is not our secretary, and we would be insulting Jesus if we asked him to list every name that would encourage us to put people in places we should reserve for God and for Jesus. Jesus started the list and if He is truly our master, then we will try to finish it.
Many other names are just as dangerous to us as the names Rabbi, Father, and Master are, And like the names Rabbi, Father, and Master, these other names must never be names that we call men by.
Two of these names are the names Pastor and Reverend.
Call no man pastor, for Christ is your pastor, and you are all brothers and sisters in His flock. People can be pastors to sheep, but only Jesus can be a pastor to people. The word reverend means, that which is revered. Call no man reverend, for you have a reverend in Heaven. Revere no man, for you have one whom you revere in heaven.
People who never mention Jesus’ name can sometimes do the most to help us learn what Jesus teaches.
A number of people can help us learn what Jesus teaches. These people range from the first gospel writers who preserved Jesus’ words for us, all the way to any person who helps us better understand Jesus’ teachings. Sometimes the people who will do the most to help us better understand Jesus will be people who never mention Jesus’ name.
Jesus himself says that, “Not all who say, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of My Father. On the day of judgement, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name?, and in your name cast out demons?, and in your name done many wonderful works? And I will say to them, “I never knew you, leave me, you workers of iniquity.” (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46)
The many people who call Jesus Lord but who do not the will of Jesus’ Father will teach falsely about Jesus, while many people who never say Jesus’ name will sometimes teach lessons that Jesus taught.
Some of these people have learned from Jesus but choose not to teach in Jesus’ name because the actions of people who say they follow Jesus often do more to mislead a new student about Jesus’ teachings than they do to help a new student learn Jesus’ teachings. Jesus tells us of these people when He tells us that if a person does God’s will that person’s, reward will “In no way be less because he does so only in the name of a disciple.” (Mt 10:42)
Some of the people who teach some of the lessons that Jesus taught, are people who have learned some of what God wants us to do, and who have learned some of what God will reward, from sources other than Jesus. Some of what God wants us to do can be learned by any person who is perceptive and honest, and who looks closely at our world over time. Many people learn a great deal about what God wants us to do from sources other than Jesus, and great good can sometimes come from people following teachers other than Jesus.
Chapter 7
People who call themselves Christians have given Jesus a bad reputation.
Most people in western societies claim to follow Jesus, but do not try to follow Jesus’ teachings, While the small number of people who actually do try to follow some of Jesus’ teachings often do not claim to follow Jesus. This is so because Jesus’ presence and personality are so powerful, that all people are drawn to Jesus and want to follow Jesus, but few people have the strength of character to actually try to follow Jesus. People who do not try to follow Jesus, though, are the people who shout Jesus’ name the loudest. This is so because praising Jesus’ name is easy for these people to do, so these people choose to believe that praising Jesus’ name is all that they have to do to follow Jesus.
These people use their churches to try to convince themselves that they are good people who will receive good things from God because they praise Jesus’ name, and these people use their churches to try to convince themselves that people who are different than them will be punished by God, and to stoke their hatred of people who are different than they are.
By doing this these people give Jesus a bad reputation. They make it seem as if Jesus is an egomaniac who gets His kicks from having people praise Him loudly, and they make it seem as if Jesus approves of their self-righteousness and their hatefulness. Nothing could be further from the truth. Still this reputation discourages many people who actually try to follow some of Jesus’ teachings from claiming to follow Jesus. These people claim, instead, to follow some other teacher who teaches some of the lessons that Jesus teaches. In this way, many of the people who could benefit most from Jesus’ teachings, push Jesus away from them. People who do not claim to follow Jesus, will not study Jesus’ words, and in this way they will prevent themselves from learning much of what Jesus taught us.
That claiming to follow Jesus, and trying to live in His name will often make us look bad is a small price to pay for the wisdom that Jesus teaches us. (much of which we cannot learn from any other teacher). In fact having to endure humiliation is good practice in learning to follow Jesus, because the greatest skill that Jesus teaches, is the ability to accept that we are evil people who need God’s forgiveness, when we want to believe that we are good people who deserve God’s thanks.
The true power of Jesus lies in the way of living He teaches us.
Jesus’ power will only be present in our lives to the extent that we live as Jesus teaches us to live. The more often we follow Jesus teachings the more we will benefit from knowing Jesus, and the less often we follow Jesus’ teachings the less we will benefit from knowing Jesus.
People who call themselves Christians, but who ignore Jesus’ teachings, try to say words and try to perform rituals that they think will please God and please Jesus, instead of trying to do what Jesus tells us to do. No words or rituals will please God or Jesus, though, if they do not lead people who speak those words or who perform those rituals to do what Jesus tells us to do.
Jesus tells us that saying we will follow Him will not help us if we do not then do what He tells us to do, when He says to us, “Not all who say, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father. On the day of judgement, Many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name?, and in your name cast out demons?, and in your name done many wonderful works? And I will say to them, “I never knew you, leave me, you workers of iniquity.” (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46)
Jesus tells us that rituals we perform are meaningless to Him and to God if they do not lead us to do God’s will, when He says to the Pharisees of Jerusalem, “Woe to you Pharisees. You pay tithe of mint, thyme, anise, and cumin, but omit weightier matters of law, judgment, mercy and faith.” (Mt 23:23 & Lk 11:42 ).
Mint, thyme, anise, and cumin can be good things, if they lead people to think about law, judgment, mercy, and faith, and if they lead people to try to follow the law, to try to have faith, and to try to show mercy. If they do not lead people to do these things, then mint, thyme, anise, cumin, or any other ceremonial scent or material, are distractions, that keep us from seeing God’s will, and that will bring us only woe.
Jesus tells these Pharisees, again, that religious rituals are meaningless if they do not lead to doing God’s will when He says to a Pharisee who was surprised when Jesus did not perform a ritual washing before eating, “You Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. You fools, did not He who made the outside of things also make their insides. Instead give alms of what you have and all things will be clean to you.” (Lk 11:37-41, see also Mt 23:25-26), and when He says to the scribes and Pharisees, “You are like whitewashed graves which indeed appear beautiful from the outside, but are within full of dead men’s bones and all manner of filth. (Mt 23:27-28, and Lk 11:44)
Jesus tells us again that religious rituals are meaningless if they do not lead us to do God’s will when he says, “What goes into the mouth does not defile a man. It is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a man. For what goes into the mouth comes out in the draught. But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses, and blasphemies. These things defile a man.” (Mt 15”10-20)
Jesus goes even further and warns us that, if they are misused, religious rituals can keep people from doing god’s will. Jesus told us this when he said to people who thought that he should not heal on the Sabbath, “Who among you would not save a sheep that had fallen into a pit on the Sabbath day, and how much better is a man than a sheep. Therefore it is lawful to do good works on the Sabbath days (Mt 12:9-13, see also Lk 6:7-11, Lk 13:10-17, and Lk 14:1-6)
b.) Jesus told us that doing the will of His Father is the only thing that makes any person His brethren, when, as He stood at a podium before a large crowd, He was told that His mother and brothers were outside the building He was speaking in and wished to see Him. Jesus then asked the crowd of people who waited to hear Him speak, “Who is my mother?, Who are my brethren?”, then Jesus stretched forth his hands to his disciples and said, “Behold my mother and my brethren. Whoever shall do the will of My Father in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother. (Mt 12:46-50), My mother and brethren are these who hear the word of God and do it. (Lk 8:19-21)
Telling God that we will do what he wants us to do, but then not doing what God wants us to do, will not help us at all. Jesus tells us this when He says to the chief priests and elders of Jerusalem, “A certain man had two sons. This man said to the his first son, “Go work in my vineyard.” This son said, “I will not”, but later repented and went. This man then said the same thing to his second son, and that son said, “I go sir”, but went not.”
Jesus then asked, “Which of these two did the will of their father?” After a person answered, “The first”, Jesus said, “Truly, I tell you the publicans and the harlots will enter the kingdom of God before you will. For John came to you, in the way of righteousness, and you believed him not; But the publicans and the harlots believed him; And you still have not repented, that you might believe him. (Mt 21:28-32)
Jesus is telling the chief priests and elders of Jerusalem that, like the son who said that he would work in his father’s field but who did not do what he had said he would do, They had spoken the words that God wanted to hear when they said that they would do God’s will, but they did not then do God’s will. Jesus then tells these priest and elders that people who had done great evil (Publicans, who by working for the Roman government had helped to steal the land of Israel, and Harlots, who had been with many men instead of cleaving to one man as God them to do), would receive God’s favor before they would, because these publicans and harlots had done God’s will when they believed John.
Jesus tells us that God will punish people who say they will do God’s will, but who do not God’s will, more harshly than He will punish people who never say they will do God’s will, when he says to the Pharisees of the temple of Jerusalem, “You devour widows houses, and make pretence of long prayer. For this you will receive greater damnation.” (Mt 23:14, & Lk 20:47).
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Following Jesus will help us see our evil
And Following Jesus will build our faith in Jesus
1.) Trying to do what Jesus tells us to do, will help us see our evil not only when we fail to do what Jesus tells us to do, but also when we succeed in doing what Jesus tells us to do.
If we do what Jesus tells us to do, then we will be forgiving people who have done us harm. This is so because forgiving people who have done us harm, is the only way in which we can do any of the things Jesus tells us to do. Forgiving people who have done us harm will help us see our evil because, If we forgive people who have done us harm, we will see that the evil we are forgiving in these people is the same evil we need God to forgive in us.
2.)
a.) Trying to do what Jesus tells us to do, will also help us build our faith, whenever we are able to follow some of Jesus’ commands. This is so because every time we forgive people who have done us harm, we will see that God truly will forgive us for the harm we have done to Him, if we forgive other people for the harm they do to us. We will see this when we see the good things that God will give us every time we forgive other people.
Because we will only forgive people who do us harm if we see that we are evil, weak, and frail, as Jesus tells us we are evil, weak and frail, God will give us His greatest rewards, If we believe Jesus when He tells us we are evil, weak and frail. God’s greatest reward is the ability to do His will: God’s greatest reward is the ability to do good. Because God will give us the ability to do His will when we believe we are evil, weak and frail,
The less good we think we can to do, The more good we will actually be able to do.
One reason this will be so, will be that the less good we think we can do, the more help we will seek outside of ourselves. Another reason this will be so, will be that the less good we think we can do, the more time and effort we will spend trying to transform ourselves into people who can do some good.
Truly, people who put themselves last, will be first in God’s judgement,
And truly, people who put themselves first, will be last in God’s judgement.
Truly, people who exalt themselves will be humbled,
And truly people who humble themselves will be exalted.
b.) We need to see the good things that God will give us if we follow Jesus, because, even though Jesus promises that God will give us good things if we follow Him, it is still hard for us to believe that God will show us mercy we don’t deserve. A part of us will always believe that God will show us justice instead of mercy, and that God will only give us good things if we are good.
Unless a person believes that God will show him or her mercy, any person will refuse to admit that he or she is evil, no matter what Jesus has shown that person. That person will instead try not to see anything that would show that he or she is evil.
Jesus tells us this when he says, “The World hates me because I testify that its works are evil.” (Jn 7:6-8).
And Jesus tells us this again, when He says, “The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, rather than light, because their works were evil. Everyone who does evil, hates the light, and stays away from the light for fear his works will be reproved. But one who is doing the truth, comes to the light, that the works of God may be manifested in him” (Jn 3:19-21).
When we are doing good, we will come to Jesus’ light, but when we are not doing good, we will fear and hate Jesus’ light, and we will stay away from Jesus’ light. Because Jesus has told us that all people do evil, we know that Jesus is saying that all people will hate the light He brings to our world, and will stay away from that light. Even the most faithful follower of Jesus, will seldom come to Jesus’ light, because even the most faithful follower of Jesus, will fear that his or her deeds will be reproved. People who follow Jesus, hate Jesus when Jesus testifies that their works are evil, just as all people hate Jesus when Jesus testifies that their works are evil.
Though we will all fear God and hate Jesus, If we dare to hope that Jesus is correct when He tells us that God will show us mercy if we see our evil, and if we show mercy to other people who are evil as we are evil, then we will sometimes come to God in spite of our fear and hate and ask for His mercy. Only if we do this will we receive good things from God. If we can sometimes make ourselves come to Jesus’ light, we will learn that its heat will warm us, not burn us. If we can overcome our fear, we will see that God truly will show us mercy instead of justice.
3.)
Trying to do what Jesus tells us to do, is the only way in which we can build our awareness of our evil, and is the only way in which we can build our faith in God’s mercy.
While a person will not even start to try to do what Jesus tells us to do, if he or she does not see some of his or her evil, and if he or she does not have some faith that God will show him or her mercy, instead of justice, Any person’s awareness of his or her evil, and any person’s faith in God’s mercy, will both be small, even by human standards, until that person has built them up by trying to obey Jesus in many different times, in many different places, and in many different ways.
Chapter 8
Why faith in Jesus must be based immediately and directly on Jesus’ words.
Any foundation other than the words of Jesus is a weak foundation that will not stand the test of time. To be strong in our faith all of our beliefs must be directly and immediately derived from the words of Jesus.
The only thing that any Christian church can do to help people who belong to that church, is to teach and discuss the words of Jesus. Every lesson that is taught must start with a quote of Jesus’ or with a story about something that Jesus has done. Teachings that are not based directly on Jesus’ words in this way can only be based on the belief that people in one’s church are good people who will teach good things.
Faith that is based on the belief that good people have taught us good things is faith that is built on shifting sands. People who we believe, believe what they teach us because they believe that their teachers were good people who taught them good things, and their teachers believed the same thing about people who taught them, and so on in a long chain that wraps around on itself to become a circle because the most respected teachers base the beliefs on the wisdom of the common man.
People in such a feedback loop are like children piping to each other who act as if the melody piped by other children tells them what God wants us to do, even though that melody is only a slightly varied imitation of the melody that they had previously piped to those children.
If we are honest then sooner or later we will see that people in our church are no better and no worse than any other people are, and any beliefs that we have believed because we once thought that people in our church were good will crumble and fall.
2.)
Believing that people in our church are good also puts our souls in mortal peril. Believing that people in our church are good does this because it is only a small step to go from believing that people in our church are good to believing that we are good, and because if we believe that we are good, then we will not forgive our brothers and sisters because then we will think that we do not need God to forgive us in order for us to receive good things from God. We will think, instead, that God will reward us for the goodness that we believe we possess.
Jesus tells us clearly that this is not so, but we do not want to hear this and we will try to ignore Jesus. Jesus tells us this when He says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a Lord who forgave one of his slaves a great debt, and who later learned that, that slave had refused to forgive another slave a much smaller debt. That Lord then said to that slave,
‘O you wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you asked me to: Shouldn’t you also have pitied your fellow slave, as I pitied you?’
Then his Lord delivered this slave to his tormentors, till he had paid all that he owed. So also will my Heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you, from your heart, forgives your brother.” (Mt 18:23-35)
And Jesus tells us this again when He says,
“If you forgive men their trespasses then your Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses then Your Father will not forgive you” (Mt 6:9-15), and when Jesus says, “Forgive if you would be forgiven” (Lk 6:37)
4.)
If any of us sometimes do good things we only do good things because it is easy for us to do good things at those times because we are faced with little temptation to do evil at those times.
If any of us are faced with great temptation we will do great evil. If we are poor enough, we will all steal from the poor and the lame. If we become frightened enough we will lie to people who have told us only truth, and we will all kill people who frighten us regardless of whether or not they have tried to kill us.
Whatever evil shocks any of most, or seems most reprehensible to us.
If we are put in a difficult enough situation we will all do that evil. If we are put in a difficult enough situation we will do every evil thing we can imagine.
Jesus tells us that we will do great evil when we are led to temptation, and Jesus tells us this often and clearly. Jesus tells this most clearly when He tells us to pray to God, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Mt 6:5-15 & Lk 11:2-4)
Jesus is telling us to pray that we be delivered from the evil we would do if we were led into temptation. It is this evil that we truly need to be delivered from. Evil that is done to us does us little harm, compared to evil that we do, which does us great harm.
By telling us this Jesus encourages us not to put our faith in people and encourages us only to put our faith in him, so that our faith will be strong instead of weak.
5.)
Even seeing that Jesus sometimes felt doubt instead of faith will not shake our faith in Jesus.
In Jesus, doubt was not a weakness because Jesus never let His doubt dissuade him from doing what God wanted Him to do. In spite of His doubt Jesus still gave His life for us.
Doubt is only a weakness when it keeps us from doing what God wants us to do.
Jesus doubt only shows us how much courage Jesus needed to have to be able to sacrifice His life for us. If Jesus had never doubted that God would save Him from death and if Jesus had never doubted that God would give Him great rewards that would more than make up for His suffering then it would have been easy for Jesus to die on the Cross. Dying on the cross would simply have been an unpleasant chore that Jesus would have done to receive great rewards once it was finished.
We see Jesus’ doubt most clearly when while He is on the cross Jesus asks “Lord, Lord, Why have You forsaken me?”
We also see Jesus’ doubt when shortly before his crucifixion Jesus asked God to spare him from this fate. When Jesus asks this, though, we also see the courage that allowed Jesus to overcome His doubt when Jesus says to God “If this is not possible, then Your will be done, not mine.”
Jesus is saying that He will do what God wants Him to do put our faith in people and encourages us only to put our faith in him, so that our faith will be strong instead of weak.
5.)
Even seeing that Jesus sometimes felt doubt instead of faith will not shake our faith in Jesus.
In Jesus, doubt was not a weakness because Jesus never let his doubt dissuade him from doing what God wanted Him to do. In spite of His doubt Jesus still gave His life for us.
Doubt is only a weakness when it keeps us from doing what God wants us to do.
Jesus doubt only shows us how much courage Jesus needed to have to be able to sacrifice His life for us. If Jesus had never doubted that God would save Him from death and if Jesus had never doubted that God would give Him great rewards that would more than make up for His suffering then it would have been easy for Jesus to die on the Cross. Dying on the cross would simply have been an unpleasant chore that Jesus would have done to receive great rewards once it was finished.
We see Jesus’ doubt most clearly when while He is on the cross Jesus asks “Lord, Lord, Why have You forsaken me?”
We also see Jesus’ doubt when shortly before his crucifixion Jesus asked God to spare him from this fate. When Jesus asks this, though, we also see the courage that allowed Jesus to overcome His doubt when Jesus says to God “If this is not possible, then Your will be done, not mine.”
Jesus is saying that He will do what God wants Him to do even when He has doubt, and even when He is very frightened.
Sects
I am Catholic and Protestant. I am Franciscan, and Mennonite, and Quaker.
I am Dominican, and Methodist, and Baptist. I am Jesuit, and Episcopal.
I am Benedictine and Lutheran. I am Presbyterian and Congregational, I am Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Jain, Sikh, and Parsee,
Learning what God wants us to do and then trying to do what God wants us to do is hard. People in each of these groups do different things to try to learn God’s will, and people in each of these groups do different things to then try to make themselves do God’s will. But people in each of these groups all try to do the same thing. They all try to do God’s will. Jesus doesn’t care how we make ourselves do God’s will. Jesus only cares whether or not we do God’s will. Jesus tells us this when He says,
“Whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven. That person is my brother, and my mother, and my sister.”
This is why I consider myself to be a brother to all people who try to do the will of Jesus’ Father.
Most of the time, we live our lives on the basis of the principles ‘Look out for number one’, and ‘Go with the flow’
Usually teachings about what actions we should perform, and about what actions will bring us things that we want and things that we need, come to us as anonymous sayings that we do not think about very much. The two principles that most guide our actions are ‘Look out for number one’, and ‘Go with the flow’
When we start to learn that these principles will not lead us to do what is right, and that these principles will not consistently bring us things that we want or things that we need, then we slightly modify these principles.
When we say ‘look out for number one’, we expand the meaning of number one to include not only ourselves, but also a group of people whom we feel close to, and when we say, ‘Go with the Flow’, we now mean that we will “Go with the flow of the group of people we have chosen to identify with’.
After we make these slight changes to the principles we live by, we still live lives that are based on competition and that are based on doing what is easiest for us to do without thinking about the consequences of our actions.
2.)
Because we are fearful creatures, living by the principles “Look out for number one”, and “Go with the flow” is very comfortable for us. We are all afraid that we will never be able to learn how we must act in order to get things that we want and things that we need, and we are all we are afraid that there is no way in which we can get things that we want or things that we need.
We try to forget this fear as often as we can by trying to avoid thinking about the principles that we live by. Thinking about the principles we live by and deciding how we will choose to act reminds us that we may not be able to get what we want and what we need, and in doing so reminds us of the fear we have been trying to forget.
Because of this we prefer living by whatever principles make it easiest for us to act energetically and with little reflection. Limiting our concern to ourselves and to people close to us makes it easy for us to act energetically and with little reflection, and so does ‘Going with the flow’.
We adopt these principles without thinking about what we are doing because we learn how to act by imitating other people who have themselves learned how to act by imitating other people in a chain that goes back to a person who chose to live by these principles in a conscious attempt to forget the fear that we all feel.
3.)
Because we are all creatures of habit, when we must change anything about ourselves we change as little as we believe we can get away with. If we lived forever, then through making small changes every time we see the error of our ways we would eventually learn how we can live as we should live and we would eventually learn how we can get what we want and what we need. Because we do not live forever, though, we must make great changes in ourselves, not small ones.
In order to get what we want and what we need, we must base our lives on principles that are wholly opposite to the principles of, ‘Look out for number one’, and ‘Go with the flow’
Instead of looking out for ourselves or for a group of people whom we care about as much as we care about ourselves, we must look out for and care for all people equally. Instead of going with the flow, we must carefully consider all of our actions to determine whether or not it is right for us to perform them, and to determine whether or not they will bring us things that we want and things that we need.
Because we must learn these things during our short lives on this earth, we must learn them from people who will tell us to live by these principles immediately, who will give us confidence to believe that these principles are true when we doubt them, and who will teach us what we must do in order to live by these principles.
Jesus of Nazareth has done all of these things for me, and I believe that He could also do all of these things for you.
Jesus says, “A man shall leave His father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife and the two of them shall be one flesh. What God has joined, let not man put asunder.
The Pharisees to whom Jesus spoke then asked why Moses allowed divorce, and allowed men to put their wives away. Jesus answered that Moses allowed this because of the hardness of you hearts, but from the beginning it was not so.
Whoever puts away his wife, except for fornication, and marries another commits adultery. (Mt 19:3-9), Jesus’ disciples then ask, “If these actions are adultery, then isn’t it better not to marry at all.”, and Jesus answers by saying, “Not all men can receive this saying. Only those to whom it is given can receive it. Many men are Eunuch’s, and some of these men are Eunuch’s for the Kingdom of God’s sake. He who is able to receive this saying, let Him receive it.” (Mt 19:10-12) Clearly Jesus is saying that not all men will join with women, but that men who do join with women are to cleave to those women, and are not to put them away. This command is a part of larger command that we cleave to people whenever we are able to do so, in spite of their evil. Jesus tells us to do this, when Jesus tells us to do this again, when he says, “If your brother trespasses against you, rebuke him, and if your brother repents, forgive him. Even if he trespasses against you and repents seven times in a day.” (Lk 17:3-4) If Our brother trespasses against us and repents seven times in a day, there is a good chance that when he repents he is lying to us.
Jesus tells us that if we do not do His Father’s will, then we will be strangers to Him, no matter how much faith we claim to have. Jesus tells us this when He says, “Not all who say, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of My Father. On the day of judgement, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name?, and in your name cast out demons?, and in your name done many wonderful works? And I will say to them, “I never knew you, leave me, you workers of iniquity.” (Mt 7:21-23: see also Lk 6:46)
And Jesus told us that if we do His Father’s will, then we will become His brothers and sisters, and will become closer to Him than blood relatives, when as He stood at a podium before a large crowd, He was told that His mother and brothers were outside the building He was speaking in, and wished to see Him. Jesus then asked the crowd of people who waited to hear Him speak, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”, then Jesus stretched forth his hand toward his disciples and said, “Behold my mother and my brothers. Whoever shall do the will of my Father in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother. (Mt 12:46-50), My mother and brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it. (Lk 8:19-21).
Chapter 9 Crucifixion
If the scribes and pharisees who had Jesus killed, committed more evil than we have committed, it is only because they were led to greater temptation than we have been led to (as they surely were), or because they had been given less strength to resist temptation than we have been given. Had we been placed in their circumstances, each of us would have probably tried to have Jesus killed, just as they tried to have Jesus killed. If we follow Jesus’ command to, “Judge not”, each of us must assume that he or she would have done this.
No person can be good, Any person can only win God’s favor by forgiving other people, as he or she needs to be forgiven, And all people need to follow Jesus’ teachings to be able to forgive other people who do them harm. Because Jesus knows these things, He died on the cross, so His teachings would come to many people, and so those people would take His teachings seriously.
This is why Jesus says, “Eat, this is my body, which is given to you. Drink it all, this is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Lk 22:19-20 & Mt 26:26-28).
The covenant for which Jesus shed His blood, is the covenant that if we follow Jesus’ teachings, God will forgive our sins; But if we do not follow Jesus’ teachings, God will punish our sins.
Sinners that we are, if Jesus had preached just as He preached, but had not died on the cross, we would not take His words seriously. We would say that talk is cheap, and we would think that Jesus was asking us to do something that He wouldn’t do. In fact, because we all would have felt this way about Jesus, people who lived when Jesus preached, would not have preserved and passed on Jesus’ words, and people alive today, would not even be able to hear, or read Jesus’ words.
When Jesus died, His blood flowed down from the cross to form the words of His gospels. Every time we read these words, and live by them, we are drinking Jesus’ blood. Every time we read these words, and live by them, we are eating Jesus’ body.
Jesus tells us to drink His blood, and to eat His body, so we will know we are so sinful we can only live because of his death. (“Truly, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” Jn 6:53). So that we will admit we cannot be good, and will, in doing so, accept God’s mercy.
List of Commands
Below is a list of some of the things that Jesus tells us to do.
Jesus tells us to Forgive, if we would be forgiven (Mt 6:14-15, Mt 18:23-35, & Lk 6:37) and to Judge not, lest we be judged (Mt 7:1 & Lk 6:37)
Jesus tells us to humble ourselves as children (Mt 18:4-5), and to serve as the younger serves the older (Lk 22:26). Jesus says to His disciples, “The greater of you shall be your servant. (Mt 20:26-27, Mt 23:11, Lk22:25-27), And Jesus tells His disciples, “Whoever wishes to be great among you, he will be your servant. And whoever wishes to be first among you, he will be you slave. Jesus also tells us that whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted (Mt 23:12, Lk 14:11, Lk 18:14).
Jesus tells us to help all people who need our help. He tells us this when He tells us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and then answers a man who asks, “who is my neighbour?” by telling of a Samaritan who helped an injured man when others would not, and then asking, “Who was this injured man’s neighbour?” When the man, Jesus had asked this of, answered, “He who showed mercy on the injured man”, Jesus replied, “You go and do likewise.”(Lk 10:25-37).
Jesus is telling us, that to love our neighbour, as ourselves, we must show mercy on all who need our mercy. He is telling us, that all, who need our mercy, are our neighbours.
Jesus says, “Sell your possessions and give alms. Provide yourself with wealth that will not grow old, an unfailing treasure that no thief will come near to and that no moth will corrupt.” (Lk 12:33, see also Lk 18:22, & Mt 19:21)
Jesus says, Give to every one who asks of you, and do not ask one who takes from you to give anything back. If you lend to people, who you hope will pay you back, what thanks have you? Even sinners lend, to receive as much again. Do good, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the highest, because He is kind to the unthankful and the evil, and He makes His sun rise on evil men and good, and He rains on just men and unjust. Be you compassionate as your father is compassionate. (Lk 6:30 & 34-36, & Mt 5: 42-45).
Jesus says, “When you make a dinner, don’t invite your friends, or your brothers, or your relatives, or rich neighbours, lest they invite you to their dinners in return. If this happens you will have been paid back.
Instead, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind; and you will be blessed, because they cannot pay you back. For inviting these people, you will be paid back at the resurrection of the just.” (Lk 14:12-14).
Jesus says, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. If you love those, who love you, what thanks have you. Sinners also love those who love them.” (Mt 5:44-48, Lk 6:27-28, & Lk 6:32-33).
Jesus tells us, “Not to resist evil” (MT 5:39)
Jesus says, “If a man strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him your left. If a man wishes to judge you and to take away your coat, offer him your cloak also. Whoever compels you to go a mile, go with him two.” (Mt 5:39-41 & Lk 6:29).
Jesus says, “You have heard it said that whoever kills shall be in danger of judgement, but I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of judgement, and whoever says ‘You fool’ to his brother shall be in danger of hell fire.” (Mt 5:21-24)
Jesus says, “You shall love your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, this is the first great commandment. The second is you shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Mt 22:37-40)
Jesus says, “Take no thought for your life, for what you will eat or drink, or for what clothes you will wear. Your heavenly father knows you need these things. Instead, seek first His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. . Take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow will take thought for itself. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.” (Mt 6:25-34 & Lk 12:22-34).
Jesus says, “Be as wise as serpents, and as harmless as doves.” (Mt 10:16)
Jesus tells us not to let other people believe, that we can do what only God and Jesus can do, nor to ourselves believe, that other people can do what only God and Jesus can do. Jesus tells us this, when He tells his disciples not to be like scribes, who love to be called “Rabbi, Rabbi.” And then says, “Don’t you be called Rabbi, for Christ is your master, and you are all brothers. And call no man father, for you have a Father who is in heaven. Neither be you called master, for Christ is your master.” (Mt 23: 5-12 & Lk 20: 45-47)
Jesus tells us, not to try to force other people to treat us fairly, if we cannot persuade them to do so, when He says, “If your brother trespasses against you, first tell him his fault in private. If he will not hear you, then go to him again and bring some witnesses with you. If he still will not hear you, then tell it to the church. If he will not hear the church, then let him be as a stranger to you.” (Mt 18:15-17)
Jesus says, “As you would have men do to you, Do you likewise to them: for this is the law of the prophets.” (Lk 6:31, & Mt 7:12)
Jesus tells us to love each other, as He has loved us (Jn 13:34 & Jn 15:12)
Jesus tells us, that when we help any person, we are helping Him, when He says, “When the Son of man comes in his glory, He will sit on a throne and all nations will be assembled before Him, and He will separate them into two groups. Then He will say to the group on His right, “Come, blessed ones. Inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for you since the foundation of the world. For I hungered and you gave me food, I thirsted and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”
Then these people will ask ‘when did we these things?’ and the king will say, “As you did to the least of my brothers, you did to me.”
Then He will say to the group on His left, “Leave me, cursed ones. Go into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I hungered and you gave me no food, I thirsted and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not take me in, naked and you clothed me not, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”
Then these people will ask, ‘When did we not do these things?’ and the king will say, “As you did not to the least of my brothers, you did not to me.” (Mt 25:31-46)
And Jesus tells us how important it is to Our Creator that every person be saved, when He says, “There will be more rejoicing in heaven for one sinner who repents than for ninety nine just men who have no need of repentance.” (Lk 15:7 & Mt 18:12-14)
Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it lives alone: but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. (Jn 12:24)
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Unless we have made peace with our enemies, then we have not forgiven our enemies, and if we have not forgiven our enemies, then Our Creator will not forgive us.
We can only make peace with our enemies by becoming our enemies’ friends. Like a friend we must tell our enemies of the punishment that warlike people will receive from Our Creator, so that they can avoid this punishment.
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