Requesting Guidance on a Personal Project

Originally posted by Pudgenik
Sorry Sonship, I cannot agree with this.

It is mankind who make it complicated.

Jesus simply says to love. Love God, love your neighbor as yourself.
All of the Gospels reach out to us in God's love.

Look at the simplicity in the way Jesus healed people. It was in love they were healed. Even the demonic, Jesus states, "leave him" .

Mankind was ...[text shortened]... all can be, if we so choose.
It is our free will, our choices, that make who and what we are.

Sorry Sonship, I cannot agree with this.

It is mankind who make it complicated.

I am not sure if you're saying man's situation is not complicated or it is complicated by man's own doing.

I am going to agree with the latter in that way that Adam's disobedience complicated mankind. Now you have a good creation that has been damaged. So there is something worthwhile there but there is also something damaged there.

I am not sure if you believe in Adam's disobedience bringing sin and death into man's being. I do believe in this Fall of man.

If I do not regard a fall of man too many things just do not make sense. It was a great breakthrough for me when someone explained to be the fall of man.

Like a very good radio tossed out into the sidewalk in the water and mud. It is damaged and fails to operate perfectly anymore. Yet it was made quite well. This is a complicated situation for the one who wishes to recover the damaged instrument and for the instrument itself.

Jesus simply says to love. Love God, love your neighbor as yourself.
All of the Gospels reach out to us in God's love.

And Jesus saying this, in reference to the ten commandments, also exposes us all has having fallen short of the glory of God. And this failure exposes our need for justification and redemption.

The need for man mustering up love and still needing eternal redemption exposes the complication of man's predicament.

But if you really wish to speak of simplicity, notice that Jesus commanded His disciples to abide in Him and He in them. For without Him they can do nothing. This Son of God who reminded us of what the law of God said also had to go to the cross to accomplish an eternal redemption.

And why? He had to die because the situation of man is rather involved and "complicated". He did not just say "Love you neighbor" and die the death of a martyr.

He did simply command us to love but also said - "For this is My blood of the covenant, which is being poured out for many for forgiveness of sins." (Matt. 26:28,29)

He did not die as a moral teacher teaching us just to love. He did not die as a martyr like a Socrates or Abe Lincoln or Martin Luther King. He died a death which involved the shedding of His blood for eternal redemption.

And He rose that we could get into Him as a realm and sphere of divine life to abide in Him and He in us (John 15).

Are you trying to make Jesus God's Son as just a moral reformer telling us that all we need is love? Is that the simplicity you are speaking of?

Look at the simplicity in the way Jesus healed people. It was in love they were healed. Even the demonic, Jesus states, "leave him" .

Mankind was not created just "very good" .
Mankind was created perfect in the eyes of God. His creation is always perfect.

Well, I think without arguing over the word "perfect" I would like to say this man created "very good" was still in need of something to fulfill the eternal purpose for which he was created.

This is why God put this neutral, very good, and innocent first man between TWO sources of existence. That is God placed man between TWO roads man was to choose to walk on.

1.) The tree of life

2.) The tree of the knowledge of good and evil

Put another way this neutral, innocent, yet "very good" man was still to choose between two sources of existence. One represented by taking in God Himself - "the tree of life" and the other by being joined to God's enemy - "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil".

Adam made the wrong choice and now you do have a rather complicated situation. Why?

God still LOVES man.
God still must be righteous and execute His righteous procedure.
God will not give up His eternal purpose for man that man receive God Himself as divine LIFE dispensed into man's created life, even it it is a very good life.
Man wants to live.
Man (at least some men) want to come back to God.

So the situation is involved. And thousands of years of God operating in history seem to bear out that the situation is involved. At every turn Satan is there to oppose God from recoverying His creation and man. So God has to branch over every obstacle placed before Him to obstruct His will.

Don't you think this is a little complicated, considering the rest of the history of the Old Testament and the New ?

I would agree that to receive Life is a simplicity. What God had to go through that now "the last Adam became a life giving Spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45) that we may receive God Himself as divine life and live through Him, involved God in handling a complicated FALL of mankind.

We were not created to become "good" or "bad" , but to be Holy, for God is Holy.

I agree. Or the "good" that God wants is "God". He wants us to LIVE God. Or rather that God would live through us. Coming back to God Himself as LIFE we would live in union, in oneness, in a mingled incorporation with the Son of God.

I agree that God's will is to dispense His holy nature into us in His salvation.

Enoch was perfect before God - in perfect love with God.
Enoch is the example that we all can be, if we so choose.
It is our free will, our choices, that make who and what we are.