10 Oct 2005 6:04 PM The idea is not to succumb to the horror that is welling up all around us, but to make the ultimate appeal to the rational nature of the human being.

I want to think Paul.

Paul knows that something has happened. He has become a changed man. But why me, he thought, why me? And then he put it together with the commission regarding the gentiles. That’s it. By seizing me, his enemy, and making me his friend, how much more easy will it be to seize those who are not his enemy, the gentiles, but who don’t know who he is. And so it was in a way almost happenstance that he came to the Jews, and so people like Zaachaeus entered the kingdom of God by believing that in him their sins would be forgiven and you have the gentile righteous ones, and so any of these could have become like him and Zaachaeus and the naturally good gentiles. His road was the purely moral road of the universal brotherhood of all men and so he was calling all men to leave forever the old religions and to recognize the new religion, the true religion, the religion of God and of man. And so the way he did it was to take his place on the cross in a voice to God: I do this for them, father, for I am one of them. Take my life now, father, and let it be the end of the reign of sin and the beginning of the reign of the spirit. With me, father, let all people believe that whatever grudges held by anyone against the human species are paid for in this my death for them, for I am one of them for your sake, father, let that be paid for with me, and let me now proclaim the new religion of the true worship, the worship in spirit, where the ways of the flesh are left entirely alone.

This would then mean that the gentiles did not have to change their customs in order to become Jews in order to be pleasing to God, for all that is changed in the sacrificial death of Jesus for the sin judgments in the hand of God. Now the new realm has been established through a church made up of his disciples. This now in fact exist, even though it is presently made up of people of a particular tribal make up, namely they are Jewish. The idea though is of all people, and so of all tribes, and so also then of the gentiles. And so the gentiles come into this church is a congregation with a different set of rules, namely that they are to represent Christ in their own particular situation in the same way that Zaachaeus came to represent Christ in the situation in which he found himself. [That’s one of the greatest scenes in the NT where Jesus himself declares the sanctification of not only a person, but of the house that will be blessed by the inclusion as a member of that person, i.e., his household, for I suppose they would imitate him as time went on.]

And so then, if for no other reason than the human race, in its moral state, could not believe it possible otherwise, Jesus comes to sacrifice himself for their sakes, in order that they might believe that their sins were wiped away. And then, in order to validate this claim, he was resurrected in order to prove to all (at least to those who knew him best, and through them to others) that the second chance will succeed, and that the earth will indeed be good.

And so all people can understand that in Jesus’ death there came the close to the ancient religions, just as the Hebrew in particular, all materialisticly grounded, and the establishment of a new religion. He proclaimed it in his life and death, and the proved it in his resurrection. The earth shall be made good (even if later people had to dream up apocalypses to imagine how).

And the way will be the way of yeast, individually, one on one as each affects the other and represents Christ in his or her given condition and state.

Jesus Christ then has established the new religion, Paul declares, the religion of pure morality and where there is no law but the law of love. all else is expediency. the old religions are dead and to be discarded (last of all the stubborn Jews).

With his death he paid once and for all with the old system and the old blood debts and the whole horrible contraption, and introduced the new (and proved it to the sight of those who knew him best). That’s garbage. Now the real matter is the two realms of good and evil, and no longer what is clean and unclean. And so with his resurrection he proves to those of faith that the victory is secure and that we are never to stop trying in our effort to join the spirit of good, the spirit of love, for we cannot fail, and they need merely to take him at his word (just as earlier he told them to believe him when he would be killed and would rise from the death, they thought it were chatter and sought to dissuade him of that). Now when he said, trust me, they would trust him based on the experience of what had happened in accordance with his word, not so much prophetic and rather even commanding, i.e., this death I willing accept as the judgment of this world upon the handiwork of God and I give it to my father as a payment for all the sins under the old establishment of materialistic religions so that we can enter now into the realm of the good and seek to make active struggle with the principle of this world, self interest, as the dutch know wonderfully well.

And so, as I now expand, what we say to the Muslim is this. Jesus did away with the very rationale of a religion such as yours, just as it did to the Jewish, and instead through his death made us free from all that stuff, like dinosaurs, and by his resurrection proves that the realm of the good shall be victorious. Christianity is the moral religion, the religion introduced or proclaimed by Jesus (each person able to conceive of it on his or her own) and the church established by him to permit many congregations such that many peoples could join in a common endeavor of the accomplishment of the realm of the good as the universal condition of all humans.

there is even a congregation of those who are Christians-in-heart but not in faith. The gentile congregation splits into this and that grouping, each applying Christ and the spirit of decency and goodness according to the customs of the people. They take heart in the story of the disciples that Jesus had returned from the dead and was waiting for them in heaven, and would take them unto himself. Just believe that he died for your sins, and then believe he rose to give you new life, and now take heart and join this happy band of his friends, and never think to be alone again ever, for you will always be one of us.

Because Jesus died for you you can have a new lease on life, and because Jesus rose from the dead, you can be assured that you will not fail this time, for you are given a second chance by a merciful God, announced in the 70 x 7 second chances. I.e., don’t ever give up for the victory is guaranteed, it is guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And so you enter into Christ’s church either in the rather unorganized Christian-in-heart-alone section, or into one of the organized congregations, e.g., the roman catholic, or United methodists. What is needed and soon to be expected in a gentile congregation where homosexuality and left handedness are as acceptable as people who eat green tomatoes.

How shall they dine at one table? Peter went to the gentile table, but did not invite the gentiles to the Jewish table, for they always ate alone and only with each other.

Old stuff. The law and all that stuff. The pre-modern religions. They all died together at the death and resurrection of Jesus. The true religion is proclaimed and then exemplified in the death of Jesus for all and the firmness of the church of this new religion was established in the resurrection, i.e., it shall be victorious.

And so Islam is a past tense, like the Jews and like all the rest. They are the old hat thinking that began ceasing upon the advent of Jesus. They are the left-overs. The old stuff.

I think that is a powerful message to the Muslims. I give up on the Jews and think they shall indeed be last. They will enter in, but last, a humiliation due their stubbornness. Paul seems to have it all pretty much together. He understood the existence of Jesus in terms of this marvelous mystery, of where Jesus comes and enters the modern age of religion where the question is not clean and unclean, but only good and evil. The world today is in a struggle between the forces of evil and those of good, and the actions do not always reveal what the ultimate disposition is, what which is pleasing to God.

That’s the new religion: the only thing that counts with God is your disposition or spirit, namely that it is attuned to the moral law. God let you take your own way and you come up with these religions of clean and unclean. but you miss the mark by far, for what counts with Abba, my Father, is your hearts, your spirits, that you love one another in the same way that he loves each of you. Forget your sin debts and focus on becoming a new person by taking on now the coat of righteousness; all is forgiven, and all you have to do is now to claim that by your heart set on becoming worthy of that forgiveness by now becoming a good person and doing good deeds. Let it start now with you here, that you join me in this church and work with me in brining about the kingdom of God on this earth. This kingdom is here now, for it is within me and it is within all those who love as I love, who share a kindred spirit with my own. Come into this church with me and join with me in combatting evil wherever it is, and of getting all to join, and not cursing those who refuse, but simply leaving them to the fate which God’s destiny has ordained for those who refuse.

Etc. Etc.

The Muslim needs to understand that while the faith Christian appeals to the righteousness of Christ and not his own, nevertheless that faith Christian, just like every committed Christian, expects much tribulation in life as a result of joining one of the congregations of this church, and since this is indeterminate, it suffices to offset the punishment that that person, now a Christian, was due in his formerly evil, and perhaps even blind, life. Morally the two cancel each other. And all the good that the faith Christian does in the future will be done also in the name of Jesus. In the same way that no blame falls upon the Christian in his suffering in this world, due to the righteousness