StraightAhead

I think many Christians today think that we are still under a code of law much as the people under the old Testament law were.  I don’t believe that’s what the New Testament teaches or what the New Covenant is all about.  I found this to be   interesting.  Alan Highers has always been a legalist and is notorious for some of his shinanigans in debates and such. (ie. drink this poison and God won’t let you die) I went with Alan once on a trip in which he was preaching at a gospel meeting, I think it was.  It was in Humboldt  tn.  I heard him and some other preachers talking about how to get people to respond to the alter call to be baptized.  They were talking about tricks they could use or psychological ploys to entice more people to come forward.  That was disillusioning(is that a word?) for a young mind.  

       I don’t believe we are under a code of law anymore and that means not arguing about such things as one cup or many in the lord’s supper, how orphanges are supported, how many elders we have, or instrumental music in the worship service or not. These are open to freedom in Christ and are things that we decide for ourselves in line with our love for Jesus Christ and the work that he would have us do here on earth, as his church.. Also in that ilk is whether or not to use song books, washing feet, or annointing with oil, having kitchens in the building, or, this is a good one, whether women can wear pants or not. What I read in the bible says that women shouldn’t wear gold earings, braid their hair or wear expensive clothes. We don’t take that one literally or legalistically.  I guess if you looked over at the church of God you would find them taking that literally.  Why do we choose some and not others to do in our worship to God. Because really, most of them don’t matter.  What matters is when we try to bind them on others as salvation issues.  I know what I believe about baptism, but should even it be included in a code of law as such.  I do think there are salvation issues and non salvation issues, but I also think that some things just don’t matter to me or especially to God. I was reading in Romans where Paul was telling the Roman church not to believe or hang out with anybody that tried to teach them anything other than what they had been taught already about the gospel of Jesus.  Many church members try to apply this to everything like instrumental music, or how we support orphans or how we send out missionaries.  In other words if someone comes around saying that we should have instruments in worship or anything else that doesn’t go along with our tradition or orthodoxy, then we shouldn’t hang out with them or allow them to continue.  To me that is extrapilating a lot to far from those verses in Romans.  Paul is talking, I think, about Gnostics and others that would pervert the Gospel as Paul had taught it to the Romans in the first place.  Of course that still applies to us as the church today when it comes to anything that perverts the Gospel, the good news of Jesus.  How his grace saves us.  It has nothing to do with contrived codes of law/tradition/orthodoxy, man made laws.