Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Pondering...pondering

Okay, every once in a while one comes upon a Bible verse that jumps up in one's face and one starts thinking...."okay...and what does this mean exactly?"

So two verses:

As a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest. Isaiah 61:10-11

He that has suffered in the flesh is freed from sin 1 Peter 4:1

Now what the heck are they supposed to mean?

I suspect the first one has something to do with Christ being both our priest and husband...but it's used to describe God's people (I think) Read Is 61:1-11

And then the other? Does it mean that if you really suffered you will go to heaven...regardless of knowing Jesus? What is the nature of suffering? I mean Lazarus went to heaven and was in Abraham's bosom and he didn't know Jesus. But it seems like a wild far-fetched idea. But there is something about suffering in the flesh that destroys sin.

Gotta think. -C

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thats like when people ask: will Socrates go to Hell because he didn't know Christ? (Not sure if I stated that before)

I believe if Socrates had belief in God he will be in heaven. He was born before Christ so of course he couldn't believe on Him. Yet, if he believed in God, he believed in Christ because we serve a Triune God.

The Bosom question is a good question though...

Erica

Carole McDonnell said...

Am not sure. On the one hand, the devils also believe in God. So belief in God doesn't really matter.

Then three's the crime Socrates was supposedly accused of: perverting the boys.

Christianity says that we will be judged by the light we have. But even those pagans who have never heard of Jesus haven't been true to the light they have. Am sure there will be some holy pagans there who trusted in "THE MERCY of GOD" without quite knowing it was Jesus. -C

Anonymous said...

As an example there are those who have died before Christ came in the flesh, so what some people had wondered in my class was this: are they in hell because they died before Christ's birth?

-It may have been Socrates or some other Philosopher, I have to check those names.

Erica

Carole McDonnell said...

The law was given to the Jews so on the one hand the pagans who were outside the law weren't judged by it.

On the other hand, the Jews were saved out of the world and given the law as a foretaste of the salvation to come through Christ. And even in the old testament the Jews were in some ways baptized. As Hebrews says, "they all passed under the water and drank of the rock." And they had the passover lamb.

The whole world is lost and we are taken out of the world. Which means that if we picture the world as a place where people are condemned already and Jesus saves them from condemnation, then it's pretty much that the world is already dead in sins.

But I know what you mean. Are modern pagans who have never heard about Christ, or older pagans who never heard about Christ, part of a dispensation that takes the blood of Jesus out of the mix?

Paul said if Gentiles do without the law what is holy then they are judged as holy. Something like that. Too lazy to pick up my Bible. The heathen are never judged by the Jewish law or by the Christian law. But anywhere if one has faith in God, his faith is accounted for righteousness.

But also, there is the problem of the new birth. Not just theh issue of sin but of being alive in the spirit. In addition, faith in God is a very hard thing to attain to. Even harder than living a life where one is obedient to the laws and truths as one's culture knows it. A very complicated question. I suspect, though, that there have been people who have had a true reliance on Jesus and never knew it was he.

Think of Job. He wasn't Jewish. He was of the tribe of Ishmael. Is he in heaven? Think of Baalam. He wasn't Jewish. But he was a prophet of God. God knows. -C

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the insight, Carole.

How are you lately?

Erica

Blog Archive

Popular Posts