As you might expect, there’s not a lot of Christian Law in John’s Revelation, but there’s a lot of Covenant. It’s the revelation of Jesus Christ, who is our Covenant and our Law. That’s the main point of Chapter 1. The symbols all point to Christ. The Letters to the Seven Churches begin in Chapter…
Month: June 2023
Covenant Warfare
Before we move into a Christian Law review of the Book of Revelation, I felt burdened to address something that’s been boiling away in the background. Once more: The Covenant is everything. In order to understand God and His revelation, we must keep in place a matrix of understanding that corresponds as closely as possible…
Gnostic Moral Filth
John’s second letter is a personal note to some unnamed lady he knows who hosts traveling preachers and teachers of the gospel. It’s quite short but carries one item of teaching. After reminding her that we must love each other as Christ does, and that love is defined by the Covenant boundaries. We are obliged…
The Identity of Faith
John carries on in Chapter 4 of his first letter, sharing how to discern spirits. It’s actually pretty simple: We know what Jesus taught. If they profess something else, it’s not Jesus; it’s some kind of Antichrist. His law is that we submit to His Lordship and love as He loved. It should be obvious…
Compelling the Flesh
John is quite unique in his writing style. It’s the essence of Hebrew/Christian Mysticism. He uses figures of speech to say things nearly impossible to confine to mere words. His very simple Greek syntax is easy to translate into English, but at the same time, it’s so very easy to miss what he’s actually saying….
The End in Sight
It’s a little challenging to understand 2 Peter because the historical context is not all that clear to us now. What seems rather obvious is that Peter believes he’s about to die. We believe he was crucified upside down, but that’s just a tradition. What is more difficult to ascertain is the particular heresies he…
Law of Persecution
It’s very important to understand the context of Peter’s first letter. Keep in mind that he was executed in Rome during the same period of Nero’s persecution that claimed the life of Paul. Our best guess is that Peter wrote this letter shortly before his arrest. His second letter that we have indicates he was…
Don't Take Yourself Too Seriously
In Chapter 3, James warns that teachers are held to a higher standard than others for what they say. He goes on at length about how the tongue is easily the hardest part of our fleshly nature to restrain. Get your mouth right and everything else should be a lot easier. Then again, don’t expect…
The Fundamental Law
James may well be the earliest of New Testament documents, apparently written mid-40s AD. He was the brother of our Lord, martyred in Jerusalem around 65 AD while Paul was still in Roman custody the second time. You may recall at one point, Peter had been driven underground after he escaped from jail, possibly heading…
The Law of Faith
The Letter to the Hebrew Christians is next. This was written by some unknown apostle, likely Apollos, but no one knows for sure. Best we can tell, it was published after the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. The problem is that too many Hebrew Christians were sliding back into Judaism because of the…