Paul's Passing Thoughts

The Bible is both simple and complex. It is simple to include as many as possible in salvation, but complex in order to substantiate its validity as truth. As I have said before, I have never met an atheist nurse because you have to study Physiology to become one. That kind of complexity working together didn’t just happen accidently; to say it did would be a deliberate denial of reality.

As I was studying Galatians yesterday, I noted Paul writing that the first and second temple correlated with the Old Covenant and slavery to condemnation under the law. However, the Jerusalem in heaven corresponds to freedom.

I think that is a freedom to love aggressively according to the law without fear of condemnation. Again, justification by new birth has two perspectives on the law; the Spirit’s two uses of the law, while justification by faith, which is really not justification by faith in the biblical sense, only propagates a single perspective on the law. Simply stated, a perspective that the law gives life for justification and perfect law-keeping is therefore imputed to our Christian life to keep us saved. Hence, Christians are not doing any good works, but rather obeying the church so that Christ’s perfect law-keeping is perpetually imputed to our lives.

Hence, why is church a train wreck? It’s generally accepted that everyone there is unable to do anything good. That’s church orthodoxy, viz, Martin Luther’s “alien righteousness.” And, the idea that church is society’s moral compass is accepted as pretense, because after all, how are we going to get people in here if they believe otherwise? The idea that spiritual growth is about realizing the depths of our depravity is a hard truth that we will assimilate them into once we get them in here. 

But that’s all an aside, here is what I want to mention in this short post: it occurred to me that the third temple of the tribulation period is referred to as a legitimate temple that God recognizes. To me, this means something in the present age must come to an end because in our present time, a temple on earth represents slavery.

Some food for thought. But I guess the bigger point follows: the more we understand the details of justification by new birth and its related covenants, the more the rest of the Bible will become clear. I do not think God wants us to be confused about what’s in the Bible. However, I do think all of the confusion arises from the false premises of justification by faith and its errant presuppositions.

paul