The seat of Purity

Rigidity and Flexibility of Faith

In Mark 3:1-7, there is a story that Jesus healed one handed man on the Sabbath day in the synagogue. However, the Pharisees try to persecute Jesus with the question of why he is healing on the Sabbath. To this Jesus answered. "Is it right on the Sabbath day to do good, or to do evil, to save life, or to kill?" People cannot answer. Jesus grieved to see the hardness of their hearts. They eventually cannot repent, but rather consider to kill Jesus.

We know this story well. The Pharisees sought to kill Jesus by hanging on the letter, the form, and the outline of the law. But Jesus was interested in the practice of the love beyond the outline of the law because he is love himself and the fulfillment of love. In other words, Jesus personally showed that doing the good and sacrificing life on the holy Sabbath is the most precious thing that can not be given priority, and taught us that the important thing for us is the practice of love.

The image of faith hanging on the outline of the law as the Pharisee can be seen in the modern life of faith. It is a story that I heard from a religious conservative who keeps Sunday service for his life. When he was young, he broke Sunday service once, and he was punished for it, that is he came to have bad sight.

Why did he have such faith? Even the Sabbath, even Sunday, is given to human beings by God because of his love of human. How many believers will survive if God punishes every time human beings break Sunday service?

Such a faith is not a spirit of the law, but it is easy to lead to a formal life of faith, hanging on the letter, and easily become guilty and easily condemned.

The spirit of the law is love. Jesus came for this love. If you realize it, you will not condemn others easily, you will not be ashamed of yourself, you will come out of your guilt, you will not say punishment before blessing, and not repentance before love.

I want to talk about my friend. She evangelized me. At that time I was in trouble and in a state of desperation and disappointment. But she did not say like that “you must repent. you must pray. Otherwise you go to hell. And she did not tell me any measures as if she was a solver with great spirituality. 'Why don’t you come to my church?' that was all. So I came to church by her warm guidance and came to know Jesus in the nourishment of many people's attention.

The emphasis on the right, and the law leads our faith to rigidity, condemnation, and guilt. But freedom and warmth that are full of love, that faith becomes flexible. It releases from condemnation, and guilt.

The law makes us realize the sin. If you do not know sin, You do not search for God. So the format is of course important. But this is a matter of priority. Do not try to achieve love in the form, but form in the liberty of love.

We can not help but keep the law if we love first. We naturally achieve that outline. Is there a rule that must be followed when a mother loves her child? The mother should feed her baby every few hours, and every month she should give the baby a vaccine. But this is not the rule. It is something she cannot help doing if she loves her child. Those are actions naturally achieved because love is first, so we eat it and grow.

Being flexible in faith, freedom from love is first. In this case, you will not condemn others and will not commit the most wicked sin. When you make an appointment with a loved one, no one will not keep it. Rather than the promise having a great deal of meaning itself, we just try to keep the promise to keep the beloved person happy and not to miss the beloved person.

If the inner side of the form, the noble nature of the grain, is to be preserved, the outline will be made naturally.

Tears, the condition of miracle

One day, one sister called me. It was the sound of a twang. I was worried that she had a cold.  But she said that when she heard the praise, she was crying. How precious it sounds. The sister is still struggling to hold on to God. When you hear or sing praise and pray, the tears are shed, the tears are made to let your mate know how much you are sincere. The tears are bearing earnestness. In the tears, we meet the emotions of that person and eventually peek at the spirituality of that person. It is not the spirituality that pushes like a bulldozer but the spirituality of tears that meet with despair and find God in it, and do not leave God in it, but the spirit of faith that loves God nonetheless. God loves that spirituality. So God answered to Hezekiah when Hezekiah saw his death in his sickness and prayed in tears to God in despair. As evidence of this, God moved the order of nature to turn the sundial backward by 10 degrees, and God showed his testimony with all his heart, with all his soul and with all his power in the prayer of Hezekiah's tears. Not to mention the miracle of healing.

Hezekiah was the protagonist of miracles and conditions were not prayer days, prayer times, fast prayers, nor tongue prayers, but prayers of tears. God said he saw Hezekiah's tears. And God made him heal.

We can find in many places in the Bible that Jesus, who has come to this land, had pity for people and shed tears before he feeds the people and miracles to save the dead. Bible does not say that Jesus did some gestures or performances that got people clapping and drumming before doing miracles. He showed just tears. It is not the tears that come out of the faintheart, but the pity for the human being, the grudge from that reason, the desire for it to be raised to God, and the sublimation of all those apears to tears, eventually the tear history becomes the miracle work. This is what God wants.

Tears are not expressions of vanity and despair, but nevertheless, looking for God. Nevertheless, looking forward to God, Nevertheless loving God. it is the utmost eager expression that can be done as human being who loves God, and that can melt down the liver of God.  So It is the condition of God's work.

The women in the genealogy of Jesus

(Matthew 1:17)

The first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew comes from the genealogy of Jesus. There are four female names in the genealogy, The first is Tamar who bore a child with his father-in-law. The second is Rahab, who came from a prostitute to assist the spies of Israel. The third is Uriah's wife, Bathsheba, and finally Mary, the wife of Joseph.

These women are not worthy of praise as great heroes as to come together in the genealogy of Jesus. And not too quiet women. Tamar is a woman who had a relationship with her father-in-law and planned to live aggressively rather than passively for her survival and the preservation of her family.

Likewise, Rahab was not a quiet woman but a prostitute, but she was a woman who actively supported Israel by believing in the God of Israel. The third Uriah's wife, Bathsheba, may have been as quiet as the wife of the general, but became pregnant after being raped by David.

Finally, Joseph's wife, Mary, has never been close to a man, but she conceives without sleeping. So, after all, it gives birth to Jesus. This is also unbelievable in the eyes of the world.

As you can see, the way of God is different from the way of the world. The way of the world is that the higher the house, the more strictly and strictly the condition is to put a quiet woman in the house to maintain her family. But the women who are in the genealogy of Jesus are a mess in the eyes of the world. But in common with them, the faith in the God of Israel, the faith, No matter how they were pregnant, whatever their status was, they all came to the genealogy of Jesus in a way that could not be believed in common sense: they believed in the God of Israel, their faith,.

This shows that the Bible is not a moral textbook that only teaches women to be quiet. Women who were in the genealogy of Jesus were women who obeyed God's will no matter how they were. No matter what they did. In the end, faith and obedience are the answer. The work of God occurs as a personal choice of faith granted by God.

The Story of the vineyard

In the Bible comes the parable of the owner of the vineyard and the hired men. The owner of the vineyard called the workers to do their work, and the man who came in the morning or the man who came in the afternoon gave him the same wages almost at the end of the day. Then the workers who came in the morning began to complain. The portion they received was unfair, but the share of others was more than they thought. This was a complaint from the comparison. He judged the grace of the owner of the vineyard and complained by his own rightousness.
I have heard a testimony from someone who has left the church. When he heard a sermon on this story in his school days, he said that his anger had risen beyond doubt. Because He thought that there was unfair because he who believed Jesus as born is treated the same as the one who believed Jesus lately. He judged God as unfairness and He thought God was not worthy of believing, and he left the church. And then he was living in a very worldly life and later he came back to God. Then he came to realize that I was a farmer who came to work in the vineyard at the latest in the vineyard, but who received the same grace as the workers who came and worked first.
In this parable, we should not be misunderstood that no one can be saved without the grace of God. Our merit is nothing to boast about. All of us are the last to be called to the vineyards and to receive the wages. We have received great favor with our cheap efforts. 'Grace' itself is unfair to those who are not related to God the Father. But we must remember that we were saved because of the grace of the unfairness of God the Father.

The spiritual contemplation about Gorinthians 2:6-8

6. We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.

7. No, we speak of God‘s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.

8. None of the rulers of this age understood it. for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

According to these passages, Paul divided the rulers does not know the Spirit of God into 'we' who know the wisdom of God, the Spirit of God.

It was true that all the rulers oppress the majority of people for their preservation of power and to increase their interests. They are evil and they are also the few.

On the contrary, 'We' who Paul mentioned are controlled by them. They are good and they are many.

'the few? or the many?'

If seeing with the eyes of worldly mind, the many almost want to be in the few.

And I also want to go up toward 'the few'.

The problem is whether to belong to the few or to belong to the many.

The rulers in the few do not know God's thought but we in the many know the thought of God through the Spirit of God.

Then this saying is right that the mind of People is the mind of Heaven.

The people in the many are easy to receive the Spirit of God but the rulers in the few are not easy to receive the Spirit of God but the Spirit of the World.

Why is it so? The people in the many are poor and weak in mind. And they get Jesus easily. But the rulers are strong and tight in mind. They have no seat in mind Jesus being with.

However, the mind of people is to be evil. the mind of people is not always the mind of Heaven. They can make group and can do power and it can become collective evil.

The many(we) and the few(rulers) in those days cannot be adapted to the many(we) and the few(rulers) in these days.

The many(we) do not always move through God's Spirit.

Gorinthians 1:5

"For in him you have been enriched in every way-with all kinds of speech with all knowledge"

Paul is so humble humanly, But he is too confident that he is in God, that is, he is a man of God. Therefore the confidence is not derived from belief that I am good at anything, that is, The confidence that I can do all things derives from belief that God keeps me, God is my infinite power and background. If we are in him, in other words we get grace from God, we become rich in every way, in every respect, with all kinds of speech with all knowledge. In fact I am not good at speech because I am not confident, that is I am not in Jesus. When I believe that I am in Jesus and I love God, I find to grow up not only my speech but also all things ability. I become powerful woman and confident woman. I can confess confidently that I am enriched in every way. I was shameful and had less confidence for over 10 years. Because at that time I couldn't believe God loved me. I was in hardship. I hate God giving hardship. Now although I am in hardship, I believe God love me and with me. So I feel my ability in every respect grow up.

I think love is important. the love from whoever is so important. Of course giving love is also important. But in order that my ability and my power improve, the belief that I beloved from God is necessary. the belief can make man high self-esteem. the belief of love can make man confident and do all kinds of things in him and make man participate in the work of God.

Gorinthian 1:25.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

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What is the foolishness of God? What is weakness of God?

Why dose Paul compare man's wisdom to God foolishness?

Is it true that God is foolish or weak?

I don't think so, I think God is a being who men dare not to judge as foolish or weak.

I believe the whole things in the world are in the strategy of God. So By men's eyes, the thing, sometimes, seems to be foolish or sometimes, weak. This is in the process of the complete good.

I believe that 'in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)'

In the end God proves to be strong and wise. Nonetheless I lament to God, God is so cruel. God is inclined to accomplish his end, his good regardless of its mean. even he used the evil. So sometimes God is so cruel as wise and strategic. So we need endurance. The end of God cannot be achieved easily.

Gorinthian 1:26-27.

think of what you were when you were called. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

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When I am called I was encouraged and proud only because of God, that is, because God calls me and God loves me, because I become a Christian.

But now I come to realize that the way to become a real Christian is too hard, and I come to realize the world is not easy, it is difficult to shame the wise in the world, it is difficult to shame the strong in the world. This means that it is difficult for Christians to submit the wise or the strong in the world to God. If doing so, Christians have power from God and have wisdom from God. In all aspects, Christians should not be inferior to the strong and the wise in the world.

Obviously the way to become a real Christian who has influence on the world is a hard, suffering and painful one.

The degree of Pain is the degree of Power of influence.

Romans 8:28

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

There are some cases that the novices tend to be doubtful of the suffering of Christians. 'God is love, God is benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent'. These words are ripe to the ears of most people, even those who are not Christians.

However, we often observe that some Christians are suffering. And sometimes we ourselves suffer from hardships. In these cases some people used to doubt God and to throw away their faith.

I also had an experience that I have ever doubted such that.

I did not go to church, until I graduated from my university. At that time, I suffered from a terrible pain I have never had before. I didn't know before that I could have such a pain by the meeting with a man who I was eager to see, by the separating with him, and by the words from his mouth.

Then I was painful as if my heart had torn into pieces. My self-esteem came to be destroyed. So I finally caught a disease. Then I myself, who had blamed the church and disregarded Christians, sought the church and came to go to church on my foot.

God gave so much blessings on my frail faith. After I experienced that God had been alive, I felt that the whole world was so beautiful. The nature was brilliantly shining and the people in the church was beautiful like angels with wings.

However, once again I stupidly got hurted by the problem similar to the previous experience. Then my pain was much greater than before. so I could not help complaining to God about that.

At that time, I thought 'only if I believe in Jesus, that is, merely I am in Jesus, I will not be hurted'.

And I believed that God heard my prayer and let it achieved and I expected that somethings great would happen to me.

By the time I was very disappointed and frustrated, suddenly the words, Rome 8:28, came upon to me. At that time I did not understand the phrase well, but soon I came to realize the meaning of those words through the sermon of a certain pastor. That is, I got to know that all things occurring to Christians, though they are negative things, for example, hardships or sufferings, will achieve the good later. In other words, God will change all things(whether they are negative or not) into the good. In my understanding all of them are in God's plan and they mean great blessings. And then I reflected my experience and thought it over: If I had no the process of frustration and the process of pain, Could I myself come to church on my foot? Could I realize the beautifulness of the world? Could I get the most precious salvation?

After I became aware that my experience of frustration and pain was a part or a motive of the salvation plan of God for me, I appreciated God who gave me such experiences.

From then on, my view of life began to change. That is to say, whatever environment I put in, and even in the hopeless situation or in the painful and excruciating condition. I remember Rome 8:28 and expected that something good will be happen to me. And also I strongly believe that all things are in the process of God's plan. So I realize that I should thank God and have no choice but to be grateful to God in any situation.

These words made me think positively in any situation. Even though I put in the hard condition, I can recollect the words and look forward to the acting of God which turn it into the good and then I can be thankful to God. Therefore, Rome 8:28 is the best words which changed my view and my life. And it will make me trust God and give thanks to God to the end of my life.

Why Job is a Hero in Christian Perspective?

Is Job a hero? Christians call Job as God's people, but they do not call him hero. This is because the word "hero" is not a Christian view but a word created from a human perspective. Job was only in abandon and oblivion in the misfortune that began to happen to him (the test of Satan under God's permission). It is only in the Bible that he had no other reason to blame, curse, or leave God as a person who believed in God.

    But he confessed that all of his possessions, and even of himself, were of God and can be thoroughly done God’s own way.

 “Naked I came from my mother's womb,

and naked I will depart."

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;

may the name of the Lord be praised."(Job 1: 21)”

Job suffered too much and cursed his birth. Job was only a very weak human being. Everyone who takes it, according to Job's confession, is Jehovah. Why, then, did Job curse his own birth? Is not it God who gave life? So what is this, not the curse of God? In this sense, Job was only an ordinary person with a weakness that was extremely weak in the face of suffering.

But he was blessed. Let's look at how he was blessed. Before the blessing of God was given, there was always suffering. The cause of human suffering is usually caused by human error made by God's plan. But Job's suffering is not attributed to Job's fault, but to Satan's direct involvement. In this respect, it reveals how the human character of Job itself is. Author of Job has drawn Satan to emphasize that Job is a flawless man, that is, a good man who did not commit wrongs. This is another point of Job's suffering. So Job's suffering seems to be more cruel and cruel. In such affliction, Job, like any human, grumbled, cursed, or feared, but both his resentment and his fear of cursing with God. That is, God is with Job. Job did not give up belief that God is with us. This is the same with another example from the Old Testament, as Moses, Jacob, or Joseph were blessed. He did not forget God. He lived with God.

However, there is a difference from Job and the character mentioned above. For example, Jacob was blessed by fighting with angel of God. In this case, Jacob won the blessing aggressively, but Job did not. Job was seated and suffered, but he was with God in his sufferings. Job's character is different from Jacob's. It was not as cunning or active as Jacob. If so, Job represents the suffering that good people can suffer.

    It is kind of awkward to express Job as a hero, but he is a person who is blessed with God anyway. Job was a flawless man, and he resolved all the feelings of man that could be felt in the midst of suffering, in his relationship with God, in his interactions with God.

So, God intervened in his blessings. Unlike the records of other people in the Bible, Job was recorded that God blessed Job directly.

In the Bible,

“the lord made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before (Job 42:11)”

“The Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first. (Job 42:12)”

God revealed in Exodus

The Old Testament God, God of the history who planed and led the escape of a nation, not the image of the gods of Greek mythology tied to the trivial affairs of human history, love, jealousy and betrayal, is so magnificent. The magnificence is revealed through the process of the exodus of the nation of Israel by God's plan. The God of the Old Testament is the God who led the whole thing and the only thing that is required of man is faith. So the heroism of human is reduced.

The evaluation of human is only made by faith. In other words, Moses is great only because he trusted God as shown to himself. Moses was a man who knew his weaknesses, he killed someone although it was accidental, after that he lived a very ordinary life.

However, the Old Testament God finally used the incomplete person as a significant figure in God's plan and eventually achieved the historic event of the Exodus. Moses, along with his advocate Aaron, planned the exodus of the Israelites and informed the king immediately. But from the beginning to the end, in the exodus, God appeared and spoke directly, directed personally, and foresaw what will happen to the person of God. So the role of Moses, a great leader in the Old Testament, or a hero, is reduced.

At that time, he directed the liberation of a minority, a dare to a great king, but his role was only to speak. It also played a role in bringing Aaron, the advocate. Also, looking at the background of Moses, he was already able to do this. Moses was raised as a royal family, even though he was a slave nation of repression and righteousness. Uniqueness to his birth background is also part of God's great plan. In this historical event, God is the one who has already planned, and who knew the consequences, who chose the people of God to communicate with and command to make secret decisions.

Also, as mentioned above, the relationship between God and man in the Old Testament is made by choice and promise. But this choice and promise is also God's sovereign, God's one-sided choice and one-sided promise, which humans need to accept and believe. On the other hand, what about Greek mythology? The Greek god does not choose any particular person or any particular people to make a relationship with. The human side rather choose gods. There is no one-sided promise in the gods side. The relationship between gods and man may or may not be destroyed. In the Old Testament, a relationship is formed according to whether or not the unilateral choice and promise of God is believed in the human side. On the other hand, in Greek mythology, the relationship between God and man is formed by causality that can be chosen by God, or human beings can choose one of gods. God in the Old Testament is not a god of gods but God. God is the God of all power, who controls everything and knows everything. Heroes in the Old Testament, for example, Moses, Joseph, and Jacob are merely people of faith who believe in this God.