RITES VS RELATIONSHIP II

We were forced to finally learn the lessons of the first pages of the Bible –creation exists upon the framework of healthy relationships.

The Good News is the good deal because God cannot do without man. Though a bold statement, it is a humbling thought. Angels and other celestial bodies are part of His eternal purpose as ministers and spectators. We however are not just part but at the centre of the eternal counsel of God. God is the author of relationship and we know from the design of His creation.

We are at a time in history when discussing climatic changes and implementing the right green policies has never been so crucial to our continued survival. That’s why it tops other set of topics during World Summits. For a long time man deliberately ignored the importance of ecology. But in the face of monstrous destruction by Forces of Nature, we were forced to finally learn the lessons of the first pages of the Bible –creation exists upon the framework of healthy relationships.

When we cut down trees and our industries pollute the atmosphere with CFCs, it damages the ozone layer leading to the release of ultra violet rays harmful to plants and human skins. The atmosphere, water bodies and earth corroborate to function. It is time man learn how he fits in. Not just as an umpire but a key player in this mutually beneficial relationship of the cycle of living. It is detrimental for man to continually claim exclusivity to his surroundings.

In the process of creating man, God used particles from earth’s environment as the moulding block of Adam’s body. The name Adam meaning Red Earth, is symbolic –His earthly environment is consequential to his physical health.

Adam was charged to exercise dominion (not over man but) of his ecosystem and to subdue it –that is, learn and create laws that govern his environment. God brought the animals to be named of Adam and to observe them, forming a relationship. God also brought him a wife and it marked the birth of another relationship. Man, by God, was engineered to exist and thrive based on these three relationships: God, his fellow man and his environment.  Each time he lives in violation of any of his relationships death and violence is at its wake.

God didn't stipulate a single ordinance of ritual to Adam and yet he was adorned in God's glory. Therefore, Jesus the Last Adam wasn't bound by rites but relationships. He is Lord even on the Sabbath. He is our perfect example and we ought to carefully mark and follow in His footsteps. We’ll now take a look at His relationships.

As the beloved Son of God Jesus prayed to God addressing Him as Father. He also taught humanity to pray to divinity with the opening statement, Our Father who art in heaven. He was mending the long lost link.  Prestigious the relationship of David with God.  Magnificent the promises he obtained and benevolent was the mercies God lavished on him.  Yet, not once did God address David as a son but My servant. John the beloved reminds us of the Christian privilege when he said, behold what manner of love the father had loved us that we should be called His sons. Jesus mended that link of the Father-Son relationship humanity once had with divinity.

Though He is the Messiah, author of life and the essence of living he was subject to His earthly parents. He disagreed with them about His Father’s business (will) at the temple, but held them in all honour. He kept His relationship with them spotless. Much so that while on the cross he didn't yield up His Ghost until He had secured the welfare of his earthly parent (Mary). Looking to John the beloved and one of His closest disciples he said, "Behold thy Mother" and onward Mary became the responsibility of John. Behold how important Jesus took that Parent-Child bond?

How then do we have believers who desert their own parents because of religious pursuits of purity? When Jesus the author and finisher of our faith while dying on the cross in agony ensured Mary was taken care of after his bodily demise. Here I think is where we must apply the litmus paper.

The command to children to honour thy parents, as Paul brilliantly chipped in, Is the first commandment with promise. Why did God attach a promise to that commandment? Honour gives a broader and wider scope of meaning when used than respect. Honour reveals a higher respect, to regard your parents with pride and yourself privileged to be brought to life through them. Honour is a mind-set bound by astonishment of them. It is the state of awe and a response of love towards them. I rarely see such gesture among Christians towards their earthly parents.

While some allege their parents as witches, no New Testament scriptures told us to flee from witches but to draw near our enemies and love them. How poignant it is then, when those some acclaim as “enemies” is their biological parents. The scriptures also didn't state that we ought to honour our parents because their acts necessitated it. No sir! No ma! You honour them simply for who they are.

I have heard several cases of believers who have not visited their parents for years as a result of "Spiritual fervency" or "Spiritual frenzy" if you may. And I dare ask, would you find it comforting for your children to abandon you same as you did to your parents in the name of the separation doctrine? For the sum of the Law is that we treat others just as ourselves.

You should never have your earthly parents replaced under the guise of Spiritual Parenting. You honour them in all things but in the matters of obedience, do it in the Lord. Paul in Ephesians 6:1, was talking to Gentiles whose parent's might still be attached to some pagan worship, so he added the clause “in the Lord.” Some teachers had taken same scripture and distorted it to mean pastors are to be obeyed equivocally and not their parents, which is untrue. What Paul was saying is clearer when we read from the Complete Jewish Bible:

Children, what you should do in union with the Lord is obey your parents, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” — this is the first commandment that embodies a promise —  “so that it may go well with you, and you may live long in the Land. Ephesians 6:1-3

Verse one we were admonished to obey our biological parents. Verse two Paul quotes the source of the commandment. In verse 3 he states the promise attached to the commandment. Remarkably, one of the signs of the last days is children’s disobedience to their biological parents, as the spirit says through Paul:

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy. 2 Timothy 3:1-2

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Roman 1:28-32

Note that the Bible clearly says disobeying your biological parent is a sin worthy of death. Of course no one would stone you to death in modern day but do you notice that the promise attached to obeying your biological parents is the length of days?

Therefore if any believer neglects His parents, refusing to esteem them, or brings them to public disgrace and disrepute, he is worse than an infidel. Also, he has denied the teachings of grace as seen in our Lord's example. The love and forgiveness revealed by grace is greater than the hate and division of religion. Grace equips you to be better in your relationships. Go be a better son, daughter to your mother and father.

While Jesus looked at the sick with compassion and healed any day of the week, the Pharisee saw a man breaking the Sabbath. At the well of Sychar, while the Samaritan woman worried about stigmatisation by Jews Jesus levelled the mountain of religion and the fountain of living waters led to true worship. Where the priests couldn’t be touched by any having fluid substance issue from their body, He encouraged the woman who touched Him and was healed of the issue of blood to be of good cheer. Obviously, the purity of relationship is greater than the purity that comes from religious cleansing and separation. Where no one dared touched the leapers Jesus touched them with kindness and love and they were healed. Although He could have healed with His words He did it with His touch. Though He is a priest, He went to the homes of sinners, ate with them and they loved to gather around Him. As the prophet said of Christ,

Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand (of love), and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. Isaiah 40:10-11

What is grace and truth?

For while the Law was given through Moses, grace ( unearned, undeserved favor and spiritual blessing) and truth came through Jesus Christ. John 1:17 AMP

I believe the question should be, Who is grace and truth? Jesus is. The Law given by Moses had a flaw. That flaw is not a product of the Law itself as Paul pointed out, the man under the Law was a slave of sin before the advent of the Law. Ordinances was instituted within the Law, which we refer to as the rituals to show that man's relationship with God, his fellow man and environment was imperfect. Let’s grab unto that as an absolute truth.

And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it , they removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die. And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not. And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was. Exodus 20:18-21

For God wanted to draw near in relationship but the conscience of man was still proud in his feeling of guilt just like in Eden. Perfect love cast out fears indeed for Moses had that and He drew near when the Israelites ran back. Therefore all their relationships carried that human sense of inadequacies and hostility. Because they could not forgive they were offered the clause of divorce. Because they couldn't love, an eye for an eye became a law. Because they couldn't approach God ordinances was instituted.

The ordinances reek of separation. God apart from His people, the priests apart from the people, the people apart from their neighbours etc. The ordinances blinded them from relationship as God declared:

Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against thee: I am God, even thy God. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me. I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds. Psalm 50:7-9

In the proceeding chapters He said,

Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit. Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. Psalm 50:19-21

And again He spoke from the lips of the prophets:

For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you. Jeremiah 7:22-23

Also,

Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God. Micah 6:6-8

And again:

Speak unto all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month , even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me? And when ye did eat, and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves , and drink for yourselves? Should ye not hear the words which the Lord hath cried by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round about her, when men inhabited the south and the plain? And the word of the Lord came unto Zechariah, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Execute true judgment, and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother: And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart. Zechariah 7:5-10

Therefore when grace and truth came, the ordinances which had led to intolerance, divisions and the Holier than thou attitude was dealt a mortal blow:

For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby. Ephesians 2:14-16

Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. Colossians 2:14

As the Law of Ordinances came through Moses so the Grace of relationships came through Jesus Christ. Spirituality in the New Testament is tested by the waters of relationships. God judges us on the basis of love not rituals –for this is the voice of the Prophets and Apostles. Are you cutting off relationships or knotting the loose ends? Rites have led to many wrongs but relationship has led to the righteousness of God.

Keep out of debt and owe no man anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor [who practices loving others] has fulfilled the Law [relating to one's fellowmen, meeting all its requirements]. Romans 13:8 AMP

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