Love One Another and the Cross

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Originally Posted by shazeep

you have a genuine concern that putting love one another before "admitting" that Christ came and died for us would be denying the Cross, and i understand this.

You fail to realize I am getting this from the Bible not from tradition or churches. I dumped everything I was taught when I was called, and studied the bible to determine what the Word of God said. I realized many things I was told before were correct, even strengthened, but some things were never covered at all. And then I saw things that I was taught were incorrect.

So, I continued to study each new testament book verse by verse. And the cross came to the forefront so much it changed my view of prophecy. It changed my focus of emphasis. The Bible is the cross and Christ's love for us that cannot be topped through that cross. The blood the blood the blood is everything. And the teaching of the Word informing us that Christ died for the ungodly, and associated greatest love with that, is where the focus of ANY love should be centred. THAT is the love to be looking at.

My genuine concern is that seekers after Christ are led into a book knowledge of Him, and the vast majority end up worse off because they then don't, or can't, get any Book knowledge, led by the Spirit, because they have lawyers interpreting the Bible for them if they do even read It, and the essence is left at the altar.

This is why I teach our people that they are not to trust what I say because I said it. You seem to think everyone who teaches Acts 2:38 does not truly teach people how to be led by the Spirit. It's unjust of you to do this everytime you talk to what you call an OP. YOu came across a segment of OPism that is offtrack, I agree. but you tarred everyone who is oneness with the same unjust brush unjustly. You did this so much so that you won't consider that someone may have insight you never experienced.

Communion is reduced to a ceremony, also, and the pertinent debate becomes whether there is transubstantiation, or is the wafer merely representative. Lol. Everything is reduced to a ceremony--all of the accepted elements of salvation. And they all happen in a "church," where we are told "service" is held.

I hate ceremony and service, and have told you I don't know how many times it's the HEART. But you take that and twist it with words in my mouth and continue to say I am steeped in ceremony.

And of course since this is how our parents did it, it seems perfectly natural to us. Changing comes with a warning--"you will go to hell." "We have Christ, and you will lose Him." etc. iow fear isn't even an undercurrent; it is an overtone. While this may not describe every affiliated church, speaking generally this holds true.

Our churches become corporations brought together by love, of an idea, even as they are legislating love out of the equation. So the point for me here is not to replace Christ, or reject Him, but to seek a better understanding of Him that does not find me mired in hypocrisy.

And yes, it felt like abandoning everything i had learned up to that point. I left the Christ that i learned in church. And it was hard, peer pressure being what it is, etc. And i'm a vagabond by nature--i can't imagine what the experience would be like for a homebody.

So if you are able to confront the hard questions with your model, and detect no hypocrisy, then you are likely walking in love already. And if you aren't, then i think it is inevitable that each generation seek a more genuine Christ for themselves; and love one another brings one into the body of Christ in a most genuine way. church feels like a club now, frankly.

When you care to open your mind from its offended closed state, and actually discuss to see if you could possibly learn something, let me know. So far, all I see is the results of having been disillusioned and you closed your mind to any adherent of Acts 2:38, which you actually admit is in the bible and has a true place. But you're too closed due to offence. And at your age that's the last thing you need.