A final word on 'sacraments'
I think the best way to understand the 'sacraments' is this: prior to being regenerated by the Word and the Spirit ritual sacraments (baptism and the Lord's Supper) provide for the currently unregenerate a visual parable to teach them and keep them drawn towards Scripture (ideally).
After regeneration though ritual sacraments become vain matter. Regeneration itself is baptism of the Holy Spirit. What the Lord's Supper symbolizes is union with Christ which a regenerated Christian has in reality.
The unregenerate in the church (especially leadership) never want to think anybody is regenerate. So the regenerate Christians have to just silently grin and have understanding for them. While at the same time not allowing themselves to be drawn into dead ritual or an experience of the faith that is beneath them. (Intentionally chosen words there.)
Fear God, not man. Don't ever exalt man and ritual above the Word and the Spirit. (Man being cleric or scholar or anything else.) And don't succumb to those who demand that man and ritual be exalted over the Word and the Spirit. That is a point of difference that defines the battle-line in the spiritual world. A soldier of Christ - a true spiritual warrior - does not concede or play such games for *any* reason or justification or demand on the part of the currently unregenerate.
5 Comments:
prior to being regenerated by the Word and the Spirit ritual sacraments (baptism and the Lord's Supper) provide for the currently unregenerate a visual parable to teach them and keep them drawn towards Scripture (ideally).
After regeneration though ritual sacraments become vain matter.
What about the Lord's Supper, in which Paul warns in Corinthians not to partake of "unworthily"? The unregenerate cannot partake of this sacrament worthily. By your logic, the only ones who could participate in the Lord's Supper would be those for whom it was a "vain matter".
And what about a catechumen you thought was regenerate? Would you advise him *not* to get baptized since it would be a "vain matter"?
Take heed, lest you fall into eisegesis.
Everything you say is nonsense to a Christian who knows what regeneration is because it has been experienced.
It's typical admonishment to the currently unregenerate to preach 'Don't be unworthy'...
The Bible obviously is speaking to two classes of Christians, the unregenerate and the regenerate. When it says, "I suffer not a woman to speak, teach, cough, scratch her nose" whatever, that is the Bible speaking to currently unregenerate Christians. When the Bible says there is no male or female in Christ *that* is speaking to regenerate believers.
All the subjects and disputes regarding church polity and so-called 'sacraments' are the subject matter and disputes of the unregenerate who self-identify as Christians.
The *one thing* they need is the Word of God, engaged on their own or proclaimed to them. That is how the Spirit regenerates when regeneration does happen.
Your churches are asinine wastes of time from God's point of view because He wants people hearing and reading the Word of God. Anything else is marking time and watching and experiencing 'visual parables' over and over, and listening to asinine 'sermonizers' who wouldn't know the power of the pure Word of God if you knocked them over with it.
I've been baptised: by the Holy Spirit. Real baptism.
I have experienced union with Christ. Even by degree. Greater degree, lesser degree. It's a battle because we grieve the Spirit when we get more of the Spirit. Our limits need to be provoked and extended and that is a battle between the Old man and the New man within. I know what this is because I have been regenerated by the Word and the Spirit. The Holy Spirit teaches me about this. Meanwhile the churchians, unregenerate especially in their leadership, can only react with mocking and asinine finger wagging and warnings of this and that. Imagine that, a regenerate Christian being 'warned' by some unconcious churchian who doesn't know his ass from his elbow when it comes to the Word and the Spirit. Who in most cases can't even recognize *let alone value* the pure and whole Word of God.
Union with God as a practice has to do with 'I am here' remembrance or presence, and with fearing God only and not man. A regenerate Christian comes to this understanding because the Holy Spirit guides them and teaches them this. Union with God is not about eating a wafer and drinking some wine or grapejuice. I mean, my God, get a clue.
You cling to ritual like a dumb pagan or Romanist. You're weak, you're ignorant, I understand. So what do you need? You need the Spirit and you need the Word. And preferably a Bible with the *authority of God in it* and not the authority of inane scholars.
There are different orders of Christians. If you're a church Christian you knock yourself out with those 'sacraments.' I'm on the battlefield. I need the armor of God.
In your latest post you refer positively to Luther.
You do realize, I hope, that Luther had a very high view of Baptism as the physical means by which we are regenerated. He thought we should look to it as a real, concrete source of assurance.
Do you think Luther is a "dumb pagan", or a [!] "Romanist"?
Both Luther and Calvin (Calvin less so) left too much of the fat and grease of the Beast church on their plate. They should have wiped it all off. There were political reasons for that and practical decisions of war involved in it (which gives no excuse to Reformed Christians who came after the Beast was in effect defeated). Yet one is hardly constrained to never speak of Luther positively because of his sacramentalism.
You sound like you might actually buy into baptismal regeneration. This is fallen man wanting control of regeneration by making of it a ritual when it can only be effected by the Word and the Spirit. I.e. it is out of man's control. That bothers fallen man to no end. This is why regeneration by the Word and the Spirit is the most hated biblical doctrine and reality among academic and otherwise shallow Reformed Christians and churchians in general.
Post a Comment
<< Home