NO SYMBOLS, JUST REALITY

Tuesday 10 June

In the Body of Christ today, there are a number of practices happening that are symbols or shadows of the real. The challenge with this is many are being distracted from the message of Christ by ritualism and works of the law that have no place in the gospel of grace. While this list is by no means exhaustive, we will briefly touch on some common ones and see what the Bible has to say about them.

TITHING is a work of the law. Did you know that God only told the Jews to tithe when they were in the promised land? Whenever they were exiled and brought into captivity they stopped tithing. When they returned they commenced tithing again. Question: Are you a Jew? If not, then why are you tithing? What about those who were to collect the tithes? They had to be from the tribe of Levi. When Rome destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70 all the genealogical records of the Levites was also destroyed. Today even in Israel, nobody knows who is from Levi. There are no more Levites so there is no one to rightfully collect the tithes. Don’t take my word for it, go and look it up for yourself.

COMMUNION is the Catholic version of a rebranded Passover. Nobody under the law in the Old Testament ever took communion. Jesus had Passover meals with his disciples but never had a single piece of bread and one cup of wine or a wafer and ribena. If you talk to a Jew about communion they would just laugh at you because no such ritual existed in Israel. Every instance of bread and wine in the gospels was in relation to Passover We are told that the wafer represents Jesus body and the ribena Jesus blood. We are told to take the cup. Which one? There are four in a traditional Passover feast. If you look into the word, you discover that Christ was the Passover Lamb. Passover originated from Egypt when the death angel passed over the houses where the blood of a lamb was shed on the doorposts and lintels. This was a mere shadow of the real Lamb of God who shed His blood in our hearts as our Great High Priest so we would pass from death to life.

WATER BAPTISM is a practice of Judaism and not Christianity. Jesus was only water baptised to fulfil all righteousness and to be the prophetic sign to announce the Messiah to the Jews. Remember the only reason John the forerunner to Christ was baptising people was because he was looking for the one who would increase as he would decrease. Imagine his surprise when he realised it was his own cousin that God’s people were waiting for. The Christ foretold by the prophets in the scriptures. Some would argue that the disciples both in the gospels and early on in the book of Acts were recorded as baptising with water by full immersion. There is a very good reason for that. They did not recognise for a period of time that the water was only a physical representation for the Spirit. Once the Spirit came there was no more need for the water. When Jesus said ‘whoever believes and is baptised shall be saved’ he was referring to the baptism of the Spirit which is being born into Christ. In other words, saved. Water baptism is not a prerequisite for salvation it is the physical representation of what happens in the Spirit in salvation.

So what are the realities of these things in the Kingdom today? Instead of tithing, we are told to give not under compulsion but out of our free will. This is why any giving in the New Testament can be classified as a free will offering. The epistles give us clear guidelines as to how we should give of our finances in the kingdom.

Instead of being involved in religious Passover feast or a fictitious Communion ritual, we listen to the gospel of His death, burial and resurrection. In doing this we are partaking of the body and blood of Jesus. This is simply a way to describe the life that we have in Him and are connected to through Him. Every time you meditate on the truth of the gospel, you are eating and drinking of Christ.

Rather than having baptism services we should preach and teach the death burial and resurrection of Christ as symbolised by water baptism.

Our focus is now on the baptism of the Spirit, being baptised into the Body of Christ in salvation or becoming new creatures in Christ. Again, we look into the epistles to see that after the book of Acts there was no more mention of practicing water baptism because the Apostles had finally caught the revelation of everything was now to be done in the Spirit as Jesus alluded to in John 10:38-39.

We don’t need symbols or shadows today because we have the reality of Christ. There is nothing to add to the gospel. It is solely based on His performance and not ours. Grace and not works. The sooner the church of Jesus Christ learns these truths, the sooner we can put away ritualism and get back to authentic Christianity devoid of dead works and religion.

‘Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free and don’t be entangled again in the yoke of bondage’

Let’s all get back to the rightly divided word of truth.

APPLICATION

Take up the challenge to do your own personal study into these three subjects and look for Biblical confirmations as to what we have seen in this devotion.