Walking with the Way

A friend of mine has alerted me to a teaching that is occurring in a particular Christian church right now that, to me, sounds dangerously false.  Jesus warns us to watch out for false teachers (Matt.7:15), so I thought I would bring this to your attention, least you get "taken in" by something that sounds so good.  Our reading this week reminded me of the truth, so I thought this would be a good time to explain the false teaching I heard. Here it is. Bill Johnson, who pastors Bethel Church in Redding, California, has a particular theology that goes against traditional Christian theology.  (Right there, people's warning flags should go up when being introduced to his teaching.)  It's been dubbed "Jesus Christ is perfect theology". Doesn't that sound good and right? Well, he makes a jump from there that is WAY off! This theology claims that it is always God's will to heal someone . Wow!! How did he get there? This is a quote from him, "How

I don't know about you, but my discovery last week, helped me better understand the reading this week! Remembering that the group that made up the Corinthian church was a mixed group of believers and "not quite believers yet" helped me to understand why Paul had to explain why a Christian no longer lives for themselves (5:15), why he had to explain why he does what he does (6: 6-12) and why he was concerned about the monetary gift they had promised to collect and give for the Christians in Jerusalem (8:8). This clears up a lot of questions for me, because if he was talking to only 'true followers', the things he was saying would be really strange!   After all, like Paul says, "if anyone is in Christ the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" (5:17").  It would be the desire of a true follower to, "purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God." (7:1)

Here are some verses that I have read several times before but brushed over without much thought: "For we do not write you anything you cannot read or understand.  And I hope that, as you have come to understand us in part, you will come to understand fully that you can boast of us just as we will boast of you in the day of the Lord Jesus." (2 Cor. 1:13-14). This time, reading those verses I stopped and thought....what on earth is Paul saying??  That was confusing! We can understand, but we only get part of what he is saying?  We won't fully understand everything until Jesus comes back?  I don't get it.  Why would he say he doesn't write things that can not be understood?  In other words, he just got finished saying everything IS understandable.  Well, I needed help in trying to figure out what Paul was meaning.  So, I turned to some commentaries. I  praise God for the people who have spent a lifetime studying the Bible and then took the time to write dow

Paul really stuck to a theme in these chapters!  I sum it up as, "Keep Jesus as the reason you do the things you do!"  Unfortunately, we have a sneaky little "self" that always wants to get into the position as to why we do the things we do, wouldn't you agree?  I guess that can be called our "sin nature", always putting ourselves first. So, Paul uses many examples to remind us to do things with Jesus being the reason for our actions. Starting with Paul's talk on lawsuits, he asks, "Why not rather be wronged?  Why not rather be cheated?" (6:7)  Because I want to defend my honor, my pride, my rights, that's why!!   Those reasons all describe putting oneself as the reason for what you do.  Paul is reminding us that God wants to be the reason.  He can fight battles for us, we don't need to do it. (Exodus 14:14, 2 Chron 20:17, Rom. 8:31, Isaiah 13:5) Then Paul talks about our position in life, i.e. married, single. Paul says to