SpoonfulOfDreams

There is no question that Jesus was born a Jew but did he live as a Jew? Jesus came to fulfil the Law so he had to be the perfect Jew, better than the Pharisees or any Jew before him. The question we then need to ask is, did he dispense with his Jewishness once he had completed his ministry and, in a sense, he did because he broke down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile. Paul says, in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile. The important thing is that He made peace between the two. Crucially, Paul says that the Jews own the legacy and only when they are brought into the fold will the Gentiles have the full measure of the truth. Rediscovering the Jewish Jesus clearly gives us a fuller picture of who the historical Jesus was and what he meant by what he taught. It seems to me that Paul translated the Gospel into 'Christian' beautifully as did the other letter writers but Jesus, in the Gospels, was speaking to Jews as a rabbi, not to Christians as a pastor. Much of Christi...

photo © Sarah Klockars-Clauser for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike This was written some time ago in response to a guest article and the blogger's response to that article. The point I'm trying to make is that worship is a gift of God and, like the gift horse, should not be examined clinically. What should be tested is not the attitude of worshippers but attitudes towards worship. At one extreme some worship is viewed as entertainment or merely emotional and at the other that worshipping in spirit and in truth necessitates informality or freedom from constraint. We are in danger of being guests at the party arguing over who has given the best gift. The following is the main body of my response: I feel sad that the author feels we "must be very careful how we worship". It was for freedom that Christ set us free, no longer to be tied to customs, obligations and ritual. I also find it pompous to suggest that it is all about God. In corporate worship we are to bu...