Dear Trey,
Thank you for visiting Adat Shalom last night. I'm saddened that you did not enjoy our service,but I understand that people are entitled to their own perspective. Unfortunately, your perspective has quite a few flaws. First of all, you have a distorted view of the true biblical meaning of atonement.
You also greatly misunderstood my approach to witnessing, and sharing about the need to have a "covering" before a holy God.
I, like you, have a strong belief that God is indeed love. But He also is holy and righteous, and we absolutely need to be forgiven and cleansed before Him or face eternal judgment. This is the biblical "apostolic" view of man's condition before God.
Anyway, thank you for the visit. If you wish to talk any further and clear up the misconceptions, give me a call.
Sincerely,
Robin
Robin David Rose, Congregational Leader
Adat Shalom Congregation - Dallas
And my reply/new post.
Thank you so much Pastor Robin, for being the first pastor to respond to a blog post. The desire here is to open a loving dialogue and more carefully examine each others perspectives in light of scripture, and to do it in a public forum for the benefit of all.
Please don't be saddened, as I did enjoy your service immensely, especially the Oneg, and meeting people then. You have a great group of God's people there who seem very hungry for the Word of God.
You state that I have a distorted view of the true Biblical meaning of atonement. The plain and ancient word atonement means "at one with". Scripture admonishes, in Matthew 5:37 and Ephesians 4:25, among others, to speak truthfully and plainly to one another. Atonement is a much abused word as there are numerous and perhaps conflicting "atonement theories".
From your sermon and response, it appears that you subscribe to the currently most fashionable and clearly wrong atonement theory, penal substitutionary atonement. This abomination before God is the idea that "Jesus died on the cross for our sins." and it pervades the modern church. Somehow Christianity thrived for 1500 years or so before this particular theory came on the scene in the Reformation.
I assert, via the testimony of the Spirit within me, and the confirmation in scripture, that atonement means atonement, or "at one with". All of Jesus' incarnation, birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension was to be at unity with us, His people.
No theological theories needed as it is self evident in all of scripture, that Jesus came to show us how to live, die, and rise again in Him. Theology means "study of God" and what better way to study God than closely observe Jesus. That's why Jesus' primary application point was and is, "Follow me".
Your next point says that I greatly misunderstand your approach to witnessing. Your first and only statement that I remember being made on your personal witnessing was, "When I encounter a Jewish person, I immediately go to the judgment of God, and ask them if they have appropriate covering."
Being both ethnically Jewish (Ashkenazim) and a Messianic believer, I am familiar with the concept of covering. My objection is that you go to fear instead of love in attempting to bring another into closer relationship with Christ. You assert that the biblical "apostolic" view is that "we absolutely need to be forgiven and cleansed before Him or face eternal judgment" since God is not only love, but holy and righteous.
So I will return to our Savior Jesus, who said, in John 14:9, that "if you see me, you have seen the Father". Who that saw Jesus was forgiven and cleansed before Him? I would propose either all or none. When Jesus said, "it is finished" on the cross, and that was arguably God's plan before the creation of the world, all were and are forgiven and cleansed. But if instead of one for all, it is one for one, then we each have more work to do than we can ever do, for not one can stand before Him that created all and have any claim to righteousness. While all are saved, they are only saved by the One, Yeshua. (which I enjoy seeing as phonetic response to "I am" that "Yes you are")
Once again, Pastor Robin, I greatly appreciate your response and all you efforts in expanding God's Kingdom.
In His love,
Trey
No comments:
Post a Comment