Wednesday, July 10, 2013

The Bible Challenge: Day 191

The scriptures read are Job 31-33, Psalm 6 and Galatians 2.

Job 31. Job wraps up his defense by reeling off a catalog of sins. "If I did any of this, then by all means God should punish me." But basically Job just wants an answer from God.

Job 32, 33. Hotheaded young Elihu comes out of nowhere and speaks up. First he lambasts Job's "friends" for making such pitiful arguments. Then to Job he says, "God always answers. You just have to be alert for the means or messenger."

Psalm 6. A Genevan psalm with brass accompaniment: here.

Galatians 2. Paul picks up his story with his visit to Jerusalem to let the leaders of the church know what he was preaching. They found nothing wrong with it, seeing that God sent Paul to preach to the Gentiles. Later when Peter visits Paul's home church in Antioch, he had no trouble eating with Gentile Christians...until more conservative Jewish Christians came from Jerusalem to visit. The Peter pulled away from the Gentiles. Paul called him out on this.

Paul says, look, we Jews of all people know that we can't possibly be good enough to patch up things with God. We trust in Jesus precisely because he has patched things up between humans and God. If following the 613 laws of the Torah could bridge the gap between God and human, then Jesus' death was unnecessary.

No comments:

Post a Comment