Lucas Necessary had a series of blog posts on this topic, which he then collated into one longer article. That article is reproduced here by permission.
I recently saw some people talking about whether or not it’s a sin to talk with someone visiting the assembly during “the worship.” For many, “coming to worship on Sunday” is important, but is it at all what is described in the New Testament? What, exactly, is “worship?” Does the New Testament even mention a “worship service?” Turns out, it doesn’t!
What’s going on here?
As we’ll find out, our modern word for “worship” does a HORRIBLE job of filling in for the concepts that God was communicating in His Word. And no surprise, because the etymology has morphed beyond recognition from what “worship” originally meant.
Look how "worship" has come about—and changed—as a word.
But it’s not just the etymology that’s a mess. Check out the sheer number of definitions for “worship,” and how nebulous they are:
This will have to be a multi-part (though abbreviated) series, and we’ll just start off with the word “worship,” as found in the Old Testament. This word is predominantly from ancient Hebrew “shachah,” which means literally, “to bow down, to prostrate oneself.” So if you hear someone say that they’re “going to worship on Sunday,” do you imagine them going and planting their faces on the floor? Why do we use this word? What does it really mean?
Bow Down
Some people are concerned about doing anything that might interrupt “the worship” on Sundays, such as saying “hi” to someone new who walks in. But what IS worship? Do we really understand it? Yesterday we saw that, in the Old Testament Hebrew, it is almost always translated from “shachah,” which means to physically bow down, to prostrate oneself. Think of Muslims on prayer rugs. They are “shachah,” bowing down, worshiping.
What does the word “worship” look like in the Bible? We’ll have to start out with the Old Testament.
The first time is Genesis 18:2.
When he lifted up his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth.
Can you spot the word “worship” in there? What is “worship,” as God defined it there? If you said, “bow down,” you’re right. Worship in the Old Testament, we will see, was a physical act of bowing down, of submission.
As God Defines It
What exactly is “worship?” Is it five or so acts that we do only on Sundays? In the old Testament, we see that it’s mostly from the word, “shachah,” which means to physically bow down, yet we certainly don’t do much of that on Sundays! The first time it was used was in Genesis 18, and it was where someone bowed down.
Let’s look at the next usage from Gen 22:5.
Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you.”
Ok, so what acts was Abraham doing when he was worshiping? Well, if we let GOD define it, we can read Genesis 18 and every other place where it was mentioned and see that Abraham was bowing himself down, prostrate and in submission.
Although translators sometimes get inconsistent and sloppy, we have great minds which God has given us, and we can look at the original words and use them. In this case, Gen 22:5 actually says,
Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will bow down and return to you.
Inconsistently Translated
We’ve seen that worship in the OT was a physical act of bowing down, and that translators inconsistently translate it as the definition, “to bow down,” or otherwise “to worship,” though they meant the same. Let’s look at some more, surprising, verses on what worship was in the OT.
Genesis 23:7 So Abraham rose and worshiped (bowed down to) the people of the land, the sons of Heth.
Genesis 23:12 And Abraham worshiped (bowed down) before the people of the land.
Genesis 42:6 Now Joseph was the ruler over the land; he was the one who sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph’s brothers came and bowed down to him with their faces to the ground.
When someone says, “I’m going to go worship on Sunday,” do you imagine them going and bowing down physically as is the example all throughout the Old Testament? Probably not! We’ll discuss what it means in the New Testament coming up. As a hint, remember that the Old Testament was a physical foreshadowing of the spiritual to come. We often want to be physically minded instead of spiritually, but we need to overcome that urge.
Priest vs People
So we’ve now seen that “worship” in the Old Testament was always a bowing down to something. People bowed down because the object was worthy of being bowed to. The concept being conveyed is one of submission to a greater power. Consider that God gives us the option to submit now, but at the end, “every knee shall bow.” Bowing is SUBMITTING. Consider also when Joseph’s brothers visited him in Egypt…they had to bow down. They had to SUBMIT.
Throughout the Old Testament, the people would worship (submit, bow down), and the priests would provide service. We can see this in Ezekiel 46 (and plenty of other places) in verse 2:
The prince shall enter by way of the porch of the gate from outside and stand by the post of the gate. Then the priests shall provide his burnt offering and his peace offerings, and he shall worship at the threshold of the gate and then go out.
Notice that the prince presented an offering and worshiped, but the priests were the ones who did the service and offered it up. Why? Because a priest can do nothing with his face to the ground, bowed down. In the New Testament, all Christians are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood.” That changes things big time, and we’ll talk about it down the line. To be clear, notice the distinction between serving and worshiping. The priests served; the people worshiped.
Serve What You Worship
We have seen in the Old Testament that priests served, that the people worshiped (bowed down, prostrate) or submitted themselves to a higher power, and that it was all very physical. Today we’re going to look at what happens when we bow down (worship) false gods.
Deut 11:16Beware that your hearts are not deceived, and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them.
Josh 23:7 so that you will not associate with these nations, these which remain among you, or mention the name of their gods, or make anyone swear by them, or serve them, or bow down to them.
There are a plethora of other verses which have the same terminology. As we can see, those things we worship end up being the things that we also serve. There are some who worship, say, politics, being in submission to a political mission, forgetting to submit to God’s mission and His plan. Others submit to alcohol. We need to carefully watch that which we are worshiping.
All the Time
Before we move on to mentions of “worship” in the New Testament, we need to look at some prophecies about it, and how it was going to change from the OT. Although much of Isaiah is concerned with this, I’m going to take a snippet from Is 66:19-23. Read it all if you get time.
"So your offspring and your name will endure. And it shall be from new moon to new moon And from Sabbath to Sabbath, All mankind will come to bow down [worship] before Me,” says the Lord.
Prophesied here is a huge change in worship. Notice that God said that He planned to change worship (bowing down) to something that occurred from new moon until new moon. In Genesis, we saw that Abraham was able to “go yonder and worship [bow down],” and then come back no longer worshiping. In this prophecy, God asserted that He was removing that type of worship for a perpetual state of bowing down. How can that be?
Perpetual
Isaiah says that we shall worship God all the time, which is highly at odds with what some places do, declaring worship to be certain physical acts that happen on Sunday. Those who believe that worship stops and ends at certain times often rely on Genesis 22:5, where Abraham went, bowed down (worshiped), and then got up again. “See,” they’ll say, “worship has a beginning and an end!”
The problem is that the Old Testament is very different than the New, and that God declared even in the Old Covenant that He would make a people who perpetually worshiped/bowed down to Him
Here’s a question: how many times does the Bible say that we assemble on Sundays “to worship?” The answer is 0. So what’s happened? We’ll see coming up!
Jesus Said
In the New Testament, we are said to assemble on Sundays to worship (OT Hebrew=shachah, NT Greek=proskuneo) exactly zero times, which fits in with the Old Testament prophecy that we would instead be worshiping God from “new moon until new moon,” which is 100% of our lives. What does the New Testament say about worship? First, let’s see where and when Jesus had to say, using John 4:20-24 where a woman wants to know where and when worship would take place:
"Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father… But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Pay close attention. Notice that the pattern is, “location, location, location.” “Mountain, Jerusalem, SPIRIT!” Jesus specifically said that there is no longer a “physical place” to worship, nor a limited time-frame, but rather that it is simply done in spirit and in truth.
Being in Spirit
We now know that God replaced a time and place that we needed to worship physically (bowing down) with a continual, persistent state of submission in “spirit and in truth.” Some say that there are five acts of worship that we can do on Sunday, but this is found nowhere in the entire Bible. Instead, we are to spiritually bow down from new moon until new moon, all the time.
As a Christian, when are you NOT in Spirit? Let’s look at the following verses:
Rom 8:9, However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.
1 Cor 6:19, Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
Just as we are in the Spirit at all times, we SHOULD be submitting to God at all times. Be careful, though, because worshiping is submitting. We cannot claim to be “getting drunk for Christ” as worship, because we are then not submitting to God’s will, and worship in the New Testament is about complete, utter, spiritual submission to our Lord. But again, NOT EVERYTHING WE DO IS WORSHIP—I can’t stress that enough. Rebellion against God is NOT submission to Him
Your Service
We have now seen that worship, in the New Testament, is a 24/7 spiritual submission to God. We’ve seen before that God says that humans end up serving that which they worship (submit to), so what is the overall service that He appreciates from us?
We can see the answer in Romans 12:1:
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your rational service.
God is ultimately seeking a people who give everything to Him, who submit to Him utterly out of love and awe. He has no place for “five authorized acts of “worship,” or “Sunday-only worship,” which is an attempt to replace the spiritual aspect of the New Testament with an earthly form of Old Testament, physical thinking. Let's submit to our Lord in Spirit and in truth!
Service Overview
Abad
Now that we’ve looked at what “worship,” is, we’ve seen that it is not limited to “five authorized acts” or to a certain day of the week, or to a specific place. It’s a spiritual submission to our Lord from new moon until new moon, so saying that one “worships” from 11-noon on Sunday should be inaccurate…hopefully!
We know that the Old Testament had a system where the people prostrated themselves (worshiped) while the priests (Levites) provided service, such as offering up the sacrifices of the people. Since it was impossible to slaughter a ram with one’s face planted on the ground, this made a lot of sense.
Our next question to consider is, “What is service?”
So many times people say, “That concludes the worship service,” though the term worship service is never found in the Bible.
What is service? Who does it? When?
To get us started off, the word primarily used for service in Hebrew is “abad,” and in Greek it’s, “latreuo.” We’ll discuss more on what it means coming up!
Made to Serve
Looking at service, in the OT Hebrew it’s “abad,” and in NT Greek it’s “latreuo.” They are translated as “service,” and would more literally mean something like, “to work, to slave, to enslave.” Let’s take a look at various places where the word usually translated as “serve/served/service” is used.
The first place is in Genesis 2:5:
Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LordGod had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground.
If you guessed that “serve” here was “cultivate, you’re right. It carries the meaning of “to work.”
We’ll look at some more verses just to prove what it means. Gen 15:13 says:
God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.”
Here the meaning expressed is “made to serve,” but it’s listed as “enslaved.”
We could look at a lot more, but for the sake of brevity, we’re going to move on into places where translators in some versions get “worship” confused with “service,” either through being sloppy or just having a bias because of tradition.
Poor Translations
We’ve seen how the word for “service” is used, and it’s not at all like the word for “worship,” but many people get these confused. Using the NASB translation, today I’m going to look at some places where the word was mis-translated
Exodus 12:31 Then he called for Moses and Aaron at night and said, “Rise up, get out from among my people, both you and the sons of Israel; and go, worship the Lord, as you have said.”
The word “serve” is mistranslated as “worship,” which is strange, as right before we found out that God wanted His people to be let go so that they could serve Him:
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and speak to him, 'Thus says the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, “Let My people go, that they may serve Me.”'”(Ex 9:1)
Why do people get these terms confused when they’re nothing alike? I think that it is greatly due to tradition (a clergy-laity split) and some spiritual laziness. It’s much nicer when your preacher serves you, and you worship for only 1/168th of the week.
Sacrifices of Priests
We’re looking at the word “service/serve” and letting God define what it means. In Isaiah 19, there is a prophecy of many nations becoming a spiritual Israel, and in verse 21 it says:
They will even SERVE with sacrifice and offering, and will make a vow to the Lord and perform it.
If you were a Jew reading that prophecy, and being told to serve with sacrifice and offering, you’d be thinking, “Man, this is NUTS! How can I offer a sacrifice if I’m not a priest? How can I sacrifice something if I have my head bowed to the ground, worshiping?”
Next: do we worship, as the people did, or do we serve, as the priests did?
We Are Priests
Often these days, a “pastor” or preacher “serves his flock,” and his flock “worships on Sunday.” In the Old Testament, the people who weren’t priests worshiped, and the priests did the serving. Are modern congregations which have the same style system correct?
First off, we know that God requires that we always be in spiritual submission to Him (worship), but we also know that now every Christian is a priest in God’s eyes:
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession. (1 Pet 2:9)
As priests, we know that we also must serve as well:
But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.”(Rom 7:6)
Using a system where one “attends a worship service” on Sunday and is served by the reverend/pastor/priest isn’t an example of New Testament Christianity, but rather is an “easy” tradition made up by men. We need to all keep in mind that we’re priests and, as such, we should have some form of contribution to building up and serving.
For the Work of Service
When you’re assembled on Sunday, we know that the Bible never says it’s for the purpose of “worshiping", so then, what is it for?
When we assemble together, the specific purpose is to help us as priests in serving God!
Eph 4:11-12 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.
We also know that EACH of us, and not just the preacher, should have a contribution to that edification, and that we should be stimulating one another to love and good works (1 Cor 14:26; Heb 10:24).
Put another way, the more subtle misunderstanding of this is that it sees God as requiring a "worship service," to appease Him, when God has mentioned our assembly as being for our own edification. In 1 Cor 14:26, He says:
What is the outcome then, brethren? When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.
Jesus had to correct a Jewish misconception that was very similar and He chided them saying, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:23-3:6). Likewise, the assembly is for the saints, not the saints for assembly. Edification and equipping of the saints for the work of service is the goal—making ourselves strong, spiritual warriors for Christ, not just rule-keepers of technicalities.
All of the above is summed up in an often-mistranslated verse which says:
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your intelligent service.”
(Note: translator bias shows up in the NASB translation of this verse, which ends it with “spiritual service of worship,” though it never says spiritual nor worship.)
So the Bible never says that we assemble “to worship,” but it does say that we worship (submit) spiritually, and in doing that, we naturally come to serve God, and in the assembly of the saints, that’s expressed as all things which further build us up to go out and work for our Lord.
Levite to Christian
Today is one final point about service of priests (us) that is often unnoticed. Let’s read Acts 4:32-37:
And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them. And with great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all. For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles’ feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need.
Now Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also called Barnabas by the apostles (which translated means Son of Encouragement), and who owned a tract of land, sold it and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
This is important because it illustrates the shift away from the Old Testament system, where the Levites (Levitical priests) received the offerings from the worshipers and then provided service by sacrificing the offerings. One of the priests (a Levite) suddenly got it! The people used to be laying their offerings at the feet of the Levites, and now that’s changed. Suddenly a Levite is laying out his offering at the feet of the “uneducated and untrained.” We really need to avoid going back to that Old Testament system where we, the "laity", “worship”, while our “priest” serves!
There’s a lot more depth to be had from studying these words, and I don’t have time to cover it all, so I encourage you to check them out for yourself!
A Summary:
Would you say that singing is an act of worship? Most would. But before I get to that, I have to say that it's very easy to experience cognitive dissonance in such topics. Cognitive Dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values. I've experienced it. You have. We probably all have.
But the truth doesn't fear examination, and as those who seek the truth, we should also not fear finding our own beliefs to be incorrect, or perhaps simply misdirected, though the intent is good. In fact, the worst that can happen is that we learn and grow.
We've tended to think that "we come together to worship, you know, like to praise God, maybe to sing."
Check out 2 Chron 29:28-29 and how it explains worship:
WHILE the whole assembly worshiped, the singers also sang and the trumpets sounded; all this continued until the burnt offering was finished. Now at the completion of the burnt offerings, the king and all who were present with him bowed down and worshiped.
Notice that the singing wasn't worship. The trumpeting wasn't worship. The offering wasn't worship. Why is that? How can those things be?
Worship is the physical act of prostration and bowing down—it is the only physical act of "worship," and that's why "singing" and our five acts just aren't worship. If you see some Jews on the floor bowing down, they are worshiping. Arabs on a prayer mat? Worshiping. Us singing? We're singing. That's what it is. Not worship. We are not assembling to worship, because we're not assembling to bow down in reverence to God—not physically. In fact, we're just assembling.
1 Cor 14:26 would explain it like this, saying,
What is the outcome then, brethren? When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.
Not "when you assemble to worship." Not, "for the worship service." Just, "when you assemble."
But why? Why do we no longer bow down physically as the Jews did? Jesus said in John 4:21-24:
Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship (bow down/prostrate to) the Father. [...] But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship [prostrate before Him] in spirit and truth.
Notice that the lady asked for the location to worship (bow down) and she got her answer—the location is in the spirit. Not at a church's building. Why? Because GOD IS SPIRIT. That's where He wants our reverence. Not for 1/168th of the week in some brick building.
In fact God wants our submission and reverence 24/7. Does He ever mention having a time or place for you to worship? Nope, that was for the Jews. Bowing down is worshiping, and it's the only worship. Some do it physically, but God wants it spiritually.
And that is why Isaiah 66 has a fantastic prophecy of the New Covenant saying,
“For just as the new heavens and the new earth Which I make will endure before Me,” declares the Lord, “So your offspring and your name will endure. “And it shall be from new moon to new moon. And from sabbath to sabbath, all mankind will come to bow down (worship) before Me,” says the Lord.
New moon to new moon. That's ALL the time. Not just on Sunday. This is our Old Testament key, or one of them, to understanding the difference. We can submit to God spiritually—that is, worship Him, bowing our very spirits in reverence—from new moon to new moon. Now when we're busy sinning, we're kind of lifting our heads up and being that stiff-necked people who won't bow down, so not "everything we do is worship."
By the way, this is not to discount our assembly. We very much NEED to assemble and have the Lord's Supper, we need to edify one another and be joyous praising God. But when we start calling one hour "Bible study," and 25% of the congregation shows up, and then at "worship" the other 75% shows up—well, we have a problem at our very core.
Suggested Additional Study:
The above may not be fully convincing. In the New Testament, the Greek word for “faith,” pistis, primarily means “firm persuasion.” One good way to have more faith in what Jesus said about worship is to let God define the terms. To that end, I have complied a list of every time “worship/proskuneo” is used in the New Testament. This semi-inductive study will let you see the context in which “worship” is usually used, and in doing so, let’s God define the word the way He wishes.
It’s just like at a spelling bee. “Could you use it in a sentence?” Check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/notes/luca...
Is it okay for a woman to use the copier to make copies of the bulletin for handing out on Sunday morning?
Is it okay for a woman to be the collector of items for the bulletin
(contact point for announcements/events, articles to be printed, who's
preaching when, etc)?
Is it okay for a woman to be the producer/editor/printer of the bulletin?
Is it okay for a woman to run the sound system?
Is it okay for a woman to run the A/V recording system?
Is it okay for a woman to make the sermon recordings available on the church web site?
Is it okay for a woman to run the church web site? to handle the
mechanics of domain registration / web site building/maintenance /
publishing of material on the web site / creation of original material
for web publication?
Is it okay for a woman to prepare
the bread and cup for Sunday's Lord's Supper? to clean up / clean the
utensils / pick up the empty cups afterwards?
Is it okay for a woman to get up from her seat to cross the aisle to pass the plate if the assigned server overlooks it?
It is okay for a woman to count the collection and deposit it in the bank and keep the financial records?
Is it okay for a woman to do the weekly head-count, and maintain the attendance records?
Is it okay for a woman to participate in the serving of a regular meal
during a fellowship meal, perhaps by going table-to-table with
tea/Kool-aid refills, or by dispensing yummy hot-buttered rolls?
Is it okay for a woman to participate in the serving of the Lord's
Supper, perhaps by going pew-to-pew with the fruit of the vine cups, or
serving the bread?
Some of these things may violate
our comfort zones, but we are not called to pamper our comfort zones;
we're called to encourage and equip one another to do good works, and to
use one's God-given strengths to the benefit of the body.
There
is room to discuss if these sorts of things result in a woman usurping
authority (if an elder asks a woman to do Task X, is she usurping
authority if she complies? if she refuses?) or in teaching a man (is she
teaching a man if she writes a web article? if she writes a song that
gets included in our hymnals 50 years later?), but we shouldn't just
knee-jerk react against, without prayerful consideration, a woman
filling these roles.
Originally published at: http://kentwest.blogspot.com/2016/10/questions-about-possible-roles-for-women.html
Lucas Necessary published this article on Facebook, Friday, October 21, 2016. I have reproduced it here, as Facebook requires a login account, which means not everyone can browse to the original article.
I used to think that we assembled "for worship," but interestingly Paul says, "let all things be done for edification." (1 Cor 14:26) In fact, never does God describe our Christian assembly as being something done "to worship Him." But back when I thought that He did, I saw the assembling of the saints as formality, not family, and I have to be honest—that view was destructive and hampered my ability to serve Christ with my life.
Anyway, God never says “worship service,” or “Bible class,” but He does use some very interesting terminology that I think apply to the assembling of the saints: equipping, being mended, being fully trained, and being made complete.
Sorry, zero Bible results.
One reason that we assemble with our brothers and sisters in Christ is for, "the EQUIPPING of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.” (Eph 4:12-15) The word "equipping" here is from a Greek word, "katartizo."
This basic word is also used when Jesus was walking in Matthew 4:21, He said, "Going on from there He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, MENDING their nets; and He called them.” (This time katartizo is mending.)
That makes sense. Edification is "building up," and certainly assembling with my brothers and sisters does that for me! But it also mends the spiritual and emotional wounds that I get throughout the week, like net (as a fisher of men) that has been beaten and battered.
That's still not the end of the story, though. Assemblies always featured "instruction," and often we are "able to instruct one another” (Romans 15:14). In that sense, Luke 6:40 used "equipping," and "mending" a little differently, saying,
"A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been FULLY TRAINED, will be like his teacher." Being equipped as saints is the same thing that Jesus describes as BECOMING FULLY TRAINED." (This time katartizo is about training.)
And I think there’s a reason for the above paragraph, too. Although our assemblies these days don't feature much more than a bunch of people listening to one "smart lecturer," early Christians "each had a psalm, a teaching, a revelation." (1 Cor 14:26) I imagine that this really did help them become fully trained, and that training (in a non-hostile environment with spiritual family) probably helped them much more effectively spread the gospel.
I guess I'll end with one other thing that I noticed. Equipping, mending, and being fully trained lead to one other use of the very same word:
"Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you BE MADE COMPLETE in the same mind and in the same judgment." (1 Cor 1:10) (And this time katartizo is about being made complete.)
When we assemble and do all things for the building up, we are being made complete. And all these things, then, are a lot more enticing than a mere checklist of things that we have to do to "keep God happy." As we are all members of the body of Christ, we all have different functions. In your own body, an eye is important, and so is a leg, though they serve very different purposes. Christ's church is the same way! As we assemble together, we have more people with various talents, and we truly start to be made complete!
When John the Baptist came preaching (Luke 3), he told the people to change their mindsets ("repent"), and to bring forth fruit consistent with that change of mindset.
Three groups of people then asked him what they should do. He did not tell them to pray more, or to read their Bibles, or to go to church more consistently, or to give more to the Temple, or to preach/teach others.
He gave each group an answer based on personal economics:
To the multitudes he said, "If you have extra, share it with those who have nothing."
To the tax-office employees he said, "Don't charge more than has been appraised; you've no right to that extra."
To the soldiers he said, "Don't use your muscle to get into the 'Protection' racket, and don't be making false charges against anyone."
John's preaching was a "social" gospel, not a "religious" gospel.
And what did Jesus preach?
His sermon in his home town (Luke 4:16ff) was not about the importance of baptism, or instruction in how to pray, or an exposition of the minor prophets. It, too, was a "social" gospel - about bringing good news to poor people, healing the heart-sick, proclaiming freedom to the imprisoned, healing disease like blindness, providing relief to those who are at the end of their rope, and to proclaim a new regime, the rulership of God.
The Pharisees were all about getting right the legal aspects of religion. John and Jesus were all about meeting the needs of needy people. Jesus was about the internals ("wash the inside of the cup"), not the externals, and about the weightier matters of the law - justice, mercy, and loyalty (without neglecting the legalities, however).
Where is our emphasis?
Are we told to assemble to worship God, or to prod one another into doing good works? Are we told to assemble to faithfully execute specific rituals, or for each of us to build one another up using whatever gifting God has provided to each one of us?
Let's calculate how many stars would have to form, on average, per year, to form 1 * 10^24 stars over the course of 14 * (10 ^ 9) years. Just plug the numbers into any Google search bar and Google will do the math for you:
(1 * (10 ^ 24)) / (14 * (10^9))
The answer is that on average, 71,428,571,428,571.4 stars must've formed every year since the Big Bang. We can divide that by 365.25 days in a year to find out how many stars must be forming every day:
71,428,571,428,571.4 / 365.25
The answer is: 195,560,770,509.436
Huh. I don't see nearly 200 billion new stars appearing in every night sky. Maybe something's wrong with my math. Or my observing of the night sky. Or the idea that all these stars have formed naturalistically over the course of 14 billion years.
Well, math is math; it just works.
And whereas I might not see 2 billion stars appear in every night sky, surely I'd see a few new stars appear over the course of my life.
So maybe the evolutionary theory is wrong; maybe all, or at least most, of the stars were created in one brief burst of creative activity at the universe's beginning. The math and observations certainly work better with that idea.
Old
Covenant - Get the legalities right, and the relationship with God will
be right. (Based on "don't touch, don't taste, don't handle" rules.)
New
Covenant - Get the relationship with God right, and the legalities will
be right. (Not based on "don't touch, don't taste, don't handle"
rules.)
Both "systems" have rules, but one is
rules-based, and the other is relationship-based. The relationship you
have with your government is rules-based; the relationship you have with
your spouse is relationship-based. Both have rules, but their
foundations are fundamentally different.
The kingdom
of God is not about replacing one legal system (having rules written in
stone for all to see) with a different legal system (having rules
hidden between the lines, perceived only if you have the correct study
method and love for the Truth, found only by a few). It's about
replacing a legal system, wherein you wash the outside of the cup, with a
relationship system, wherein you wash the inside of the cup.
If
you have to ask, "Is X a sin?", you're living by a rules-based system.
If you instead ask, "Does God want me to do X", you're living by a
relationship-based system. Both systems should result in you avoiding
sinful activities, but one system causes you to worth-ship a legal
book/system, and the other causes you to worth-ship a Person.
The very first Christians worshiped in the Temple, daily. What do you suppose they did during the daily instrumental praise which was being led from about 30 feet from their meeting area? Why doesn't Luke record the controversy that would surely ensue had the Christians been plugging their ears and telling their friends and families they were now sinning if they sang along with the instruments? Why didn't the enemy Jews ever list this point as one of the charges against the Christians? At any rate, the authorized pattern here is for us to assemble in some place where non-Christians are worshiping God with instruments.
And what about their daily meetings? That's the original New Testament pattern of worship. But we've subtracted from that pattern.
Why don't we take turns in the assembly, one by one, using whatever gift God has given us in order to build up the body? This is the pattern taught by Paul to the Corinthians.
Why do we take up a collection every week, perpetually, to pay the preacher and electric bill, pressing everyone to give? The New Testament pattern is for the giving to be a year-long fund-raising effort, by the wealthier, to give to the less wealthy. The poor didn't give; they received. And the money was not used to pay church expenses.
The New Testament pattern for the Lord's Supper is to eat it at night, not in the morning, as part of a bigger meal that should also feed the poor.
We have done very well at adapting the pattern of the Catholics so it looks at first glance like it came from the NT, but we've done a very poor job of following the actual NT "pattern".
And when Paul instructs his readers to teach one another using psalms, isn't it adding to God's word to insist that means "psalms, except the ones God has already given you"? Isn't it subtracting to not use those psalms for teaching when Paul himself used them often in his teaching?
Truth be told, there is no "pattern for worship" in the NT. But we have a psychological need for such a pattern, so amazingly we find that pattern (and explain away the pattern elements mentioned above that don't fit the pattern we've "discovered").
In the old covenant, based on keeping the letter of the law, God gave a definite written-in-stone pattern for worship. The new covenant is not like the old; it's based on keeping the spirit, not the letter of the law. But we (like children) have that psychological need for law, and so we've read between the lines and jigsawed this puzzle-passage with that puzzle-passage and have "found" the "New Testament pattern for worship".
We've gone from instructions written for all to see to instructions that are hidden so well that only "we", for two hundred out of two thousand years, have been able to successfully find and keep them.
Paul said that if law could bring life, the Mosaic law would have been the law to do it (Gal 3:21). And it couldn't do the job. Why then do we seek to find a different legal system? Paul said that doesn't work.
The new legal system, the law of Christ, is not a letter-of-the-law system. Instead, the law of Christ is fulfilled by bearing one another's burdens (Gal 6:2); the perfect law of liberty is fulfilled by taking care of orphans and widows and living a clean life (Jam 1:25-27); the royal law is fulfilled by loving your neighbor (Jam 2:8).
This is the New Testament pattern of worship - to live one's life day-by-day honoring God with your lifestyle (Rom 12:1). It is not following an imagined set of rules on a certain day, rules having more in common with medieval Catholic practices than first-century apostolic practices.
For some years I've wanted to write a little app that allowed me to use a couple of keys on my computer keyboard (or the mouse buttons on my mouse) as a dit/dah keyer, but to make it available for other hams, I wanted it in a universal language
Whereas Windows users have VisualBASIC, Linux and Mac users do not, and whereas Linux/Mac users have shell scripting, such is pretty limited in the Windows world.
But everybody has a web browser.
It's only recently that the HTML5 web standard has made my goal fairly trivial.
So if you'd like to code a bit of web-page to play some computer-keyboard Morse, come along....
Of course, you'd probably like to know what the result will be, before you follow these instructions, so click here to give the keyer a tryout.
The HTML Skeleton Document
If you've never written a web page, let's start out with that. I won't deal with all the exacting web standards, but I will do some of the basics. Open a text editor of some sort that produces plain ASCII text (like Notepad on Windows, or TextEdit on Mac, or Gedit on Linux - be aware that the Mac TextEdit has a few gotchas; you have to remember to convert to Plain Text before you save your document, and to manually add the .html extension, and to turn off Smart Quotes and Smart Dashes in the Edit / Substitutions menu), and type in the following:
Hello, World!
Save the document as plain text, giving it a name like MorseKeyer.html. If you have a web presence, you can place this file on your web server, but if you don't, just save it to your hard drive, perhaps on your Desktop. Then open a web-browser, and either browse to your web server, or do a File / Open and browse to the document. When you open it, you should see the words "Hello, World!" in your web-browser. Yea! You have a web page. But it's really not up to web standards, so let's add the basic minimum it should have. Edit your document so that it now looks like the following:
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
"Hello, World!"
</body>
</html>
The blank lines are not necessary, but they help to break the code up into visual blocks that make the code more readable.
This code doesn't exactly meet proper web standards, but it's good enough for our purposes. Save the document (as plain text, remember, with an .html extension), and then refresh (or reload) your web document/page. You shouldn't see any visible change.
Developing Our Page
Now, in the <head> and </head> lines, add this little bit:
<head>
<title>My Morse Code Keyer</title>
</head>
Save the document and reload it in your web-browser, and you should see the Window or Tab title change to say "My Morse Code Keyer".
The <header> section is for web-page housekeeping stuff; the <body> section is where most of your web-page code goes.
In the <body> section, replace the "Hello, World!" with something more meaningful, like:
<body>
<h1>Welcome to Kent's Web-based Morse Code Keyer!</h1>
<p>Press the left arrow key for a dah, and the right arrow key for a dit.</p>
</body>
(Later, you can choose to use different keys than what's convenient on this MacBook keyboard on which I'm currently typing, and change the message accordingly.)
The <h1> tells your web-browser to display the enclosed text as a header, using the built-in definition for the first-level of headers. An <h2> would use the second-level of built-in header definitions, etc.
The <p> defines its enclosed text as being a paragraph. Although not strictly required for your web page to work, it's good to get into the habit of using this tag around your paragraphs.
Save your document, reload it in your web-browser, and you should see the appropriate changes.
Using Javascript to Watch for a Keypress
Now we need to do a bit of Javascript programming, as we need a little more
programming power than HTML by itself can handle. Since Javascript
is built into modern web browsers, we won't have to download/install
anything extra. And despite the similarity in names, Javascript has no
relation to Java; they are two separate programming tools.
Now we need to watch for a keypress. Later we'll generate the code to generate the dit and dah tones, based on which key is pressed.
In the <body> section, just above the closing </body> tag, add this section:
<script>
document.addEventListener("keydown", dealWithKeyboard, false);
function dealWithKeyboard(event) {
alert("Hey! A key has been pressed");
}
</script>
This code tells the web-browser that this is a Javascript script (more properly the <script> line should be <script type="text/javascript">).
The script command, "addEventListener" tells the browser (or more accurately, your document in the browser) to listen for an event, in this case the event of a key being pressed down (you could also listen for a keyup, or a mouse button, or several other options), and when it hears one, to run another piece of code called a "function", which is named "dealWithKeyboard" (people with some experience programming with functions should notice there is no "()" pair at the end of the function name). In the next thee lines we build that function ourselves, which simply displays a message via the "built-in" function of "alert".
We could call the function pretty much anything we wanted, as long as it matches both in the addEventListener command and in the function definition. For example, we could call it "playMorseTones" if we wanted. The "false" operator at the end of the addEventListener command just tells the command to not "capture" further input.
Save your file and reload the page in your browser. Now when you press a key, you should see that message.
Which Key Was Pressed?
Of course, we need to know which key was pressed, so change the function to this:
function dealWithKeyboard(event) {
alert(event.keyCode + " has been pressed");
}
The "event" parameter holds the keycode of the key that is pressed, and passes it to our function. The line "function dealWithKeyboard(event)" tells the system that "dealWithKeyboard" is a function, and it's being given all the information that is contained in the variable "event", which includes quite a bit of stuff, but of most interest to us, the keycode of the key that was pressed.
The ".keyCode" is a built-in function that returns the keycode's value from that "event" parameter. If you wanted to, you could use a different name for the "event" parameter, such as "e" or "theKeyThatWasPressed", but "theKeyThatWasPressed.keyCode" is more tedious to type than "e.keyCode", which itself is not quite as self-explanatory as "event.keyCode".
Save your .html file, and refresh your browser page, and press some keys to see what keycodes they generate.
Now would be a good time to try pressing a few keys to figure out what you want to use for your Dit and your Dah, and make a note of the keycodes generated by those keys. I'm going to use 39 for the right arrow (dit), and 37 for the left (dah), on my keyboard.
Checkpoint
At this point, your entire "MorseKeyer.html" document should look something like this:
<!DOCtype html>
<html>
<head>
<title>My Morse Code Keyer</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to Kent's Web-based Morse Code Keyer!</h1>
<p>Press the left arrow key for a dah, and the right arrow key for a dit.</p>
<script>
document.addEventListener("keydown", dealWithKeyboard, false);
function dealWithKeyboard(event) {
alert(event.keyCode + " has been pressed");
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
Responding to the Appropriate Keypress
Now that we've captured the keypresses, we have to do different things based on which key is pressed. We'll handle this with a "switch" statement, which is a form of an If-Then statement you may remember from your high school programming class.
We no longer need the pop-up box telling us what key we've pressed, so we can delete it, or just comment it out. Let's comment it out, so that it won't be treated like a computer programming instruction anymore, but just a comment. This way we can always uncomment it later if we need to test other keys.
Just add a couple of forward slashes somewhere at the front of the line, like so:
// alert(event.keyCode + " has been pressed");
Now if you reload your page and press a key, you won't see anything happen, because our function no longer does anything.
So let's give it something to do.
Just after the newly-commented alert line, add these lines:
switch(event.keyCode) {
case 39:
alert("You pressed the Right Arrow");
break;
case 37:
alert("You pressed the Left Arrow");
break;
}
Now if you reload your web page, and press one of your two chosen keys, you should see a pop-up window telling you which key you pressed. All other keys are ignored.
I don't like "magic numbers" in my program, so rather than test the case of "40" and "39", I'm going to use variables with meaningful names here, so that the lines become
case _Dit:
and
case _Dah:
Then earlier in the script, just below the opening <script> tag, I'll define these two variables. The entire <script> section now looks like this:
<script>
var _Dah = 40; // 40 = down arrow
var _Dit = 39; // 39 = right arrow
document.addEventListener("keydown", dealWithKeyboard, true);
function dealWithKeyboard(event) {
// alert(event.keyCode + " has been pressed");
switch(event.keyCode) {
case _Dit:
alert("You pressed the Dit key");
break;
case _Dah:
alert("You pressed the Dah key");
break;
}
}
</script>
Now if you want to change your keys for Dit and Dah, just change those variables.
Notice that all other keypresses are ignored. We could put a default case for those, like so:
switch(event.keyCode) {
case _Dit:
alert("You pressed the Dit key");
break;
case _Dah:
alert("You pressed the Dah key");
break;
default:
alert("You pressed an invalid key");
break;
}
Replace Message With Tones
We're nearly there. All that is left is to generate the tones.
For the last and final section of our program, we'll just replace the pop-up alert boxes with sound-generation code.
So comment out the Dit alert lines, and add the following code:
// alert("You pressed the Dit key");
// Create the audio context
var context = new AudioContext();
var oscillator = context.createOscillator();
oscillator.frequency.value = 220;
// Connect the oscillator to our speakers
oscillator.connect(context.destination);
// Start the oscillator now
oscillator.start(context.currentTime);
// Stop the oscillator after "DitLength" seconds from now
oscillator.stop(context.currentTime + 1);
Now if you save the code and reload your web page, and then press the Dit key, you should hear a tone of 220 hertz. (The Dah key does not yet work.)
Again, there are a couple of "magic numbers"in this code, so let's replace them with variables.
Replace the "220" with "_Freq", and the "1" with "_DitLength", and then declare these two (and a Dah) variables:
var _Dah = 37; // 37 = left arrow
var _Dit = 39; // 39 = right arrow
var _Freq = 220; // Tone frequency
var _DitLength = 1; // Length of the Dit
var _DahLength = _DitLength * 3; // A Dah is usually three times a Dit
and replace those magic numbers with their variable names.
Now add the Dah key handler: replace the alert-Dah line with:
// alert("You pressed the Dah key");
// Create the audio context
var context = new AudioContext();
var oscillator = context.createOscillator();
oscillator.frequency.value = _Freq;
// Connect the oscillator to our speakers
oscillator.connect(context.destination);
// Start the oscillator now
oscillator.start(context.currentTime);
// Stop the oscillator after "DahLength" seconds from now
oscillator.stop(context.currentTime + _DahLength);
If you run your code now, you should have a working keyer.
I find that a _DitLength of 0.6 works better than 1. You can also tinker with the frequency.
With a little more programming, you could even have these values input by the user. And you may hear a bit of click in your tones; I do on my MacBook. But this is a simple program; I'll leave it to you to work out all the kinks.
Just in case I've left something out, or left something a little vague, here's the entire .html document for reference (I rearranged the order of the variables a bit):
<!doctype html>
<!-- From http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-web-audio-api-what-is-it--cms-23735 -->
<html>
<head>
<title>My Morse Code Keyer</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to the Web Audio API</h1>
<p>Press Down Arrow for Dit, Right Arrow for Dah.</p>
<script>
// Duration of the dits and dahs
var _DitLength = 0.06;
var _DahLength = _DitLength * 3;
var _Freq = 440;
var _Dah = 37; // 37 = down arrow
var _Dit = 39; // 39 = right arrow
addEventListener("keydown", dealWithKeyboard, true);
function dealWithKeyboard(event) {
// alert(event.keyCode + " has been pressed");
switch(event.keyCode) {
case _Dit:
// alert("down");
// Create the audio context
var context = new AudioContext();
var oscillator = context.createOscillator();
oscillator.frequency.value = _Freq;
// Connect the oscillator to our speakers
oscillator.connect(context.destination);
// Start the oscillator now
oscillator.start(context.currentTime);
// Stop the oscillator after "DitLength" seconds from now
oscillator.stop(context.currentTime + _DitLength);
break;
case _Dah:
// alert("down");
// Create the audio context
var context = new AudioContext();
var oscillator = context.createOscillator();
oscillator.frequency.value = _Freq;
// Connect the oscillator to our speakers
oscillator.connect(context.destination);
// Start the oscillator now
oscillator.start(context.currentTime);
// Stop the oscillator after "DahLength" seconds from now
oscillator.stop(context.currentTime + _DahLength);
break;
}
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
Have fun playing with your new web-based Morse code keyer!
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>My Morse Code Keyer</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to Kent's Web-based Morse Code Keyer!</h1>
<p>Press the left arrow key for a dah, and the right arrow key for a dit.</p>
<script>
document.addEventListener("keydown", dealWithKeyboard, false);
function playTone(DitOrDah) {
const ditLength = 0.06; // Length of the Dit tone in seconds.
const dahMultiplier = 3; // A dah is this many times as long as a dit.
const freq = 440; // Frequency of tone, in Hertz.
const waveType = "sine"; // sine, square, sawtooth, triangle
const soundBooth = new AudioContext(); // Creates a virtual recording studio, sort of.
oscillator = soundBooth.createOscillator(); // Creates an oscillator.
oscillator.type = waveType; // That generates this type of wave.
oscillator.frequency.value = freq; // At this frequency.
oscillator.connect(soundBooth.destination); // Connects the output to the system's default speaker system.
switch(DitOrDah) {
case "dit": // If this function gets a dit, play oscillator for dit's length of time.
oscillator.start(soundBooth.currentTime);
oscillator.stop(soundBooth.currentTime + ditLength);
break;
case "dah": // If a dah, then longer.
oscillator.start(soundBooth.currentTime);
oscillator.stop(soundBooth.currentTime + (ditLength * dahMultiplier));
break;
}
} // end of playTone()
function dealWithKeyboard(event) {
const dah = 37; // 37 = left arrow
const dit = 39; // 39 = right arrow
switch(event.keyCode) {
case dit:
playTone("dit");
break;
case dah:
playTone("dah");
break;
}
} // end of dealWithKeyboard()
</script>
</body>
</html>
Originally published at https://kentwest.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-simple-web-based-morse-code-keyer.html
I'm not a fan of reality-TV, but being married to a fan, I get exposed to such.
Occasionally, a nugget is discovered.
In the show, "Marriage Boot-Camp: Reality Stars", S7E4, "Memp-hitz The Fan", one of the hosts made this statement:
Conflict means that you are free enough with the other person to share your heart in an open and vulnerable way.
and then they give these eight rules of engagement to prevent crazy fights and stay in productive fights:
"Same Team" - Fights are for your relationship. Attack the issue, not each other.
"One Play At a Time" - Stick with one topic until you get past that topic.
"Stay In the Game" - Don't be avoiders; don't turn your back and walk away; stick it out.
"LUV" - Listen, Understand, Validate.
"Personal Fouls" - Don't name-call of any kind.
"the Time-Out" - if the fight gets too intense, take a time-out.
"Win-Win" - If your goal in a fight is to win instead of being happy, you're gonna lose every single time. (This point was illustrated earlier in the show by having the couples face-off from each other across a swimming pool, each holding one end of a tug-of-war rope. The couples were told, "Don't be pulled from your spot." On the "go" signal, some couples used all their strength to pull their partner into the pool; one person struggled for a while and then gave up, jumping into the pool to end the tug-of-war; another person cheated by having someone push her partner from behind into the pool. At the end, the hosts had another couple demonstrate the way to win - each partner in this couple, when told to not be pulled from their spot, simply stood there holding the rope without pulling. Neither was pulled from their spot, and there was no conflict between the two partners.)
"Spike the Ball" - Celebrate when you move past something.
Originally published at: http://kentwest.blogspot.com/2016/06/eight-rules-of-engagement-to-prevent.html
To avoid being turned over to the Jewish courts, which would have been a death sentence for him, Paul told the Roman court ĺActs 25:11, paraphrased), "You've found me innocent, but want to appease the Jews. So I appeal to Caesar."
What would have been the result if Jesus had told Pilate, "You've found me innocent, but want to appease the Jews. So I appeal to Caesar."
Originally published at: http://kentwest.blogspot.com/2016/05/i-appeal-to-caesar.html
WEB Gal 1:6 I marvel that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different “good news”; 7 and there isn’t another “good news.” Only there are some who trouble you, and want to pervert the Good News of Christ. 8 But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any “good news” other than that which we preached to you, let him be cursed. 9 As we have said before, so I now say again: if any man preaches to you any “good news” other than that which you received, let him be cursed.
This phrase, "other gospel", has been used by some as evidence that "we cannot assume the approval for something when none is given". But in using it thus, the passage is made to say something it doesn't say.
The "other gospel" which that passage warns about is a "gospel" that requires the Gentiles to keep the Jewish law of Moses. You can't just pull those few verses out of context; if you read them in context, you should be able to see that the "other gospel" of which they speak is summarized at the end of the next chapter, and the beginning of the one after that:
WEB Gal 2:21 I don’t make void the grace of God. For if righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nothing! 3:1 Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you not to obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly portrayed among you as crucified? 2 I just want to learn this from you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now completed in the flesh?
The entire book of Galatians is dedicated to the theme that we are justified by faith, not by keeping this regulation or that rule or some legal system like the law of Moses (he also speaks of this in other places in his writing, such as in Col 2:16ff, where he says that Christianity is not about rules and regulations like "don't touch, taste, handle", or such as in Rom 14 where he says that the kingdom of God is not about rules such as eating or not eating, drinking or not drinking, keeping a holy day or not keeping it, but rather is about joy and peace and "doing the right thing" throughout your life's walk).
This false teaching which Paul is combating throughout the book, that Gentiles must keep the law of Moses (as we see the Jewish Christians teaching in Acts 15:1,5), is what he's referring to when he mentions "another gospel". He is not referring to the idea that "we cannot assume the approval for something when none is given". In fact, this claim is the very thing Paul is arguing against, saying:
WEB Gal 5:1 Stand firm therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and don’t be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. ... 4 You are alienated from Christ, you who desire to be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace. 5 For we, through the Spirit, by faith wait for the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision amounts to anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love.
He says that if you want to be a law-keeper, you have to score 100% on your law-keeping, or you fail completely; none of us can score 100%; that's why law-keeping can't save us. There is NO law that will save us, not even the law of not assuming we have approval for something when none is given. (If there were ANY law that could save us, it would have been the law of Moses - Gal 3:21 "For if there had been a law given which could make alive, most certainly righteousness would have been of the law" - but it couldn't do it.) This is Paul's point in Galatians, and in much of the remainder of his writings, that we are not saved by keeping rules, such as "you must have authorization to breathe" - that's not a very freeing gospel; it's just as binding as the old covenant was, just with different rules.
Regardless of whether you can accept this teaching, that Paul is preaching against meticulous rule-keeping as a means of salvation, the use of Gal 1:6-9's "other gospel" to mean we need authorization for what we do is to simply take that passage out of context and use it to say something it doesn't say.
It has been claimed that, "The church of Christ practices and maintains the pattern of which was laid out in the book of Acts...".
I urge those who make this claim to reread the book of Acts.
Do we meet daily?
Do we praise God in a place (ie the Jewish Temple) wherein instrumental music is used in praise to God by those with whom we have serious doctrinal differences?
Do we live a communistic lifestyle, wherein none of us consider our possessions as our own, but rather as belonging to the community?
Do we have conferences where delegates from different churches meet to decide doctrinal practices for all churches everywhere?
Do we have thousands of believers who zealously keep the law of Moses?
Do we have church leaders who make Nazirite vows, ending them with the prescribed purification rituals and animal sacrifices?
If you'll reread the book of Acts with these questions in your head, I believe you will find that you need to cease claiming that we maintain the pattern laid out in the book of Acts.
In fact, if you'll zoom out and look at the broad overall pattern, you'll see it's a pattern of change, of adapting, not of a static snapshot of a perfect model of a perfect church.
When we look at the New Testament as a legal contract, to which we must adhere in every aspect, we have simply replaced one legal system with another, and we have gotten it wrong. We have missed the mark.
The apostle Paul does not contrast the Law of Moses, the old legal system, with the Law of Christ*, a new legal system; he contrasts a legal system with a grace/faith system. (* The only time the phrase "law of Christ" is found is Gal 6:2, wherein it is said that this law is fulfilled by bearing one another's burdens.)
The New Testament is not a new legal code replacing an old legal code. The old legal code (the old covenant) was written in stone, for all to see. God prophesied (Jer 31:31ff) that the new covenant would not be like that old covenant. The result is a new covenant that does not have a list of laws like the old covenant had; it's not a legal system.
Yet we think it is, so we FIND (that is, invent) legalistic laws within the pages of the New Testament, and then we teach those man-invented laws as doctrine. Vanity, this is vanity.
Don't you think that if God wanted to replace one legal system with another legal system, he'd make the laws in the new system just as plain and clear as he did in the old system? Or do we think he's now hidden those laws "between the lines", perhaps to weed out those believers who aren't dedicated enough to dig to find them?
The "law of Christ" is not about rules and regulations, such as "don't handle, nor taste, nor touch". These rules certainly look religious, but they aren't of any value in changing who we really are; they're just externals (Col 2:16-23). The law of Christ is about bearing one another's burdens, about feeding the hungry, and dressing the naked, and about having joy and peace, and doing "the right thing" (Gal 6:2; Matt 25:31ff; Rom 14:17). The "royal law" is not about keeping or not keeping a Sabbath day or a Sunday or a Passover or an Easter as a holy day, or about eating or not eating meat sacrificed to idols, or about drinking a little wine with supper vs being a teetotaler, or even being in agreement with other believers on these and similar issues (like one-cuppers, or kitchens in the building, or instrumental music); it's about loving your neighbor, and taking care of the widow and orphan, and living a clean life (Col 2:16-17; Rom 14; Jam 2:8; 1:27).
Yes, there may be correct and incorrect answers to these issues, but not every believer may come to understand that correct answer, and more importantly, the New Testament may not even provide that correct answer, simply because ... the New Testament is not a legal system.
Rather, the New Testament is a record of Jesus, and of his early disciples as they learned to live within the new covenant. The New Testament "system" can be best summed up by Rom 12:1 - "Live your life in submission to God, on a moment-to-moment basis; this is your holy service."
It's not about tithing on pennies (or spices, as Jesus put it - Matt 23:23); it's about the weightier matters of justice and mercy and being heart-faithful (like a spouse to a spouse should be heart-faithful - not perfect performance, but perfect commitment to each other). Yes, take care of the small details also; tithe on the pennies if that's what your understanding leads you to do; but the legalities are not the focus.
When we ask if a man who has been widowed, and then marries a second time, can be an elder ("Does he meet the qualification of being the husband of one wife?"), we're looking at the New Testament as a legal system. We're looking at the letter of the law, which Paul says brings death (2 Cor 3:6). Instead, we should be making judgments based on having God's spirit within us, on having the heart of Jesus; what would Jesus do? Would he use such a man as a shepherd for his people, or would he disqualify the man on a technicality?
We supposedly are adults now, no longer children; we don't need the rules and regulations that children need. We don't look to technicalities to get away with what we can ("You just said I couldn't watch TV; you didn't say I couldn't watch Netflix on my smartphone"; "You said I could bake the batch of cookie dough and then have one cookie before bed; so I just made one big cookie out of the batch, so I didn't disobey you"). We now have maturity, based on how our parent has raised us. If we have the heart of Jesus within us, if we are led by God's spirit matured in us, and not by our own childish, legalistic spirit, we may then do all things, whether in word or in deed, in the name of Jesus Christ, even if there's not some rule somewhere that specifically governs that thing we are doing. If we are led by the spirit of Jesus, we don't have any need to "find" rules to cover whatever it is we're doing; we'll make a good choice based on our maturity we have in him.
Go, and be Jesus to the world. Don't teach a legal system; teach how to live as God-empowered, spirit-filled, grown-ups.
