Ephesians Lesson 30 of 39 part 5

James 4:4-12

“You adulterers and adulteresses, know you not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Do you think that the scripture say in vain, The spirit that dwells in us lusts to envy? But He gives more grace. Wherefore He said, 'God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.' Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up.

Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaks evil

of his brother, and judges his brother, speaks evil of the

law, and judges the law: but if you judge the law, you are

not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is one lawgiver,

who is able to save and to destroy: who are you that judges

another?” 

The question is, to whom is James addressing this letter? The answer is found at the entry salutation at the top of chapter 1 verse 1, "to the twelve tribes scattered abroad" or Israel. The Israel which is worldly and spotted by that worldliness. He calls them adulterers and adulteresses because they have been a pagan idolatrous nation since after Jacob death. In the cyclic cycle of the supplanter (which means this: the bottom of the foot, the heel, to over-through and undermine, to turn the head in another direction in a negative sense) and in unbelief. The very people that Moses had to deal with and are the ones he had so much trouble from.

This heel reaches all the way back to Genesis 3 and the promised seed. Who's heel the serpent would bruise and we know Him as the Messiah of Israel, the greatest of Prophets and the greatest Apostle, the High Priest of our Faith in God, the Father of spirit's and who by the way is also the Father of Life, Christ.

2Corinthians 5:14

"For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all are dead:"

By virtue of Adam’s fall, every human is spiritually dead estranged, separated from God the Father, when he/she is born into the human family. This is why we are sinners, we are born sinners, we are the sons of Adam. So consequently Christ died for the whole human race, because the whole human race is spiritually dead, and in need of redemption which when received (by the baptism (not in or with water) of the Holy Spirit, through Whom we are given the right to become, a son of God, which requires our receiving the ontological essence of Christ within us in accord with Jesus' prayer of John 17) will reveal our (Israel and Gentile's) needed salvation. And now verse 15.

2Corinthians 5:15

"And that he did for all, that they which live (the true believers) should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again." (There is our Gospel again.)

Paul just pops our salvation Gospel of Grace in there all the time. Why? Because God is a Covenant God and we are a New Covenant people, this Covenant is Grace and Truth in Christ Jesus alone. He was the hidden end of the Old and is the embodiment of the New which He inaugurated at the table of the Passover and consummated by His death and resurrection. This should sound vaguely familiar as it is a reversal of the Hebrews Passover before they left Egypt. We are what we are because we believe that Christ died for us and rose (resurrected within us) again and that we are now God-children because we have in faith received the ontological essence of Christ within our heart. Through the cutting away of the flesh of our heart by God's doing when we rightly understand the alter of our communion, the Cross of Christ. Not by mans works but by God's doing, as He promised Adam.

The Hebrew children did not seem to get just what was done for them at their table and what God did that night in Egypt for them. Though they rehearsed it over and over as they did all the other requirements given them for well into 1500 plus years until John the Baptist came. They did not see the meanings and purposes of all the utensils used in worship because they never saw the shadow cast by the tree, heck they never saw the tree. As many who copy them still do not. This is why Paul tells them and us that when we do not properly discern the Lord's body that we all are unfit to partake of His alter (study 1Corinthians 10 and Hebrews 9-10 closely). Now verse 16.

2Corinthians 5:16

"Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: 

yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now

henceforth know we him no more."