🇬🇧 Glory be to Jesus Christ! 🌞
Philippians III:1 – ‘εμοι’ – ‘emoi’ – ‘me’.
Philippians III:3 – ‘ημεις’ – ‘emeis’ – ‘we’.
The apostle Paul calls us to rejoice in the Lord and to guard the pure faith of Christ against the temptation to return to the rituals of the Old Testament, which he writes about extensively in his various epistles.
He gives his own example of a very devout and zealous believer whose observance of all the ritualistic requirements did not save him (i.e. Paul) from persecuting the Church of Christ in his blindness. Therefore, observance of the ceremonial part of the Law does not save others (just as it did not save Paul).
At the end of the reading, Paul says that in Christ there is
everything one needs, but if someone offers him something instead of
Christ
(anti-Christ
), he considers it a loss, the more decisive the
farther it differs from Christ. He chooses a harsh expression to
emphasise the madness of those who depart from Christ for something
else.
A direct continuation of yesterday’s reading, with
which it has two verses in common (Luke IX, 49-50). See about
yesterday’s reading here:
18102023.html
Luke IX, 49 – ‘ημων’ – ‘emon’ – ‘us’ ((with) us).
Luke IX, 51 – ‘ημερας’ – ‘emeras’ – ‘days’.
Luke IX, 55 – ‘επετιμησεν’ – ‘epetimesen’ – ‘forbade, warned, rebuked, admonished, chided’. The words of Jesus are not found in all the ancient Gospel copies.
If we assume that Jesus’ words in verse 55 were actually spoken at
that time, then we can say that Christians are like… doctors (Luke
himself was a doctor). The doctors’ rule of do no harm
and the
obligation to treat all who need it is directly related to this reading.
Christ is the Saviour of people. If they reject Him, reject His
disciples, He says… go to another city
. The Lord does not impose
salvation on anyone. But if a person who needs salvation (all people
need it) rejects it, then this very rejection contains a punishment -
the absence of salvation.
There are many conclusions from this, including the fact that one
cannot spread the faith of Christ by violence. We can say that the gap
between salvation in voluntary union with Christ and His rejection
cannot be filled
by force, by violence, by captivity, by obsession,
etc. And the first part of the reading shows that there may be many
people on the way to Christ who have not yet accepted Him, and then such
a punishment or forced conversion
will be devastating for them. This
is an important addition to the first part of the reading, and it is
clear that they are mutually important.
Glory to Thee, our God, glory to Thee!