The strength of a chain is determined by the weakest link.
When a team contains a stupid, this stupid determines the performance of the team.
But Christ overcomes the sin of the world. It is similar to as if the strength of a chain were determined by the strongest not weakest link.
It may be very hard to believe that Christ can overcome all sinners and make the whole system effective. But He has demonstrated that he can resurrect even if sinners kill Him.
This is the glory of Christ.
All Christians are liable for blessing or can a sin stop blessing?
The answer is: The only reason which may prevent blessing is miss of faith. Non-believing is a sin. So the answer to the subject question is “yes”: A sin can prevent blessing.
Can another sin (not missing faith) prevent blessing? It cannot because we are children of Abraham by faith, not by our good deeds. But every sin steems of unbelieving. So even as another sin cannot stip us of blessing, this sin and the curse have one the same common root, unbelieving.
It is very important to understand what are “gods” in Bible, because this word is cognate with the word “God”. So we necessarily need to know what are “gods” to know God.
(Jn. 10:35) “If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture can’t be broken)”
This seems that here Jesus defines the meaning of the word “gods”. Gods are creatures to whom the word of God comes. In other words, “gods” are these who hear the word of God. This may be their primary difference from angels, maybe.
We need also try to understand the following: What is my/his/their god? Is it, for example, “my one who receives the words of God”? Maybe it means “my spirit who receives the word of God to me”? I am unsure here.
Compare my older post.
Salt is the substance with chemical formula NaCl that it consists of Sodium and Chlorine. These two chemical elements are of almost opposite properties (the first is a very active metal and the second is a halogen).
Both are highly reactive and flammable, both are poisons. But when they are combined together they produce an “moderate” substance which we can even to eat in some quantities.
So Jesus speaking about salt meant composition of opposites which lead to a moderate outcome.
(Mark 9:50) “Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, with what will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.””
This means to hold seemingly contradictory radical concepts combined into a composite theological theory which makes them into one moderate philosophy leading to peace with one another.
See my book End of Gospel for some examples of such concepts.
Continuing this post:
(1Cor. 8:4) “Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no other God but one.”
I think this mean that an idol may have effect in spiritual realities, but this has no practical effect on this world. Idols can rumble with supposed “wonders” they produce, but have no practical effect on our lifes (unless we submit ourselves to serve them and receive a harm).
The below is my opinion, it may be wrong.
What is a “god” of something? It is the spiritual entity which controls such thing.
(Psalms 96:5; I Chronicles 16:26) “For all the gods of the peoples are idols,
but Yahweh made the heavens.”
An idol is a specifically crafted thing in order to represent a force of spiritual world. An idol is a mean to control spiritual world: It concentrates spiritual forces on a certain topic. If an idol is broken, the spiritual force dissipates.
So gods of people, they are idols, that is they live only as long as the idol is set up and not broken.
God of Israel is an exception. He is not controlled by an idol. But He is Yahweh himself, one who created the heavens long before the first idol appeared. He cannot die. For example, losing his ark does not cause Him to dissipate, because He is deathless.
Theological “science” system is broken. It is impossible to publish a Bible-based revelation.
I tried a little a few years ago to publish my ideas on what Christ is (see my free e-book chapter 5).
They said it cannot be published among other reasons because it should link to works of other scholars.
Wait! A revelation is meant to be based on Bible, not on works of other scholars.
Exact fit of the prophecy of Jesus: (Mark 7:7-8) “But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. For you set aside the commandment of God, and hold tightly to the tradition of men…”
Do not allocate money to support theology PhD programs. Jesus calls this thing “vain”.
Some translations (e.g. New American Standard Bible) of Luk. 2:40 say that Jesus was “increased” in wisdom.
But he is God and already knows everything. How can his wisdom “increase”?
In my opinion (see my book for more details), Christ limited himself to human senses to perceive the environment. He already knew all mathematics, but he needed to study physics of this region on the universe (as other regions of so called multiverse behave as having different laws of physics).
(Philippians 2:8) “7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, yes, the death of the cross.”
It means that Jesus researched the world around him and found that now he is in a human body. In the childhood he was busy understanding the laws of physics (which He created) of this part of the world.
Some Christian teachers (one notable preacher is Kenneth Copeland) teach that the evil exists in this world despite God is good, because God legally delivered the Earth to mankind and has no legal right to control this world without man’s consent and so cannot eliminate the evil.
Is this teaching right? Honestly, I do not know. We can find arguments in Bible both pro and counter this teaching. We need further analysis.
However, does this (as of Kenneth Copeland) teaching contradict to my previous blog post? I think, it does not contradict.
Even if God legally removed Himself from governing the Earth, there must exist a good reason of Him to remove himself. So all arguments of my previous post apply. There must be a good reason for God to remove Himself from governing this world (if He ever removed). So there must be a good reason for seemingly evil.
In this post I want to present my opinion on what is evil and how there can be evil in the world created by good God. I don’t quote Bible in this post, it is mainly a philosophic assessment (however without trying to prove that it is correct).
First, evil is mainly related with Satan and sin. Sin is a denial of service attack (something what prevents a computer or in our case a brain to function properly), which attempts to reverse the function of an entity to do the opposite to what it should do.
It is essential to note that sin is a problem which needs to be solved. It needs to be dealt with on a certain stage of the development of the universe.
In my opinion, there is no absolute evil. An evil is a part of bigger good or not clearly seen good. Consider sin as a problem which needs to be passed through. “Evil” is seeing good not clearly. God does no evil.
Everything what God created is good. Bad things are only parts of God’s creation separated from the entire system. Even sin is in some sense good as it is a problem and a problem with solution is good thing. A bad thing is a problem without solution.
Another thing I want to note is the following: In an entity struck with sin, every small step of its behavior is correct. The system is wrong on large scale.
Reversely, acts of God are correct on the large scale despite small fragments of the work of God may look like wrong.
Comments are welcome.