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NASB | Mark 9:41 "For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of your name as followers of Christ, truly I say to you, he will not lose his reward. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Mark 9:41 "For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of your name as followers of Christ, I assure you and most solemnly say to you, he will not lose his reward. |
Subject: What is the "reward" ? |
Bible Note: Greetings CDBJ: Here is what I just posted to Emmaus - I'd appreciate your input. Thanks for the great tesitmony of the power of God to work through an unbeliever! mommapbs I've been in a dialog recently with a self proclaimed "post-moderist Christian" who asserts that his understanding of following Christ is to respond to the the world's problems of oppression and poverty, etc. Loving God and loving one's neighbor - can we love our neighbor and declare that this is HOW we love God? Or do we love God first and then extend it to our neighbor? Can someone love his neighbor and not love God? When I questioned him about who Jesus is he replied: "Do i think Jesus is God? I dont know. I know it was not important to Mark's gospel, where Jesus is called Son Of Man - a term for the return of King David. I know that in hebrew writing the title 'son of God' was given to those mystics that were thought to have a specil connection to God - in jesus's own time you had Honi Circle-Drawer, Hanina ben Dosa, even Peter and Paul. Greek people with their myths of the Gods fathering people saw the phrase very diffrently. The biblical text has all of this diversity. Remember teh first creed of the Church was 'Jesus Is Lord' and the other creeds only showed up 400 years later when constatine wanted to consolidate his power. Look at the letter writers. No one refers to miracles,virgin birth etc. No one refers to a bodily resuerection (though paul refers to the church as the resuerection). Jesus said 'the father and i are one'. If you start with John 3:16 'for who ever believes in...' and realize that the word for IN can also be translated as LIKE then the context changes. The Father and i are one...the life i live is the life God wants of all of us. 'I am the way, the life and the truth' can just as easily mean 'the life i live is the way, the life i life is the truth, the way i live is the life God demands of us'. 'lord'? It does not mean God or anything about divinity. It means a master of knowledge. To call Jesus lord is to say that he is the master of knowledge of the life God wants of us. And what was that life? To love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves!" (BTW, this chap is an aspiring seminarian! Sorry about all the errors, I copied his text as he wrote it to me.) WELL? Perhaps now you can see the motivation for my questions. I realize that there is another thread going about testing the spirits 1 John 4:2 - since this fellow questions the virgin birth, the Divinity and resurrection of Jesus, what would you conclude? What instruction is there for us in this exchange? Is the counsel of Mark 9:39 applicable here? I'm inclinded to shake the dust off my sandals, what do you advise? |