I am an extreme amateur Bible scholar and a former lawyer. I will answer any question you have about the Bible an/or how it applies to your life/prblem etc.
.. I tried to figure all this out, and can't, but Now I do understand why it took Enoch so very long to answer all those who have posted... and why he disappeared .WOW! :ROFL::excited:
the aliens are comin.... the aliens are comin, and they're bringin purple angels with them:purpleangel:!:prayingm::prayingf:
It doesn't make any difference spiritually what you eat or drink in Christ. However, in the old Testament, the Jews in israel had strict dietary laws. Paul had preached Christ in the church at Colossi and while he was gone others had come into the church and tried to introduce false doctrines such as Asceticism who believed in strict guidelines on what people could eat, drink or touch. asceticism was brabched from a Jewish cult who still held to a religious law regarding what a believer could and could not do in order to be in compliance with God's law and that he must participate in certain feasts and festivals in order to please God (see Colossians 2:16-17).
Also the Gnostics tried to teach a doctrine that one needed to have secret knowledge in order to walk with God (see Col. 2:18). Others are described in v. 3:17 who introduced other false doctrines contrary to Paul's teaching. Paul's purpose in pointing these things out were to warn them from deviating from the gospel he preached that as Christians they were free from all these religious observances. Further preversities are listed in vs. 2:21-23.
Paul points out that as Christians they are not subject to what he calls "the elementary principles of the world" (see v. 2:20). Even today most religions are based to some extent on religious laws and do and don't requirements when in fact we are no longer any such laws.
In order to be righteous we simply must have faith in Christ, not earn our way into His favor by doing what we think is
right or wrong. God is not pleased by our so called "dead works" that is doing things by our own efforts in order to please Him. He has come to cleanse our very consciences of the ability to dictate what works are right or wrong or what pleases God and what doesn't. The only thing that pleases Him is that we appropiate His Son's very nature where good and bad and right and wrong is written on our hearts so that we can only do what He wants, which it turns out is what we want too.
If you are inclined read the Book of Hebrews especially chapters 5-10 where the writer distinguished between the Old Testament laws under God's old covenant with Israel and the New Covenant under Christ where He promises to write His laws on our hearts and thus fulfill the law.
It is great that the Colossian church had such a loving spiritual Father who was able to gently correct them and steer them back to the right path while still showing them how much he loved and cared for them..
I do agree it is not what we eat that save us. Sin of eating unclean food is not the food itself but the sin of disobeying.
While circumcision and sacrificial law are noted in OT that circumcision of the heart is what is matter and God do not need you to sacrifice in order for forgiveness of sin, no where in the OT that said eating unclean food is something representative.
I believe that eating in the Colossians refer to the food eat in the festive. Remember Jesus did not come to give us a law and He said that the law is forever.
Unfortunately the scripture does not bear out your comment. Consider the following as an example:
[Christ] called the crowd to Him again, He began saying to them, �Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man. (Matthew 7:14-15).
What is clean do not make unclean, including food. As recorded in the gospels; �After He And He said to them, �Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?� (Thus He declared all foods clean.�). Matthew 7:18-19).
You are right. God�s law is eternal. However, after initiation of the New Covenant upon the death and resurrection of Christ man no longer had to try in and of himself to fulfill the law. The law is fulfilled in Christ. In Hebrews 8:10 Christ said: �FOR THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD I WILL PUT MY LAWS INTO THEIR MINDS, AND I WILL WRITE THEM ON THEIR HEARTS. AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE� (SEE ALSO Jeremiah 31:33).
Peter faced this problem as recorded in Acts 10-11. Peter was on the way to Caesarea to see a Gentile named Cornelius. On the way he had a vision: �On the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. But he became hungry and was desiring to eat; but while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance; and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air. A voice came to him, �Get up, Peter, kill and eat!� But Peter said, �By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.� Again a voice came to him a second time, �What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.� This happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into the sky (Acts 10:9-16).
Peter a devout Jew was not about to eat any food that was unclean according to the Law. However God told him in the vision that he had made the food clean and that Peter by refusing it was making unclean what God had made clean. Peter went on to meet Cornelius the Gentile whereas before Gentiles were considered unclean and Jews did not associate with them. As Peter�s vision indicates god, through Christ, has made all things clean and if we religiously adhere to the Law we are negating Christ by making unclean what He made clean by His eternal sacrifice.
