Hello! and happy good Thursday to all of us, GUYS. Our "food for the soul" today:
THE GOOD NEWS (03 November 2016)
"We are the true circumcised people since we serve according to the Spirit of GOD, and our confidence is in CHRIST JESUS rather than in our merits.
I myself do not lack those human qualities in which people have confidence. If some of them seem to be accredited with such qualities, how much more am I! I was circumcised when eight days old. I was born of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin; I am a Hebrew, born of Hebrews. With regard to the Law, I am a Pharisee, and such was my zeal for the Law that I persecuted the Church. As for being righteous according to the Law, I was blameless.
But once I found CHRIST, all those things that I might have considered as profit, I reckoned as loss. Still more, everything seems to me as nothing compared with the knowledge of CHRIST JESUS, my LORD. For HIS sake I have let everything fall away and I now consider all as garbage, if instead I may gain CHRIST." - Philippians 3:3-8
Paul's Conversion
(Through what Paul says concerning his faithfulness to Judaism, we know something of his past. He was born in Tarsus to a Jewish family who had left their country and had settled there, in "Greek" territory, where they dedicated themselves to business. His parents were wealthy and well thought of since they had the dignity and the rights of Roman citizens [see Acts 22:28]. Along with Greek culture, Paul received religious education from the Bible and the Jewish people. He saw firsthand the pagan feasts and sacrifices, but was proud of belonging to GOD's people, of being circumcised and instructed in GOD's promises to his race. His parents sent him to Jerusalem to study Scripture and the Law with the great masters of his time [see Acts 22:3].
He was a model of strict Pharisee. He did not meet CHRIST but did meet the early Christians. Because he was faithful to the religion of his ancestors, he believed it was necessary to persecute, imprison and even kill those preaching a new doctrine and deceiving [so he though] the people, since they proclaimed a false, defeated and crucified Messiah.
At times, Paul must have had doubts [Acts 26:41], and increasingly so, when he felt duty bound to increase repression. The Pharisees were against the death penalty. To hesitate or go backwards was to recognize that GOD had taken another road than the one where he himself had been the defender of GOD's cause. Worse still: with JESUS, never more would he be the just man but rather the pardoned sinner. When JESUS forcefully entered into Paul's life, it was a matter of losing all and Paul from then on accepted to regard as garbage all that he had been proud of.)
On-Track
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