Our Mission Series, The Coming of Jesus is the Good News of Joy and Hope/Chapter 5: God's Covenant Promises to His People in the Past and in the Present

Chapter 5: God's Covenant Promises to His People in the Past and in the Present

(Balik Sa Panginoon: Turn Our Ways Back to the Lord)

Balik Sa Panginoon (Back With God)

Luke 4:16-21

Jesus went back to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as usual he went to the meeting place on the Sabbath. When he stood up to read from the Scriptures, he was given the book of Isaiah the prophet. He opened it and read,

"The Lord's Spirit has come to me, because he has chosen me to tell the good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners, to give sight to the blind, to free everyone who suffers, and to say, THIS IS THE YEAR THE LORD HAS CHOSEN."

Jesus closed the book, then handed it back to the man in charge and sat down. Everyone in the meeting place looked straight at Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, "What you have just heard me read has come true today."

Chapter Five: God's Covenant Promises to His People in the Past and in the Present

(Promise and Prediction of the Coming of Jesus, the Saviour of Mankind)

It was not accidental that the Lord Jesus quoted Isaiah:".. "The Lord's Spirit has come to me, because he has chosen me to tell the good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners, to give sight to the blind, to free everyone who suffers, and to say, THIS IS THE YEAR THE LORD HAS CHOSEN."

From the tragic day that our first parents, Adam and Eve had fallen away from God, and ever since then, because of and together with them, all of us human beings through all generations have inherited their original sins, and on our own have committed our own kind of horrible sins. Thus, on account of this fallen nature of all men and women since day one of the fall man has lost God's paradise, man has been banned from his former state of bliss and happiness with God, and man has fallen persistently under the great influence of the "serpent" the evil one. And so we have had a life and a world characterized by Godlessness, i.e. a disorientation, and disorderliness mainly consisting of selfishness. It has been like man has been banned from the Kingdom of God; and was cast onto a power-grab-survival of the fittest oriented Kingdom of this world. Each one is pitted against each other; and so its been a story of alternating winners and losers, predators and preys between and among men. Bottom-line, each one goes down, and goes down hapless and dead. Every one suffers. Because every one becomes the prey, the victim, the vanquished at one time or another. Story of human civilization. Man's state of sinfulness.

Through it all God never completely turned away His face. God, aware of the disgrace that man has fallen into, has always desired man's return to His grace, to good will. And so God called his special elects from among men to deliver to them His message that He longs for the people to return to God. And so God called Noah, Abraham, Jacob, David, Moses, Joshua, the prophets especially Isaiah and others including John the Baptist to tell the people one underlying message: to acknowledge human sinfulness, and rebelliousness against God, and to repent of their sinfulness. The 10 commandments, the law, were the measuring stick by which men were to acknowledge the ways by which they offend God. The law pointed to man which sins they needed to accept guilt for and to repent of. Saint Paul explained that what the law did was only to guide men away from committing the specified grievous offenses against God, and to lay down guilt upon those who insisted upon committing them. But the law did not provide men strength to consistently avoid sins, and did not provide real relief ( release from remorse) for those that tried to avoid offending God. Saint Paul said this is the imperfection of righteousness through the law. And so something, or Somebody (already predicted beforehand) was needed to come to really free men from the bondage of committing sins, and from the guilt of their sins.

The first prediction of God’s promise of relief of man from sins was the following. We have the implied coming of a new woman in contrast to the old woman, Eve. And whereas the Old Woman Eve has fallen prey and victim to the serpent personifying evil, the new Woman through her Son will be empowered to crush the Devil symbolically represented by the serpent. This was referred to in Genesis 3:15; to the serpent God said, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel." This was accomplished with the new Woman’s, Mary’s, Son overcoming the Devil by his Redeeming Act on the Cross as evil people, in lieu of the serpent/Devil, nailed Mary’s Son’s feet to the cross. The following prelude discussion puts in perspective one repercussion from the our first parents' sin against God with respect to man's becoming tied up to life suffering per the instrumentality of the evil one.

{A Prelude Discussion: Sub-Topic on implied believers' co-crucifixion/suffering with their promised God-sent devil crusher human deliverer, the same Son of Mary -- Son of God.

THE REALITY OF SIN & EVIL WHICH INFECT HUMAN LIVING

We have pointed out the following: evil and sin exist in the world, man himself is prone to sin because of his concupiscense, and the devil or evil spirits continue to influence man into more sins, and evil. The consequences of all these is a life and a world of men characterized by friction and conflicts, inside man and between or among men. This because each man is intrinsically separated from God, and is therefore without ‘godliness’ or life; ie. is dead spiritually and eventually physically.

But man suffers on two accounts: negatively because of his sin, and positively because that is what it takes to colaborate with Jesus’ work of salvation.

Originally, thus, it was on account of the Devil that our first parents got into the mess of the "original sin"; the Devil was directly influential at getting Adam and Eve fall away from the goodwill of God. Consequently as all descendants of Adam and Eve inherited the "original sin", continuously, thus, the Devil and all its demons are again at work messing up all human beings born from Adam and Eve. As repeatedly referred to in different chapters of our Mission Series man or human life has become flawed or made corruptible, both in the physical and psychological/spiritual sense. It was this characteristic of human nature which St. Paul often called man’s life of the flesh. The same reason why he himself confessed of his personal weakness: how no matter how he resisted against it this flawed characteristic of the human nature shamed himself for his natural inability to overcome it; (saved by the grace of God). This is thus, the same ordeal, handicap, or/and death state and predicament each man and human is encumbered with from generations to generations. Prior to baptism all men, or all descendants of Adam and Eve all over the world and throughout the entire human temporal existence were, are, and will be beset by this predicament. All of mankind from the beginning of human history until the End-Time are dead spiritually until they are born again in spirit and in water per baptism into the life of Christ. St. Paul preaches about this again and again in his many Epistles. He belabors on and on this antithetical, even contradictory relationship between living in the flesh versus the living in the Spirit, which he also calls living in the life of grace. (All our other chapters in this Mission Series are inter-related elaboration/explanation about the life of the Spirit or about the life of grace.) In this chapter, and particularly at this juncture of this chapter we are belaboring to expound on the meaning and the real experiencing of and by man of the life of the flesh.

With unbelievers and non-believers, this is exactly no other than the living in sinfulness or in sin, which is the main topic of Chapter Four, in reference to the City of the World, ie City of Sinners. Indeed, without grace, or without our being in the state of sanctifying grace, we are dead spiritually. In other words, if we are without grace, then we are WITH sin. Either we are alive in grace or are dead in sin. (It is on account of this dire reality that it is scary and horrible to die unless we are duly receiving of sanctifying grace. What a terrible moment to be at the moment of our death unprepared without grace inside of us!

(We are not yet discussing nor presenting the more fundamental perspective of evil & suffering in relation to and as it has become essential to the total salvation work of Christ. That will be my later explanation, hopefully.)

But first off, let us tie in together with this chapter on God's promise of redemption the two human predicaments of life discussed in two other chapters: the predicament of intrinsic human miserableness because of sin, and the all around internal and external aspects of the problems of living and the inescapable human suffering resulting from such problems of life, again on account of sin. So we recall the treatment of human misery done in the earlier Chapter Three. Critique, therefore, the statements, --which are initially posited there in Chapter 3.

In Chapter 3, we, thus, described suffering as this "fundamental phenomenon of broken-ness" either within the person or between persons. Through those examples we could decipher the individuals’ experiencing of being cut inside them – whether physically or emotionally, of being torn apart from someone or others, again spatially or emotionally or culturally, and/or of any other similar experience of the destroying of individuals and communities or inter-relations on account of, along with other human shortcomings, natural selfish oppositions or irreconcilable differences. We say an individual suffers when certain parts of his body breaks up, eg. like bruises, and wounds, or like a broken heart as in hurt or injured feelings. Moreover, individuals suffer when between each other some separated-ness exists, or conflicts take place. Thus, we could generally denote suffering as human ‘conflicted-ness’, ie conflicts within himself or conflicts with others. Within oneself man is always burdened by fears, worries, and uncertainties that always clouden and foreshadow man’s day to day living notwithstanding any amount of caution and diligent efforts about dealing with them. Then as regards his relations with others, every individual has no guarantee he wont be betrayed by somebody no matter if he be his/her "best friend" or his/her closest blood relation. The individual selfish interest will always dictate an individual’s bottom-line behaving with respect to others. How sad it is to experience the moment when a promise is broken, or our trust betrayed!

Summarily, thus, evil or sin consists in judging or acting by exclusive natural standard and with the imperfect and flawed human faculties. This inescapably unravels into necessarily time and space constricted perceiving or achieving. Sans of the faith element accompanying and even actually elevating the "judging" or "acting" to their fullest dimension and capability, such restricted and faith de-capacitated human activities are bound, surely, to reckon with mere temporal and visible or tangible dealing with reality. It can only be surmised how easily and falsely human existence would have become characterized. In other words, atheistic and agnostic attitude and behaving naturally follows under such existentially restricted dealing with reality, regarding with both facts and ideas.

Sans of faith, or grace; or to be without God, it becomes an open city for evil and evil spirits to occupy that realm of human existing. Another way to look at it: evil and the Devil has been given a free hand over the lives of such unbelieving & non-believing people. And to their tragedy, they then have unraveled their lack of God in their lives by the consequential chaotic and troublesome living of their lives. The last paragraph above preceding this synthesizing outline illustrates this dire and tragic effect of a life cast into the power and dominion of the evil spirits.

But suffering is real, is part and parcel of our life reality; even Jesus suffered.

The fact is Jesus suffered, and had to suffer.

"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" The words of the God-man Jesus crying out to God the Father during the summit of His crucifixion pain, sorrow, heartaches, and perceived moment of near death. The man Jesus truly suffered, and really knew first hand exactly what it was to suffer. Moments previously before they began to lay hand on Him, as He was aware of His destiny to suffer, Jesus also said words revealing His desire to skip the ignominious and excruciating personal and physical ordeal of pain and violent death foresight. He said,: "Father, you have the power to do all things. Take this cup (sacrifice of death at Calvary to the Father for the sins of men) away from me. But let it be as you would have it, not as I." Mark 14:36

We are saying that our Lord irrevocably underwent the extraordinary pain of the Cross... Jesus' experience of suffering was real. It was, as an aspect of His Passion and Death, a hardest human experience even for our Lord. But He embraced it because it consisted His mission of Salvation of mankind whereby He served as the Lamb Sacrifice to the Father for human sinfulness. As we already explained, His suffering was a central part of Jesus' Incarnation, death, and resurrection. And He fulfilled this earthly 'act' literally and completely. Nobody could ever merely allegorize or symbolize the Lord's going through the act of physical, emotional, and mental suffering on the Cross. He did suffer! And He cried suffering because of the total pain and sadness that came along with the complete act.

Why Jesus suffered?

From its fundamental Scriptural aspect human suffering is a revelation account about the "serpent’s"/the devil’s biting of Jesus’s heel, and consequently of each believer’s heel thus resulting in a damage inflicted by evil upon Jesus and his followers. We call this both the phenomenon and the mystery of human suffering and Christian-human sacrificing. This is the main brunt of discussion on part 1 of this chapter. In the mentioned other chapters, we put in context how it all began: both sin and the devil’s getting into the mix of human and earthly existence. We refer to it as the Fall experience and fate of Adam & Eve along with all their descendant human race. (For purposes of faith we are, however, to bear in mind throughout this chapter discussion of God’s gratuitous mercy, whereby it has been permitted by Divine destiny how the serpent/devil was to have bitten Christ and all Christians in order that with the "bite’s" death effect upon Christ and the Christians, Jesus Christ and believing Christians are able to manifest Christ’s and the Christians’ victory over that "death-experience" with Christ’s resurrection, and the Christians’ re-birth into the new life in Christ, including their promised physical resurrection during Jesus’ Second Coming.) But to place all of these in context, this serpent’s bite consisted initially in the devil’s successful tempting of Adam & Eve, and Adam & Eve’s consenting to the temptation, which led to their losing their beginning life of grace, divine life, given them in Eden upon creation, and to the consequential banishment into Earth’s sin-tainted natural/human existing, ie. the total earthly-human predicament of conflicts & suffering. By temporal order Adam & Eve’s conniving with the devil took place first; yet per eternity, the Lord’s being "bitten by the serpent", ie Christ’s being ordained to be assaulted by both the devil’s act of tempting of Adam & Eve and our parents’ act of consenting to the devil’s temptation, has been all along pre-visited, pre-ordained, and pre-destined by God’s forgiving love and mercy to have to take place. God knew in all eternity how certain bad Angels would have rebelled, and would have tempted Adam & Eve, and would have seen Adam & Eve yielding to the devil’s temptation. Thus, by God’s omniscient nature, he has known it would take his having to send a Saviour to earth to have to save Adam & Eve and their offsprings from their having disobeyed him during their initial life of blessedness in Paradise, which necesitated his Divine Wisdom and Divine Loving Mercy to have to provide for mankind a new Divine Plan for union with him via the Son of God’s Incarnation and Redemption of mankind. Hence, the story of this Saviour having to suffer, and his letting man to suffer with him both as his act of ransoming of man, and as man’s act of retribution for their own sins.

And now an advanced bringing in of what we shall more elaborately discuss in the later chapters about all sufferings man must put with per se. What comprise the all encompassing human sufferings? And why, therefore, do we human beings, suffer?

Like we state repeatably, above and elsewhere, this is the reality, our reality even and precisely as a saved people of God. As Jesus underwent real suffering, so with Jesus , it is each and every man’s destiny to have to embrace suffering in unity with the Saviour Jesus. And while Jesus himself tried to refuse it so its natural we are going to want to refuse to suffer; even if it is only natural that we suffer, and that we have to suffer anyway whether we like it or not . But for our own good, according to Him, if we are to be His true disciples, we have to want going through our crosses, or our own types of suffering in life. And as Jesus cried as He suffered, we are going to cry going through our suffering. As humans we already know this undeniable reality. So if Jesus, the God-man had to suffer, how only appropriate it is for us human beings that we suffer. As God, Jesus is above suffering; whereas we as mere creatures are necessarily involved with suffering. It is a fact of life. To repeat, whether we like it or not we have to suffer in life! We cried during the first moment we saw the light of day when we were born. We suffered as we went through the pains of growing up. E.g. mostly suffering of the fear of the unknown. Being uninitiated in the different aspects of life we struggled to face each and every stage of boyhood/girlhood, and later of manhood/womanhood. It seemed then like older guys or people always had the advantage over us the younger ones. And we complained when we were told we just had to experience and pass all kinds of initiations that seemed only okay for the already experienced. How terrified we were during our first jump over the deep water, at our first day at school left behind by our parents, at our first real propositioning of or getting propositioned by the opposite sex, at the first time we had to leave home or town and off to an unfamiliar city or environment, at our first challenge to a fistfight or girl squabble, at our first taste of accident, whether a fall or a car accident where it almost cost our life, when we were faced squarely by the consequences of our first major life mistake, when we had to measure up to many standard tests of social institutions where we thought we were no match for competition with others seemingly more suited for the tests, etc... Then there are the real life-like human sufferings, or social disparities in life. Others are born rich, others are poor; others are more physically endowed of beauty or strength or size, others are not; others are born with greater IQ, others are not; others are raised in more affluent environment of better school and peers, others are not; others are born in peaceful families or communities, others are not; others seem well connected for social advances, others seem so all alone and without any manner of assistance, etc.... Then we have those sufferings under the category of misfortunes: those raised orphans, those born handicapped in faculties, those that were victims of child abuse, even sex abuse when they were so very vulnerable, those that went through life unsettling events of society or of nature like disasters & catastrophe, or incapacitating military sojourn, changes in economy or political events or government, etc..

Directly or indirectly these examples of suffering are results and manifestations of the sinful man. And when the suffering is indeed directly the result of a sinful act like aids, gonorrhea, incarceration or any trouble with the law, most abortions, criminal convictions due to falsification of documents, stealing and robbery, assault and abuse of someone, or any other criminal act, then the suffering is more painful. Such an individual is pained by both the punishment and the guilt of the act. And indeed, oftentimes, our suffering is the result of our own doing, whether individually or collectively. At other times, they are caused directly by our fellow human beings even if without any fault of ours. And then also at other times it is caused simply by our being members of the imperfect creations: our predicament of human shortcoming. I.e. we are imperfect beings; and our world is an imperfect world. Nothing will seem to be right ever; and nothing will seem to be enough ever. We just have to suffer having to put up with our imperfections. Further elaboration on the human suffering is discussed in Chapter 11.

Ultimately, and again paradoxically for our own good, with respect to its holy dimension, there’s the necessary real act of suffering: the act, or the many, many acts of self-denial. The hardest thing for a man to accept and to do is to deny himself. And whereas this is the ultimate call of God to every human being; self-denial is the toughest suffering every human being is to bear. Christ spoke of self-denial along with man's carrying of his cross. Together, self-denial is initially where every man begins to carry his cross, and ultimately where he/she crucifies himself/herself. In actuality, self-denial will involve the act of self-denial in relation to other people that come along his/her way. But it is his decision to completely surrender of himself/herself to the will of God in relation to others that he gets to love God, and be in union with God. This sense of suffering thus is fundamentally the main task and work of every human being all through his/her life. And it is in this sense that the act of suffering is and will be a recurring activity in any human spiritual life. It is clearly an instrument of penance, cleansing, purification, and sanctification for a human being on his track to God and salvation.}

And now back to our regular "Salvation Promise" chapter discussion.

The above explanation defines for us the referred-to-above-Genesis verse re: the destined "... enmity between" the serpent and the woman/Eve, and the destined ".. strike at" the serpents head by Mary's son, Saviour Jesus, and the serpent's nailing Mary's son's feet to the cross, and the implied effect of the need to have to be nailed along with the Saviour (the need to have to suffer) by all men who follow this Marys Son -- human Saviour.

Then, further on we have the following Scriptural referencing of the promised Saviour from Jeremiah 33:15, (mark the closeness of the verses #s: Gen 3:15, and Jer. 33:15, possibly indicating the similarity of the message in different story forms), "..I will raise up for David a just shoot; he shall do what is right and just in the land." Whereas David did beget a son Solomon who did some right and just in the Land of Israel, nevertheless this verse foretells the coming down of God-become man, Jesus, who was the Son of Mary, (married to Joseph, who came from the ancestry of David). This makes Jesus, historically belonging to the lineage of David. And so this verse confirms the realization of the coming of the Saviour via the lineage of David.

Then finally from Isaiah 7:14, we have the most familiar prophetic verse about the Saviour, "Therefore, the Lord himself will give you this sign: the Virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel." This of course is realized in the Virgin Mary conceiving, and giving birth to Jesus. In Matthew 1:23 the evangelist writes about the prophecy being fulfilled in the following verses: "So God’s promise came true, just as the prohet had said, "A virgin will have a baby boy, and he will be called Immanuel," which means "God is with us." Another verse In Isaiah referred to the same birth of a child, the Son upon whose shoulder DOMINION (Lordship) rests, and who, it is also referred there, is called "..Wonder-Counsellor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, and Prince of Peace". Isaiah 9:6 states, "..His dominion is vast and forever peaceful, from David’s throne, and over his kingdom, which he confirms and sustains by judgment and justice, both now and forever." These descriptions of Lord or King with such jurisdiction, acclaim, and power only fit the descriptions of the Saviour Jesus Christ.

There are other prophecies pertaining to the promise of a Saviour of man in other places of the Scriptures as in Micah and Amos, etc.. And the Old Testament provides plenty of prefigurements of the predicted Saviour of men, e.g the many Old Testament heroic characters who showed great sacrificial feats for the people of Israel according as Yahweh had prompted them to take care, protect, and deliver His chosen people. Chief prefigurement was Moses delivering the people of Israel from their slavery to the Egyptians. That Yahweh initially willed to have a chosen people, the Jews; and that He willed the Jews to be delivered by Moses to His promised land to them were foreshadowing of the more universal will of God to have a "Deliverer" sent to the world to save mankind from the worst enslavement of men to sins. And further Old Testament records also provided accounts describing the manner of coming of the Saviour, and the types of events, and the qualities of the personality of the predicted Saviour. We have some accounts in Micah about the birth of the Messiah, and further in Isaiah confirming events pertaining to the Saviour, including about his experiencing of suffering as part of the Saviour’s destiny in the "delivering" of the people of God.

And so the greatest event of all times and history took place with the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ, and in Jesus' redeeming act of living, dying, and rising from death as atonement to the Father for the men's great offense against God. So the salvation of mankind is accomplished.

But some want to reduce the wondrous reality of salvation to a mere afterlife event, a hereafter thing. And they talk about just saving "the souls".

But salvation isn't just an afterlife, a hereafter promise to believers. If that were the case, then poor christians! Because of their faith they are the lifetime outcasts all over the world and all over history of predators, victimizers, oppressors, and persecutors. What an unbearable life to live! A 100 years, or at least 65 years for some to have to live beat up, defeated, even in the end murdered for a promise without any manner of respite within their lifetime? Is God's promise of deliverance that so desconsolate and unpeaceful for every christian? Is God so tough and so unforebearing in withholding for every man's lifetime his promised human salvation? If this is what Jesus Christ teaches, I can only understand how Nietzsche could ridicule the christian God to be dead.

But Nietzsche was wrong; and some among us are inadvertently misled for holding on to such a misconception. .

Salvation is not thither nor yonder. It is here! I repeat Jesus' declaration:"...The Lord has sent me to .......... free everyone who suffers; and to say to everyone, THIS IS THE DAY THE LORD HAS CHOSEN!"

Realize that with the Incarnation of God, God has become man. The God-head is now immanent. Behold, Jesus, The Emmanuel! (God-immanent, God-here-and-now.) And so salvation is here now on earth. Glory to God, and now (God's) peace is on earth. John the Baptist said, 'the Kingdom of God is at hand'. Be glad and rejoice!

Now I am not talking here about a Liberation Theology i.e. God's army is now here to guard and protect every christian against all enemy armies. I am not talking here of a Prosperity Gospel, i.e. God is making all born-again wealthy and healthy. I am not talking here about a One-World Government with judges and executioners ready to avenge against persecutors of believers and followers of the gospel. Such are likely sceneries during the end-times.

What we are talking about is the fact that Jesus Christ has come down to humanity. He has died and paid with his blood for our sins. And he has risen from the death as a testament that now the power of sin is overcome. Now a new life of man is begun. And He came that we may have that life, and have it abundantly. He said as we eat of his flesh, and drink of his blood and thus unite ourselves very intimately with Jesus we are receiving that new life, which is also everlasting. But that life is to satisfy us was implied by the Lord when He said when you drink of the water I give you you will never thirst. I.e. When we receive this new life we shall not grow weary of it. It will permanently nourish, reinvogorize, dynamize itself. Our Pope is a living testament to such a happiness on account of the Gospel. He radiates this happiness in him through to all segments of the people the world over, (e.g. the Youth, or the Old, etc..). For indeed the faith is really fun. There is the cross, and the demands of metanoia. But by the yoke of Christ or his grace, all of the Good News altogether is the experience of Joy and Hope, once and for all. It is the best kept secret to the people of the world. They have to be content with whatever temporary and illusionary satisfaction the world offers; but the christians here and now can have the foretaste of heaven as they are given avail to true moments of joy and happiness even if only in small doses. But it is an experience very much unlike the worldly one, it goes deep within the person affording real moment of peace and rest. Whereas that of the worldly type of respite is pretense like and superficial. And most times it has to be at the expense of others.