the leaven we swallow

I have to wonder if Jesus said this looking down the corridor of time and seeing how much these ideas would spread and do great damage to his gospel. Almost immediately after Jesus' resurrection and with the church beginning to spread, the Pharisees' teaching manifested in the teachings of the Judaisers, who began saying faith still required circumcision to amount to justification. I think Paul understood the implications of this teaching rightly in his jarring reaction urging them to go ahead and cut off the whole thing. This seems a foreign and implausible circumstance to us, because we do not see what the teaching of the Pharisees boils down to. We unknowingly swallow a little of it everyday. When we do something thinking that it will garner favor with God, and every time we feel like God's love for us is absent, or He is distant from us because of our sin we are taking a spoonful of this leaven. God's favor is unmerited and his love is steadfast. If there is one truth I could wish to never again betray by my thoughts and my life it would be this.

Created over 3 years ago