JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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John further emphasizes how crucial such a teaching is by adding the solemn warning:
"If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into
your house or welcome him. Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked
work" (2 Jn 10-11).
Paul states that our growth in Christ is dependent upon our obedience to the truth
contained in the apostolic doctrinal framework:
"So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him,
rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught,
and over-flowing with thankfulness" (Col 2:6).
Timothy is told by his spiritual father Paul that it is only as he adheres to the "good
teaching" that he will become a "good minister of Jesus Christ" (1 Ti 4:6).
John, in his emphasis on the correlation between belief (orthodoxy) and practice
(orthopraxis), presents three tests by which we can discern whether our spirituality is authentic:
● Believing the right doctrine (1 Jn 2:18-27; 4:1-6, 13-21).
● Obedience to right doctrine (2:3-6; 28-3:10).
● Living a life of love as a manifestation of right doctrine.
(vv. 7-11; 3:11-18; 4:7-12)
Doctrine is essential because it is "truth" (2 Co 4:6; Eph 1:13; Col 1:5; 2 Ti 2:5; Titus
1:14; 1 Pe 1:22; 2 Pe 1:12; Jas 1:8; 3 Jn 4). Scripture is adamant that it is only by
coming to know this "truth" that one comes to know God since Christ is the object, the very
center, of this teaching (2 Ti 3:7; Titus 2:4; Heb 10:26; 1 Pe 1:22).16
Therefore the early followers of Jesus were urged not to depart from the apostolic
teaching they had received from the very start (Jn 2:7,24,26; 3:11; Heb 2:1; Jude 3). Rather they
are to "guard" this legacy of faith and transmit it intact to succeeding generations (Gal 1:9; 2 Ti
1:13-14; 4:3; Titus 1:9).
To jettison such a body of doctrine is to end up in the sandy soil of conjecture with no
higher authority than the latest "finding" of the most recent scholar. Such "scholarship" is
frequently blind to truth for it is wearing the intellectually correct glasses of antisupernaturalism
because of its naturalistic, and therefore, antisupernatural presuppositions.
The Crucified God
The liberal agenda in its naturalistic pursuit of the so-called "Jesus of history and the
Christ of faith" has doggedly tried to detach Jesus Christ from God, and to separate Him from
Israel, and to jettison Christianity from Christ Himself.