THE SPIRIT AND SELF (1)

How Spiritual Consciousness Interplay

“We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, Who shall also tell you the same thing by mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that ye abstain from meat offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare well. ” [Act 15: 27–29]

The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is the personality of Jesus, Beloved of the father. The Holy Spirit is in fact, the package of divinity which is a ‘gift’ from God to the church. God is the all–knowing God, so is the Holy Spirit. He knows everything.

He has the largest, boundless database of every historical tracks of activities, both in darkness and light. Scripture says all things are naked before Him. Therefore, every information Jesus has resides with the Holy Spirit.

That is why Jesus said, “When I go, I will pray the father, and He will send you the Comforter (the Holy Spirit).

And when He comes, He shall ‘teach’ you all things. For He shall not speak of Himself, but that which He shall hear, that also shall He speak, He will (even) show you things to come.” [John 16: 7, 13, 14]

So establish this, that the Holy Spirit is a perfect, wise, all-knowing presence of God in our lives. The elders of the church in Jerusalem (in our text above) gave a powerful, harmonizing juxtaposition –the Holy Spirit and us.

The Circumcision Controversy

Something happened. There was dispute in the church at Antioch about circumcision. Some teachers came around saying that the gentiles (born into Christ) must be circumcised. Letters were sent to the elders in Jerusalem concerning this, after much argument.

The elders in the response wrote a letter back to the church in Antioch. Our text above is an extract of that letter. Such case had never come up before so it needed to be the Holy Spirit who shows them the way.

The Reply From Jerusalem

After consulting with themselves, and James confirming from scriptures that the gentiles shall benefit from the mercies of God through the sacrifice of His son, the elders discouraged dissociating the Gentiles because of circumcision.

The Gentiles converts were spared the pains of circumcision, which is the mark of the covenant that the Jews practiced.

The elders presented their reply using an interesting juxtaposition, which is the core of this article.

See you in the next part. God bless you.

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