(183) – AUTHOR AND FINISHER OF OUR FAITH – II

183 – AUTHOR AND FINISHER OF OUR FAITH 2

 

“Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith” (Heb. 12:2). The author is the one who has the idea. The author is the first one to bring up the issue. If another person can prove that it is the author of the idea, the pretense author is publicly ridiculed for undue appropriation, and he is forced to compensate the true author. If it is written that Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of faith, no one in heaven and on earth has had the idea before, not even God the Father. The author is the creator of the plan.

1.      Jesus, as the author of the work of men’s salvation, becomes the only and true light of men.“There was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man” (John 1:9). What true light is this? “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:9). Any other light does not bring life, but death. For example: Solomon affirmed that the law of Jehovah is light. “For the commandment is a lamp, and the teaching is light; and reproofs for discipline are the way of life” (Prov. 6:23). As the law leads to sin and death, it is not true light. “For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death” (Rom. 7:5). Since the law of Jehovah came prior to Christ, if it led the Christian to eternal life, Jehovah would be the author and finisher, and Jesus would be the impostor. Jehovah killed, through the law, all those he saved. “Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe” (Jude 5; Num. 14:27-29). Jesus, on the contrary, saves the lost and the sinners; therefore, he is the author and perfecter of faith. Perfecter, or finisher, because he died on the cross instead of the sinners. And if Jesus is the author and finisher of salvation, why did Jehovah ordained a light before the true one came?

2.      Jesus revealed the Father God, full of love and mercy. This love is so sublime that it saves all men, such as Paul revealed in his letter to Timothy 4:10. This love is poured out within the Christian through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). In this way, if anyone does not love, he does not know God, for God is love(1 John 4:7-8). If this is the God whom Jesus revealed to men, why did Jehovah reveal himself as god through fury and murderous wrath? “And Jehovah said to Moses, ‘How long will this people spurn Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the signs which I have performed in their midst? I will smite them with pestilence and dispossess them, and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they’” (Num. 14:11-12). What was Jehovah’s expectation? Did he expect that his people loved him for the treatment they were receiving? Jehovah, as a God, does not communicate the love of the Father by the way he speaks and acts. After killing the people in the desert, he destroyed the kingdom of Israel, and later, the kingdom of Judah (2 Kings 17:20-23; 23:27).Jehovah turned the city of Jerusalem into an infernal furnace, to torment his people (Is. 31:9; 48:10).This unloving treatment produced a people rebellious and insensible to love (Ps. 78:58-59). Jehovah loathes the sinner, that is, he hates them (Ps. 5:5; 11:5; Jer. 12:7-8; Amos 6:8; Mal. 1:2-3). The God that Jesus revealed is the total opposite of Jehovah, and for this reason he is the author and finisher of faith.

3.      God, the Father, handed everything to Jesus, his only begotten Son. “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands” (John 13:3). “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand” (John 3:35). So, “For not even the Father judges any one, but He has given all judgment to the Son” (John 5:22). The apostle Peter declared that Jesus sent the disciples to preach that he is the one whom God established as Judge of the living and the dead (Acts 10:42).Paul stated the same thing. “I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom” (2 Tim. 4:1). And Paul further said, “Because He has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). If this is the truth about the future judgment of men, how come Jehovah came ahead of time, judging and condemning before that day? If God judged before Christ, and after him he did not judge anymore, God changes; but Timothy affirms that God does not change (James 1:17). So, God condemned before Christ, and he does not condemn any longer, after Christ?  Is it any justice for God to privilege bad men in detriment of other equally evil men? This is why Jesus is the author and finisher of faith. We can be happy that, for us, Christians, the one to judge, persecute, kill and destroy was Jehovah, not the Father.

4.      If God loves the sinner, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8), and because he loves, he desires that all men be saved.“This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3-4; 4:10). And this love for the lost sinner is so great, that “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through Him” (John 3:16-17). If God does not condemn anyone, for he is love, and wants to save everyone, how did he come at a time prior to Christ, condemning, killing and destroying? He destroyed all humanity in the Flood. He destroyed and condemned the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim (Deut. 29:20, 25). He destroyed his own people. What looks like is that Jesus came from heaven and lived among men, so that through his humility, through his kindness, selfishness, his infinite love, his virtues, etc, he could reveal the true God, and for this reason he is the author and perfecter of faith, and by his works he proved that the angel that came before him was at such a low level that he was associated with Satan to try and destroy even the righteous, such as it was with Job (Job 1:6, 12; 2:1-7).

 

 

By Pastor Olavo Silveira Pereira

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