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CR18Day_11 @ nkjv@Genesis:22 @ RandyP comments: This is the passage that we will have to pay particular attention to. This is the passage were many a foolish man has staked his claim on a works based justification with God. I want you to remember back on all the work God has performed on Abraham to bring him to this point in his faith. Abraham's works to this point certainly have been less than stellar (nor will be his works to continue). As time and experience have gone by, Abraham's faith has been refined down to one definable thing: God has promised/God has provided and will continue/therefore God will accomplish. What is Abraham's role in all this? Continue believing in the promise/provision/eventual accomplishment and to not get in the way of it by what his baser impulses are attempting to do to achieve this in some measure of his own. This is a refined faith much different than a works based justification, it is a God based justification. Remember this, that Abraham's faith has already been accounted to him as righteousness (justification) kjv@Genesis:15:6 before Isaac was even born. The fact that Abraham is being tested now because of this imputed justification already received by faith is more a test of our understanding of Abraham's faith than it is a test of his own. If to be understood any other way than this, well then at minimum we should each be taking our sons to the mountain top alter to sacrifice thus prove ourselves worthy workers of a different justification; perhaps we should be proving ourselves by even more; perhaps we should be proving ourselves even more justifiable than the others just to make the final cut eh! Is that justification with God the way you understand it?

CR18Day_19 @ nkjv@Mark:14 @ RandyP comments: I sense that even though Judas has already been to the chief priests to field their offers to turn Jesus over, that Jesus does not yet see this as "the betrayal". Jesus says that one here "will" betray Him. The actual betrayal is still an option for Judas that he will have to decide on. Note that Jesus as much as tells Judas in the other men's hearing that it would be better for him (if that is his decision to betray) to have been never born than to suffer the woe he is about to to suffer as a consequence; and yet Judas decides to betray him any way. Some would say that Judas does not have a choice in the matter, some even that he was predestined/born to do this. Why then would it be said that it would be better for him not to be born? Why then must he suffer for that which he had no choice in doing? One possible explanation for us to consider is that God does not violate man's choices, but knows what those choices are going to be with perfect foreknowledge. God uses the foreknowledge of our choices to direct the accomplishment of HIS perfect will. Another explanation is that God is always in action, man is always responding to God's action, man is free to react however he chooses but it is never any surprise to God how a particular individual does in fact react; man's free reaction thus can be reliably be counted on. This theory essentially holds that God does not make a man to do any particular thing, HE simply counts on it. Some would look at this as the ability to predict, I look at it as the ability to know a man better than he can know himself.

CR18Day_23 @ nkjv@Mark:16 @ RandyP comments: "...but they did not believe them either". Shown clearly here is the natural tendency of man to be critical of what he has not yet seen for himself. No doubt the reports coming to the disciples from many sources are describing something never before witnessed as true. I think it significant to us as later believers that Jesus did not first appear to the eleven disciples, that we see that they too were of doubt. Not everyone of every generation will be privy to witnessing this resurrection in person, logistically that would just be impossible. The majority are going to have to simply take it on another person's word. Thankfully we do have their word. We also have the witness of how their lives proceeded following this, the impact of having seen this, the witness of just how true they believed this to be. The fact is that people that knew these people believed these peoples testimony and in turn their lives also were greatly effected. The chain of justifiable evidence like this continues even into our day where a great many are just as convinced in their minds as if they themselves had personally witnessed this first hand. The disciples later did see Jesus physically. Again I think it important that we see that even for them belief became a process, then there could be no doubt. Having been told by Jesus that HE was going to do this and believing it to have been physically accomplished is after all contrary to most rational and critical tendencies.