That doesn’t mean we get a free get-out-of-jail card if we believe in God but willfully go against Christ’s teachings. God has made his promise of salvation to believers, and he cannot deny that promise. This author said it means that God is faithful to himself and his own values, “for he cannot deny himself,” so those who lose faith, or who never had it, have lost out on salvation.īut other authors, and I tend to side with them, contend that God is faithful to all of us who have ever been believers, even if we don’t always act like it. One author I read said that it doesn’t mean that God will provide salvation to the faithless. What in the world does that mean? As usual, there are contradicting views. If we endure, we will also reign with him īut then comes “if we are faithless, he remains faithful- for he cannot deny himself.” If we have died with him, we will also live with him He tells Timothy that he’s been promised the greatest rewards for this service, and that Timothy can share in these rewards. Paul, though, says these sufferings are borne gladly out of his love for Jesus and for spreading the Christian message. Early on, Paul tells Timothy of his own suffering in prison, where he is not only in physical pain, but also humiliated to be publicly described as an evil person. It has the characteristics of most good pep talks. I know the purpose of the letter was to encourage Timothy to be a minister of Christ. This is my somewhat lame segue to Paul’s letter to Timothy. He is saved as a believer in Jesus, as a man of Christian faith. The Gospel said they all were cured on their way to the priests.So it’s not such a stretch to believe that what Jesus is saying to the Samaritan is that his faith has not only cured his leprosy, but also has saved him in the bigger sense of the word. I don’t think this means that the other lepers remained sick. And Jesus responds, “Your faith has made you well.” Then, only one of the lepers - a Samaritan of all people - returns to thank Jesus. I have to admit, I always thought Jesus just wanted the priests to know he was working miracles, but it was actually the only way for the cured lepers to be readmitted to society. In Judaism,lepers could only return to society if a priest certified that they were “clean.” That’s why Jesus sent the 10 lepers to the priests. Francis admitted he feared lepers, leprosy had come to mean Hansen’s disease. These are often chronic conditions and a person could live a very long time after showing the signs, separated from their communities in what one author called a “living death.”īy the Middle Ages, when St. In the Bible, the word for leprosy covers a variety of skin ailments including psoriasis and eczema. The first effective cure for leprosy, which we now call Hansen’s disease, wasn’t introduced until the 1940s. It is a bacteria that spreads through droplets in the air. It still exists in parts of the world where people can’t access treatment, but it can be cured with a two-year course of antibiotics. One of the things I’m grateful for is that leprosy is no longer the scourge that it was. She told me that in preparation, she removed all of her bumper stickers from it, except the one that says “Gratitude for all there is, and all there isn’t.” I recently bought a used car from my friend Barbara. 10-9-22 Morning Prayer Reflection by Sandy Burnett
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