Sunday lessons 10/22/06

It was a good day today. The morning lesson went well. My title was "What to Hate" and the text was Romans 12:9. Of course Paul tells us to hate (abhor, detest, despise) evil. I pointed out that we avoid or destroy that which we hate. We must let God define evil. If we will hate evil (in our selves and the church) then we will focus our attention on cleaning up our act instead of hurting others. The complement to hate is to cling to what is good. Of course we must also let God define what is good. "Cling" or "cleave" seems to be used for glue in the first century. So if we stick to good, then good will stick to us. This should be our agenda in the church - hate evil, cling to good and let it show in our behavior.

Sunday evening was also good. I talked about The Gospel of Judas. Earlier this year (around Easter) the press was really talking about this document. Although it was discoverd in the 70s, the English translation was just finished. A papyrus codex (book form instead of scroll) was found containing this document. The scholars believe that the document is 31 pages long but only 13 pages were present in the codex. The headlines tried to give them impression that this document could essentially recast our understanding of Judas and Jesus. The document was dated from around 220 to 340 AD. It was written in Coptic (Egyptian) and may have been a translation of an earlier Greek document. Irenaeus condemned a Gospel of Judas in his Against Heresies work that was completed in around 180 AD. There is no way to prove that the one Irenaeus condemned is this Coptic translation. There are some who think it likely it is the same and some who do not. Either way it was still written at least 100 years after the canonical four and is quite Gnostic in its content. It is not a narrative of Jesus' life but a glorification of Judas. Even though Judas is probably the big loser of the apostles in the Gospels, the Gospels do not really glorify any of the apostles in any way approaching what The Gospel of Judas does for Judas. I continue to receive new comments from members that they really like what I'm doing Sunday evening.