The kind of God needed for the COG's to function.
This past weekend the Living Church of God was asked to fast soon after the Feast of Tabernacles. Many LCG members found it rather odd that the church just celebrated symbolically the coming Kingdom of God and yet within a few days after celebrating the millennium, where no one will be required to fast again, LCG members were told to reexamine their lives in order to devote more attention to pleasing their god and refocusing themselves into supporting the church in order to give more income to the church for a final witness.
LCG members constantly seem to be found guilty of doing something so wrong that they need to keep God appeased with works. Instead of following Jesus, instead of the law, they fail to understand the rest they could have in the Jesus they claim to follow. All of this constant "doing" would be unnecessary if they understood the work has already been done.
Why Self-Examination? God told Abraham that one of the conditions of the covenant was to “walk before Me and be blameless [perfect]” (Genesis 17:1). Jesus urged His audiences to “Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:14–15) and to become “perfect” (Matthew 5:48). The Greek word for “repent” is metanoeo which means “to change your life, to think differently, to turn with contrition and sorrow from a former course of action.” This involves learning to live “by every word of God” (Matthew 4:4; Luke 4:4) and learning to recognize and eliminate behaviors that are contrary to God’s instructions. This requires “self-examination”—prayerfully studying God’s word and prayerfully examining our thoughts, attitudes, and actions in order to follow the example of Jesus Christ. This is what the Apostle Paul advised Christians to do if they want to become more like their Savior (1 Corinthians 11:27–32). One way to do this is to review the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) and to consider both the letter of the law and the spirit of the law as outlined in Mathew 5–7 and Galatians 5:18–24. Taking time to work through this self-examination process will help us walk more perfectly in the footsteps of Jesus and develop the very mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5–11).
Have a profitable Sabbath,
Douglas S. Winnail
