Tree, I am blessed at your ability and willingness to be vulnerable with your life. Coming to grips with what our makeup is can be unsettling at times. Being too self-focused is a sure way to lose track of the calling of God, and all that it means to be sanctified. You apprehend some of the more sure things of God, as your confidence in Him is certain and valid.
One of the chief things that we, as Gentiles, need to understand about God is that we were not included in any of His works prior to the crucifixion. It is there that all humanity entered into a crisis of judgment, not merely Israel, with God. Up til that point, the nations were without God and had no access to Him without following the Chosen People.
The so-called Old Testament, a man-made term to describe the ancient Hebrew Scrolls, is a record of the history of God meeting with man and His various points of revelation to him. He chose Israel as the channel of that revelation. There were no other revelations taking place in the earth. His dealings with them as a demonstration of man's inability to save himself or be holy unto the Creator is detailed in that Record with extreme accuracy. He has preserved it miraculously for thousands of years. That we have access to it is to be greatly appreciated by us.
The Greek Scriptures, referred to as the "New Testament", mark the beginning of His operations apart from the Jew and introduces the message of Paul for the nations, which was kept secret until Paul revealed it. A joint spirit body of believers, Jew and Gentile, on the same footing in divine service to God. This was never mentioned anywhere in the OT by the prophets of God. It was secretly kept in the heart of God until after Jesus' glorification.
The New Testament Hebrew writers (Peter,James,Jude,John, and the writer of Hebrews) speak to the Jews in their letters. This will be readily seen in the titles penned at the beginning of the letters, and their content. While there are many great truths about God in them, they were not written to us, they are Jewish and remain so. Only the letters of Paul have any significance for us. To try and apply Hebrew doctrine to our Apostles' teaching, i.e. faith without works is dead, is to confuse the truth for today.
The Hebrew Greek letters were written for the chosen people of the past, and will become needful in God's workings during the time of the end, after the Body has been removed from the earth, the element that is detaining the man of lawlessness from arising. Again, I add, that all of God's word is inspired, useful for instruction and doctrine and establishing us in righteousness, but they were not all written to us. This is rightly dividing the word of Truth.(2Tim 2:15)
Without a firm underpinning of Paul's doctrine and commands, time spent in study of the word of God can bring about a good deal of confusion. The tendency of those who do not understand the ministry of Paul is to mix Jewish truths with ours, and the result is error and confusion. Today's truth is lost out on trying to purloin what belongs to Israel. Such is the case with the spiritual endowments of the Pentecostal period. They were meant to announce the coming of the Kingdom of God, and the presence of the Lord on earth. But we all know that did not occur. Consequently they have receded and are inoperative in the ecclesia, until the nearing of the Kingdom comes once more.
They were Jewish endowments to be used for discipling the nations under them, but with their refusal of the re-offering of the Kingdom through the Twelve, Israel became hearing and not hearing, seeing and not seeing once more. The gifts subsided, and faith, expectation, and love became the only abiding elements of service towards God.
YLT 1C 13:8 . The love doth never fail; and whether there be prophecies, they shall become useless; whether tongues, they shall cease; whether knowledge, it shall become useless;
YLT 1C 13:9 for in part we know, and in part we prophecy;
YLT 1C 13:10 and when that which is perfect may come, then that which is in part shall become useless.
YLT 1C 13:13 and now there doth remain faith, hope, love-these three; and the greatest of these is love.
The creation of the new humanity, formed in the image of Christ Jesus, has already been bestowed upon us from above. It is perfection in an imperfect flesh body right now, but at the resurrection that will be changed. The perfect, in spirit, has already come. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, (2C 5:17) and this is an absolute truth. We belong to another realm and await a future time when Christ is King over all. Our citizenship is in the celestials, the ( Phl 3:20) heavens. The exhibition of the spiritual endowments is useless and out of place in this economy. It is taking from one era, and trying to make it fit in with the new creation. It is old and impotent, and not of God. This is the cause of great confusion and is perpetuated through pentecostal sectarianism.
Keep earnestly seeking after Him, and I appluad your honesty and desire for the things of God. You are in a race to receive an award at the end of days for the Gentiles, and, to have been chosen by God to come to Him and serve Him is without a doubt the most valuable thing you have in your life.
fivesense