God who is not served by human hands is simply no respecter of person. The outward flesh of any nation has never had anything do with salvation. Types and shadows as that seen, the temporal were used temporally to point to the eternal not seen, but were never the payment for sin. They provide no saving grace.They are considered dead works (they have no spirit life to offer)
Ceremonial laws are merely fleshly temporal ordinances or celebrations. They either look ahead or back to an event.
If the flesh of Christ profited for nothing (zero) what would make a person think it would of profited for any other person?
Taking that which is spiritual and trying to make it about literal flesh and blood is not about the gospel of Christ .It would be another kind. Not one we have received. .
2Co 4:18 While we look not at the “things which are seen”, but at the “things which are not seen”: for the things which are seen “are temporal”; but the things which are not seen “are eternal”.
A clear distinction
must be made between the invisible, eternal “thing of God” and the visible temporal “things of men”. It is there that Satan the antichrist (singular) seeks to devour those antichrists (plural) who know not the wiles of the devil.
Scripture provides a clear picture of the antichrist and shows how deceived men like Peter, who worked with Satan to offend God.
You could say Peter forgot to apply the precept found in 2Co 4:18 so that he could find the spiritual meaning of the parable in regard to the gates of hell that was given prior to Peter trying to thwart the salvation program the gospel. You could say the opposite happened the gates did prevail , when it became the “things of men”.
Then Peter took
him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee,
Lord:
this shall not be unto thee.But
he turned, and said unto "
Peter",
Get thee behind me, "
Satan": thou art an "
offence unto
me": for thou savourest
not the "things that be of
God",
but "those that be of
men". Mat 16:22
Many dismiss the procedure above(2Co 4:18 ) needed to rightly divide the word of God . In a false fear of what they call spiritualizing even where the spiritual understanding is needed .Therefore making the parable
without effect. They will say look for the literal interpretation. Don’t search for the spiritual understanding.
2Corinthians 5:7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight
That kind of
not rightfully dividing the word of God would be dissipation of the spirit, the subtle that caused the fall in the beginning. When Adam and Eve refused to walk by faith in respect to a invisible God , walking by faith (the unseen God) but rather put their trust in the creature that took on the form of a creature .
Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:Which are a
shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those “things” which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, Col 2:16
Intruding into those fleshly “things of men” the temporal, and hoping to make them the not seen , eternal , spiritual, is a hope that comes by turning the “things of God” upside down in a hope they could come after what is seen .
Searching as for silver or gold for the spiritual meaning as the “things of God” in the parables throughout the scriptures can save much work of repenting, as with Peter..who was used as one of antichrists (plural) one led by the father of lies. (the antichrist singular)
