Quote:
Originally Posted by Boxjobox
Throughout the gospels, Jesus is constantly praying to our Heavenly Father. in most instances, the prayers of the apostles are to God our Father. It would seem to me, that if we were "living Christ", we too would have been---dare I say, imitating Jesus. Instead there was the constant "oh Lord Jesus". I feel this created a dysfunctional church family. Instead of praying to our Heavenly Father, we would pray to our big brother, Jesus.
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Like many things LC, it started with some scriptural basis and got distorted. In the LC, one set of scriptures would assume primacy, simply because WL was focused there. In this case it was arguably "Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved"; the name obviously being the name of Jesus. "It is by no other name given that men will be saved" etc. And Paul's "Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with
all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours..." I could add a half-dozen NT verses to buttress the case. But the danger is that in our ten or dozen "key verses" we then forget the Father of lights. We might even hear an argument that "since Jesus IS the Father we just pray to Father Jesus". One stop shopping, as it were -- I actually saw that presented by LC members: "Pray to Father Jesus".
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Thus we have a generic, "blended Christ" smoothie who's the Father, the Son, the Spirit, the Body, the Ministry, the etc, etc... so we just say "Oh Lord Jesus" in every place... but look at Paul's "in every place"... it means everywhere people call upon the name of the Lord Jesus they are separated and sanctified. It doesn't mean that "Oh Lord Jesus" now becomes the generic, one-size-fits-all prayer.