My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. The more they increased, the more they sinned against me; I will change their glory into shame. (Hosea 4:6-7 ESV)
When God speaks of humbling yourself like a child, he's speaking of humility, not in knowledge and understanding. Sometimes He speaks of us as His children, because true born again Christians have become His sons and daughters.
At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:1-6 ESV)
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:1-2 ESV)
God wants us to be mature in the faith, metaphorically no longer living on milk but on solid food.
About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:11-14 ESV)
God will give that to you exactly when you are ready to receive it. First, get to the basic principles, or you will not have the doors of your mind opened to be able to process the deeper things.
You will notice that Jesus begins to preach in Matthew chapter 5, in order to till the hard soil of His listeners' hearts, the exact opposite and inversion of conventional wisdom. This is a great place to get acquainted with spiritual principles, to get your mind ready to accept the things of God and be able to reject the things that blind you to them. It can't happen until humility opens the door to His sacred wisdom. Ego and self-centeredness and fear are blinders, and self-delusion is the most insidious kind, a poison that will permit no entry of light or truth Matthew 6:23.
The hidden secret to righteousness that even some seasoned religious scholars completely miss is the Great Exchange. God gives us what we utterly lack, through His incarnation and sacrifice on the cross, and offers us His perfection and righteousness and peace and love--literally heaven, which can be enjoyed while yet on Earth--in exchange for our imperfect selves which are jealously guarded by our own pride. This is the absolute key to the kingdom. The blood of Jesus will instantly position you into to a place of enlightenment that millennia of Buddhist meditation could only offer dim, transient glimpses of.
"Submit yourselves therefore unto to God..." James 4:7
What does that mean? Well, in the Great Exchange, we die to ourselves ("take up your cross" Luke 9:23) and live to God (Romans 6:9-11). What is self? Self is merely the avatar that we use to navigate the outside world. Self is an illusion; ego is a trap and a snare, an anchor that holds us in an imaginary prison. So we are not giving up anything of value whatsoever. We are merely exchanging illusion and death for the priceless gift of reality and life.
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. The more they increased, the more they sinned against me; I will change their glory into shame. (Hosea 4:6-7 ESV)
When God speaks of humbling yourself like a child, he's speaking of humility, not in knowledge and understanding. Sometimes He speaks of us as His children, because true born again Christians have become His sons and daughters.
At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:1-6 ESV)
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:1-2 ESV)
God wants us to be mature in the faith, metaphorically no longer living on milk but on solid food.
About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:11-14 ESV)
God will give that to you exactly when you are ready to receive it. First, get to the basic principles, or you will not have the doors of your mind opened to be able to process the deeper things.
You will notice that Jesus begins to preach in Matthew chapter 5, in order to till the hard soil of His listeners' hearts, the exact opposite and inversion of conventional wisdom. This is a great place to get acquainted with spiritual principles, to get your mind ready to accept the things of God and be able to reject the things that blind you to them. It can't happen until humility opens the door to His sacred wisdom. Ego and self-centeredness and fear are blinders, and self-delusion is the most insidious kind, a poison that will permit no entry of light or truth Matthew 6:23.
The hidden secret to righteousness that even some seasoned religious scholars completely miss is the Great Exchange. God gives us what we utterly lack, through His incarnation and sacrifice on the cross, and offers us His perfection and righteousness and peace and love--literally heaven, which can be enjoyed while yet on Earth--in exchange for our imperfect selves which are jealously guarded by our own pride. This is the absolute key to the kingdom. The blood of Jesus will instantly position you into to a place of enlightenment that millennia of Buddhist meditation could only offer dim, transient glimpses of.
"Submit yourselves therefore unto to God..." James 4:7
What does that mean? Well, in the Great Exchange, we die to ourselves ("take up your cross" Luke 9:23) and live to God (Romans 6:9-11). What is self? Self is merely the avatar that we use to navigate the outside world. Self is an illusion; ego is a trap and a snare, an anchor that holds us in an imaginary prison. So we are not giving up anything of value whatsoever. We are merely exchanging illusion and death for the priceless gift of reality and life.
https://kupdf.net/download/jesus-christ-sun-of-god-ancient-cosmology-and-early-christian-symbolism-by-david-r-fideler-ocr_58a100e36454a7335db1eb87_pdf
bon appetit