Del Tondo claims that Paul softens “the requirements of costly grace which Jesus taught.” We answer this false charge here.
The main thrust of Del Tondo’s site is, as its name implies, the worship of Jesus’ words to the diminishing, if not dismissal, of all other Scriptures (See The Word of God).
Worse yet (yes, it can get worse), Del Tondo limits you to hearing only the words recalled by those who knew the Lord in the flesh. So, while the apostles who walked with the Lord during His days on earth were alive you could have heard the many things they heard the Lord say, but now that they’re gone and we have no record of the Lord’s words other than what’s recorded in the Gospels, that’s all you’re left with.
This would be the case if the Lord hadn’t been resurrected, ascended to heaven, and returned to earth by His Spirit to be forever with those who believe. For Del Tondo, who doesn’t believe, the Lord’s interaction with men ended with the last words from His mouth recorded in the Scriptures. But for those who know and walk with Him, the Lord is alive and yet speaks, even as He spoke to believers before He came to earth in the flesh as the Messiah and after He ascended into Heaven!
Consider: If a person is alive and wants to have a relationship with you, will he not interact with you? How much more God the Spirit, Who fills the universe and isn’t limited in means of communication? Doesn’t the Lord Jesus tell us so? Do He and His Words have an expiration date or is it those who don’t believe that are expired?
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:27 MKJV).
“And, behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the world. Amen” (Matthew 28:20 MKJV).
“I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you” (John 14:18 KJV).
“But I say to you, that I will by no means drink of this fruit of the vine from now on, until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s Kingdom.” (Matthew 26:29 EMTV).
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall by no means pass away” (Matthew 24:35 EMTV).
How can Jesus Christ be your Lord and Savior if your relationship with Him is limited to only those words He spoke while on earth 2,000 years ago? That’s a relationship with a book and history, not a Living Person in the present. It is idolatry. It’s not the experience of the living.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they who hear shall live” (John 5:25 MKJV).
Hebrews 12:22-25 MKJV
(22) But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
(23) to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are written in Heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,
(24) and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
(25) See that you do not refuse Him Who speaks. For if they did not escape, those who refused him that spoke on earth, much more we shall not escape if we turn away from Him Who speaks from Heaven,
Del Tondo is Catholic in spirit, figuratively wearing a large crucifix around his neck with an abominable image of the Lord nailed to the cross, insisting you bow to it. Anyone, such as the apostle Paul, who preaches the Living Resurrected Lord is to be vilified and shunned. Del Tondo writes:
“The famous theologian Rudolf Bultmann even claimed Paul teaches us in Second Corinthians 5:16 that it is necessary to treat Jesus’s teachings pre-resurrection as irrelevant.”
Paul wasn’t telling the Corinthians to ignore Jesus’ teachings – he was telling them to know Jesus as the Living God Who came in the flesh, reconciling all men to Himself:
2 Corinthians 5:16-21 MKJV
(16) So as we now know no one according to flesh, but even if we have known Christ according to flesh, yet now we no longer know Him so.
(17) So that if any one is in Christ, that one is a new creature; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
(18) And all things are of God, Who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation;
(19) whereas God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and putting the word of reconciliation in us.
(20) Then we are ambassadors on behalf of Christ, as God exhorting through us, we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
(21) For He has made Him Who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
The apostle Paul acknowledges Jesus in His Rightful Position, whereas Del Tondo would have you presume to know Jesus after the flesh, relegating Him to prophet status – a man whose words you worship rather than Him, the Word of God made flesh. Del Tondo wrongly equates Jesus with “that prophet” of Deuteronomy 18, but Jesus was and is much more than a prophet. Jesus Christ is God, which Paul not only preached, but lived (“For me to live is Christ” – Philippians 1:21).
Del Tondo faults Paul for not quoting the Lord’s sayings from the Gospels, whereas all of Paul’s sayings are revelation from the Lord, guiding His people in salvation and relationship with Him. Del Tondo is anti-Christ; he does not see the Lord Jesus Christ or confess His coming in the flesh.
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me” – Paul’s letter to the Galatians (V. 2:20).