Many cultural conditions in the Bible have no parallel in our culture today. Few, if any, greet one another with a holy kiss. You don’t want to take a teaching that prevailed for that particular time and place and make it a binding law for all time, and in every place. It’s dangerous to make a blanket acceptance of first century Jewish culture, by transferring it into ours today.
Paul advised the single Corinthian believers to remain unmarried because of, “…the present distress.” But this was not to be a permanent statute, but was a temporal teaching for that time. Christ brought about vast changes in many cultural areas. For example, women no longer have their own Temple Court, or sit on opposite sides of the church to worship. The Cross now brings them along side their husbands.
There are transitory, geographical, and local cultural conditions in the Bible that were never meant to be timeless, nor universal. But the principle teaching can be applicable to whoever, whenever, whatever. For example, my wife says of the wise woman of Proverbs 31, “I don’t have to buy a sewing machine and make my own clothes to be like her; but I do need to be industrious if I’m to emulate her.”
It’s not the kiss, but an affectionate greeting that’s the issue. Not the washing of feet, but ministering to another’s needs that is important. Let us be careful we do not lose the lasting principle, while trying to establish something permanent out of the temporal.
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