Hi everyone :)
REB: “Speak the truth in love.” (A lesson that i continually learn graciously from my Heavenly Father.)
You said, “The church is full of sinners!” i say, “Exactly!” So please do not make the mistake of casting the first stone. We can be firm in our convictions based on God’s standards of perfection (“Be perfect as He is perfect”!) but always remembering that we cannot be perfect apart from His work in us. “While we were still sinners [God loved us] and Christ died for us.”
With all due respect, i sense a lot of judgement and not much grace in your words. God is both just and merciful; and like what Christie Siganos wrote, “there is only one judge!” We cannot and must not judge others; while as God’s ambassadors to the rest of the world, we have to share both His righteousness/justice, AND His love, that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from”.
This is the same “Jesus” “in the Gospels” and the same “LORD of the Bible”. We have the responsibility to report the complete story and share about all the attributes of God; especially since the one defining moment in history is when Christ died for us undeserving, unworthy, sinful creatures. :)
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comment 2
From REB: "By focusing on my comments alone, you present a lopsided view yourself. I can assure you, that if I saw people over emphasizing judgment, then I would try to balance it out by speaking of the other part."
So we're both "balance" people? :) (That's what i'm trying to learn nowadays...)
i don't think it's lopsided to remind people of the full Gospel that we're both mentioning. :) But this post is talking about those outside the Church who have not yet experienced God's grace (or haven't realized it yet), as opposed to those in the Church who are God's not preaching judgement. (So we do agree after all! Because it's the complete Gospel! :) )
In the same way that we must judge ourselves as you said (or constantly ask God to reveal to us specific areas where we need improvement), and reflect as a Church on whether we have lost our saltiness already....we need to reflect on why should the world turn to us anyway. Like what Clay wrote, "Jesus met people where they were": He drew people to Himself, as they were, but without ever condoning their sin. (Tough act to follow!) But again, we must test our saltiness in dispensing God's righteous judgment and God's loving grace. But note that judgment has different incarnations in other religions and in the secular world, while grace is scandalous, ridiculous, and found nowhere outside the Bible. :) Jesus' teachings are full of grace because the people in His time (and everyone else) already knows about judgment and is all too ready to give it.
We don't have to ignore sin and judgment of course. Actually, i've heard some say that for people to appreciate the Good News of the Gospel (grace!), they need to learn about the Bad News first (judgment!). Makes sense! Also, grace would not make sense if there's nothing to forgive --- Jesus told the adulteress that He is not condemning her, yet His last words were "Go and sin no more," an honest assessment of her past combined with an incredibly empowering goal for her future. In reaching out to people mentioned in the blog post (the people we used to be! people who are as sinful and imperfect as we are!), we need to get back to Jesus' way.
i agree with you, i've heard of a lot of churches and movements that suddenly say <***> is ok and so on, overriding the Bible's explicit statements that <***> is sin. And it's alarming because naturally, people who do/have <***> would of course go to grace-only-but-unBiblical "churches" instead of grace-with-judgement-as-the-Bible-says ones. i worry, but we know God will back up those who preach Him and not their own ideas :)
REB, here.
ReplyDeleteMy comments are directed at the Church. The blog post asks questions about the effectiveness of the Church to reach out to a lost a dying world. Paul tells the Church that we're to judge ourselves. When sin has been dealt with in the Church, and the full Gospel is being preached, then God will make the Church fruitful.
The Church in America and Europe has been forgetting why God gave His only begotten son. Don't forget to give out John 3:18 while you're giving out John 3:16!
Hi Reb :) Thanks for stopping by :)
ReplyDelete(For the benefit of the others who would read this:
John 3:16 --- For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:18 --- Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.)
i agree, verse 18 is like the "other way" of saying verse 16 eh? (actually, i've heard v. 16 so many times before, so it was v. 18 that really impacted me when i first read it...The entire John is a real eye-opener :) Well, the entire Bible is!)
Yes, a lot of churches have stagnated and have lost their effectiveness in the world because they have become "of" the world as opposed to just "in" it. (Why would i turn to Jesus, as preached in those "churches", when i am not doing anything wrong according to them anyway?) It seems that that is becoming the trend in America and Europe, as you said, which is why it was so refreshing when i attended services in China, because they kept on talking about seeking God's presence and worshipping Him (instead of the more self-serving "we are loved by God" themes).
But the blog post talks about an outsider who is well aware of her scarlet letter sins already without the Church having to preach to her. The other comments, like mine, focused on how we need to dispense more grace...on the other hand you focused on how we cannot reach out to others because we ourselves have been blinded by our own sin.
i apologize because i only got to realize now why you wrote what you wrote. i mean, i'm all too familiar with the judgmental self-righteous type of Christians who would look down on the girl on the ThinkChristian post, in effect closing heaven's (or the Church's) doors on her. So frankly i was shocked with your comment at first.
There might be lots of unBiblical churches who could take "her" in and say that it's ok. We agree that the Church's answer should *not* be "Oh, let's lower our standards to up our attendance". *But we must take her in, along with the rest of the world*! :)
At the risk of oversimplifying things, there are different approaches to different people: there's the heal/feed/love-first-preach-later (the masses), and then there's the shock-with-truth-and-judgment (religious types who are supposed to know better). i don't want to stereotype though, i'm just analyzing why Jesus wasn't as gracious to the Pharisees and other "God-experts". Of course, we don't have God's omniscience and authority to judge perfectly, so i don't really recommend calling other people "snakes" and such things (http://tecigurl.blogspot.com/search?q=good+and+bad+fruit).
Again, thank you for your comments at ThinkChristian and over here. :) i checked out your blogs but since you disabled comments (ahem, ahem!) i can't think of how i can give you feedback except by hoping you hop over here every now and then. :) But, God bless always! And you're right: "JESUS ONLY!" :)