He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
The pharisees then all drop there stones and leave one by one. After they are all gone Jesus speaks to the woman:
"Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you? (...) Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”Jesus was very clear: 'You sinned, and what you did was wrong. Don't do it again, but I do not condemn you.'
Today Christians seem to go to one of two extremes. If this case were presented to the church today there would be two main responses. One side would respond exactly like the pharisees: "Let's grab our stones and stone her!" The other side would say: "Oh that's okay. God knows it's hard to resist having sex with multiple people. When He said "Don't commit adultery" it was really just a guideline, but He knows we can't really follow that. So go ahead and keep doing what you're doing."
We may not be saying these words exactly but these are the messages convey. Neither of them match with Jesus. This is the reason people look at the church like Gahndi did. They see how Jesus had a great philosophy and great commands, but they don't see us following them. Many people probably have the attitude of: "If His own followers don't do what He says then why should I?"
It is time for the church to be filled with Christians, with followers of Christ! Because so far Christians have seemed to be a minority in our church and that is sad!
Hey just saw you on BlogCatalog
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately there will always be the tares along with the wheat, the true convert and the false convert.
The thing about the tares is that they are virtually identical to wheat and cannot be removed until the harvest. However, While waiting and working for the harvest we must be able to discern the fruits that are being produced.
We all need pruning and for those that are within the church it must be done in love but not at the expense of the truth
This is a really good article!
ReplyDeleteI was once reminded that we should all use the Bible as a mirror instead of a weapon. I love thinking like that, because it makes me work on myself - striving to be a better discple of Christ - instead of judging and comparing myself to others.
Colossians 3:1-17 is a great part of scripture :)
Thank you for your comments! It's true that there will always be tares but I think sometimes we are tares simply out of complacency, not realizing it. One of the jobs of ministers is bring this to their realization.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great metaphor healingleaf! We must look at ourselves first just like Jesus said, often we are the ones with a plank in our eye.