I have always considered myself a student. For the longest time, my wife and her family thought I was going to be a professional student. Can’t make money from that, but you can sure learn a lot of things. However, my teaching has always come from observing and watching human nature, and to be honest with you all, yes, mine included, and that, especially in the light of the Word of God.
As I started to mature and get older, and with some of the experiences I have been through with people of all ages, many times in the worst of natural circumstances, you start to see how people react the situations in the world around them.
The one thing that has never ceased to amaze me and even more so as I have grown in the knowledge of the Word of God, is how little human nature changes over the many, many decades and even centuries!
A television show that my wife and I used to watch a lot when we were younger were the different Star Trek series, from the first original one up until after Star Trek Voyager. Yes, we’ve probably also seen all the major movies as well, but the thing that I always found fascinating is that no matter how far into the future man has supposedly gone, according to the series, and how enlightened they have become, the writers could never get around that pesky problem of innate human nature! In fact they used that to create drama in so many story lines! But to me, that didn’t show a very enlightened nature for supposedly evolving so much from the base things like greed and lust, envy and even lying!
Which brings me to what I want to share today. Jesus said it more than once to those either caught in sin, or those suffering from a result of natural sin, “Go and sin no more.”
Pretty straight forward and pretty simple really. Yet for some reason and especially among very strong conservative Christians, in which I claim to also be, there is a tendency to bypass that, and by the way, all the compassion, empathy and love that is inherent in that phrase, and go straight to beating the sinner over the head with the horror of their sin. It’s like the mindset behind that kind of onslaught, is “we’ll show them how bad they are and for sure they will cry out to the Lord!” I mean, I will be honest with you, other than base human nature and the need to be either over people which puts you above them, I don’t understand the concept from a Christian perspective.
We’ve all heard the theology, but I don’t think many Christians have let it sink in; yes, God hates, He abhors, detests even, sin. He is a holy, just and righteous God and there is absolutely no stain or spot of darkness in Him. But Christians seem to forget, the Lord created mankind with the ability to choose whether to sin or not to sin. He hates the sin, but out of an unfathomable ability to love His creation, He created US! And according to the Word of God there is nothing that will ever stand in the way of His love for us. (Romans 8:38-39). Now I know what a lot of “preachers” teach, that it is because of a person who accepts Jesus Christ as Lord, that His love never fails. But that is NOT what those Scriptures say, and there are many more. It is through Christ and His sacrifice that nothing will come between God’s love AND His ability to love His creation. Now I don’t know if you’ve thought of this, but that means even hell AND the eternal lake of fire CAN’T keep God from loving His creation.
However, because Agape (Godly love) cannot exist without holiness, justice and righteousness, man is the one who refuses to love God and in that refusal subjects himself to the ultimate free-will choice, to be separated from the very presence of God and the love that the Father has for all His creation, by choosing utter and total darkness, away from any source of light and love that originates from God, the Creator! God does NOT choose that, man, himself chooses that and God out of His unfailing love, and despite every effort to sway the heart of man, will give man the desires of his dark and stony heart! If that doesn’t do something to the heart of a Christian, then that “Christian” needs to rethink his stance on whether or not he is truly surrendered to Christ Jesus!
God does NOT want us to judge another in the sense of condemning to eternal death or sentencing to eternal punishment another person, Christian or otherwise, because we have all sinned and we all have the freedom to choose forgiveness. That type of judging will come from Christ Jesus who won that honor by obeying the Father on the Cross of Calvary!
However, God DOES want, and He equips His children to judge, based on discerning right from wrong, good fruit from bad fruit, and falsehoods from truth. We are to be aware AND vigilant to that fact, not just for ourselves but for each other who are in Christ Jesus, for the protection and growth of the Body of Christ.
So, instead of wooing others who feel there is no hope, or there is no other way to live other than the world’s ways, just to get by or survive, we will beat them over the head with their sins and sinfulness in the hopes of showing them the way to Heaven!
Sorry, I don’t thing so and in fact through experience I KNOW it doesn’t work that way. The way you win people, is to show them there is a way to hope, there is a way to escape the ways of the world and a way to do more than just survive, but to actually live life more abundantly until the promise of eternal life is redeemed.
If you’re going to beat someone over the head with something, do it with something they would least expect, Godly, compassionate, sincere love, through our actions towards them and not just in empty words. Anyone can say I love you to another, it happens all over, every day. BUT, it is very rarely demonstrated in a Christ-like way.
Oh, but you say, “I won’t enable or compromise their sin! It is my job to turn them from it!” Actually, no, it isn’t. In fact, it is our job as Christians to show them that Jesus loves them for who they are and He is the one that can change them by starting with their hearts, if He so desires. Of course we know a changed heart changes, but what those outside the Body of Christ don’t realize is that God, through Jesus Christ loves them for the creation they are. Isn’t it time we started demonstrating that?
I put a challenge to all Christians who might be reading this; show me anywhere in the Bible where Jesus Christ Himself, beat a sinner, any sinner and even one caught in the act, over the head with their sin.
I can find a LOT of instances where He ridiculed and in anger tore into the religious leaders and Pharisees of His day, because they did the same thing that Christians today are doing to others in the world. He didn’t have a lot of nice things to say to them because as He told them, “they should have known better because they had the Words (oracles) of God, Himself!”
All I can say is, how much less of an excuse do we have today, with so much more of God’s Word AND the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us into ALL truth?
When Jesus healed the sick, or the demonic, or any myriad of other things, did He first tell them to go and repent and come back and then I will demonstrate God’s love to you, by healing or deliverance, etc.? Most certainly not, He showed God’s love and compassion on them and then let them know, God knows their hearts!
When Jesus was teaching in the temple and the scribes and Pharisees brought before Him a woman who somehow had been caught in an adulterous act, they weren’t concerned about God’s love, or compassion, all they were concerned about was that her sin was an affront to them and God and cared nothing about her, God’s creation!
John 8:3-9:
Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?” This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear.
So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
And then Jesus started to berate her about being caught in the very act of adultery and telling her how wicked a person she was and she should repent so that God would love her!
Okay, okay, got a little carried away there! He didn’t do that and He didn’t even think those things. Here’s what really happened:
John 8:10-11:
When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?”
She said, “No one, Lord.”
And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”
Jesus, God’s only Son, (Who only speaks what the Father tells Him – John 12:49) told her that He didn’t condemn her, just go, but don’t sin anymore! “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.” – Romans 5:8-9.
In closing, I want you to meditate and consider what I have said here and to remind you that we are to follow the EXAMPLE of Christ Jesus Himself. Everybody knows John 3:16, you even see the Scripture notation displayed at large arena sporting events, what few people share or even remember is what follows after that and so, what better example to pattern our Christian walk by than the following:
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. – John 3:17.
I can give you a Scriptural principle to make my point using this very verse:
For God did not send His children, the disciples of Christ into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through them might be shown the Father and Salvation through the Father’s Son, our example, Jesus Christ!
Something to seriously think about before our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ breaks through the clouds and sounds that mighty trumpet calling His chosen and anointed home to be with Him and the Father!
*Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture links provided by Biblia.com
John Linton (1888 – 1965) John Linton is not normally listed among the elite of the evangelists in this century: Moody, Sunday, Bob Jones, Sr., Appelman, John Rice. But he was not some lesser light—God mightily moved through his ministry. He left a trail of converts to Christ as well as revived, restored, rejoicing churches.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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