Friday, April 04, 2014
Two-fold response
I wish you to remember this point—that the true friend of God and man never takes the sinner's part, because he never acts through mere compassion. And at the same time, he is never seen to denounce the sinner, without at the same time manifesting compassion for his soul, and a strong desire to save him from death.—Charles Finney
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3 comments:
ABSOLUTELY!! God doesn't have to accept sin because he sent Jesus. "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." John1:29.
What would we say about a doctor who, upon discovering a patient's Strep Throat first wringing his hands, and grabbing a picket sign with an epithet writ upon it denouncing the infection? We'd report him to the state medical board as a nut job! No the doctor simply gives his patient an antibiotic and sends him on his way.
God doesn't need to picket, run for political office on a platform of fighting sin. God simply gives us the cure for sin.
The problem for God is that he must deal with our unloving, faithless, condemning attitude toward sinners, before he can reach through us to the sinners. Jesus is the cure, but we offer sinners empty platitudes like, "love the sinner, but hate the sin." That little saying would be fine, but for the evidence against it's veracity. Christians love hating the sin.
We have the one true God, but we keep using the ways of the lost world in an attempt to achieve God's goals. God accomplished all his goals through Jesus Christ.
Lonnie,
Debbie and I were just talking about the problem of "loving the sinner, hating the sin" the day before you posted this : )
The problem is that we identify the sin with the sinner. We don't say, "That person lies." We say, "That person is a liar," thereby identifying the person with the sin. If we were to see the person as a person, created in the image of God, a lot of our problems in relating to a lost and dying world would disappear! Of course, that can only happen through the power of the Holy Spirit!
The good news is that the Holy Spirit is not just present with us, but living within us. All we need to do is allow him to make us what we already are...
James
James,
You are of course right, but as I've been writing my book I've begun to see that there really is a time when sin and sinner cannot be separated.
When looking at the lives of Moses, Abraham and his nephew Lot, we see there is a kind of dead end for them. God gave the law through Moses, but in John 1 we are told that grace and truth come through Jesus Christ. One of the reasons Moses was given the law is that he was a law breaker. Break the law and die, there is no grace, no hope, just death.
When we look at Lot, we plainly see a righteous man. In 2 Peter 2 we're told about righteous Lot, and how he suffered because of the lawless and wicked deeds practiced all around him. We see Lot take a righteous stand against the wickedness of the men of Sodom. Lot goes outside his house and confronts the wicked men surrounding it. He even offers his very life in sacrifice. When Lot offers his virgin daughters he isn't being cruel to them, but to himself. A man's children were his only way of having eternal life. When Lot offered his daughters he was sacrificing himself and the future of his family name. Lot is truly a righteous man!
But so what if Lot was a righteous man? So what if Lot made a righteous stand? Lot and his daughters are the only recorded survivors to escape with their lives. But again so what? Lot was righteous, but his daughters; his hope for continued life after his death aren't righteous. Lot's daughter's are as unrighteous as any Sodomite! It would have been better for the wicked men to take and rape those daughters. If Sodom was a continual source of affliction how much more the daughters who get him drunk and rape him?! How much more is Lot troubled and made miserable if he'd known his posterity; his son/grandsons were the roots of two wicked nations??? Righteous Lot's righteousness is cut off because the culture of Sodom had invaded his body (through his wife and daughters), and the posterity of righteous Lot is wickedness (through his sons).
There is only hope in the lot of Christ. Christ doesn't come to take a stand against sin, Jesus overcomes sin!! Jesus utterly destroys it, and Christ in us and through us overcomes the world around us. "In this life you will have trouble, but rejoice for I have overcome the world!" The righteousness of Lot couldn't give him a righteous lot in life. Christ's righteousness cannot be cut off and the lot of Christ is eternal life!
Before Christ sin and sinner were the same, and even the righteous could not stand. With Christ the unrighteous cannot stand, and the posterity of the wicked will be utterly cut off, either through Jesus Christ, or with the death of the wicked.
Grace and Peace,
Lonnie
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