The Weekend Word
“A principle I got from Jesus: Live your life with such freedom that uptight Christians—Pharisees—will doubt your salvation. And put brothers and sisters around you who will hold you accountable-not to be wonderful, pure and nice—but to not shilly—shally, to be free, and to bask in your freedom to the glory of God.
Matthew 12 shows us the people who don’t like us…
THEY LOOKED FOR SIN
The Pharisees looked for sin…and they still do. “‘Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath'” (Matthew 12:2).
We don’t discipline for sin in the church. We discipline for a lack of repentance, the lack of a broken heart. If you start looking for sin, that’s all you’re going to find. It’s everywhere.
There is a game in the church played by Pharisees: “But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him” (Matthew 12:14). The game is “gotcha” and it’s a game free Christians don’t play. When you’re free, you assume sin is there. You hold your brothers and sisters, and let them cry. You identify with the hurt, struggle, failure and shame…because we have nobody but us to do that. The world is bad and it’s hard. We’re not Home yet.
Sin is everywhere. “It’s me, O Lord, not my brother or my sister, standing in the need of prayer.” The Pharisees are looking for sin and they’ll point it out in you. Don’t let them. That’s what it means to live in the freedom of grace.”
Those that hunt sin are the same that seek to kill Christ. They dont even know they hate the Christ they profess.
Excellent!
Don’t we all “hunt sin” to one extent or another?
It’s how we stroke our egos and prove to ourselves we’re not “that bad” after all
At my office we hunt the sin of being late, or being dumb, or making a mistake….
Then we tell our friends and agree amongst ourselves we’d never be that way.
We feel better that we are somehow competent and pretend to soothe our hidden fears that really we are much worse
Speaking of hunting sin, I have been hunting the sin of Stephen Arterburn.
I am trying to get my arms around this whole tension between the scripture’s call for upright living, and the Brennan Manning etc. proclamation of grace.
Arterburn, on his third marriage while making a good living as a relationship counselor, is sort of in the Manning camp.
I honestly do not know how to perceive all this. Grace and forgiveness, second and third and fourth and fifth chances, are all very very important in scripture as colored by my own experiences of needing them so often.
And as L is possibly alluding there is a sick schadenfreude dynamic which most of us see in ourselves and are ashamed of.
I also believe that to hold any sort of judgmental or morally superior attitude is absolute poison to one’s own soul.
But what about wholesome living and healthy choices? Isn’t that important?
Dunno.
“But what about wholesome living and healthy choices? Isn’t that important?”
To whom and for what purpose? Surely you don’t think it has some special “spiritual” power.
Yes, I do. And don’t call me Shirley. 🙂
PP (alias Frank Drebin) Vet – LOL 🙂
Then we should all be Amish … they seem to have the wholesome living and the healthy choices down just right.
“But what about wholesome living and healthy choices? Isn’t that important?”
To whom and for what purpose? Surely you don’t think it has some special “spiritual” power.<<<
I can't believe a Christian would write something like this.
I will be out of town for the day and won’t be around to see the expected response about how shopping at Safeway, washing one’s car and driving one’s grandchildren around town constitutes “good works.” I’ll just leave with a paraphrase of Jesus: “So what. Even the unbelievers do this much.”
I will be out for a while also. Going to the beach where the girls wear bikinis – I don’t have to worry about be caught there by anyone here, as going to the beach is not a “wholesome living” activity.
But since your reply was YES – i would like to know “what is that “special spiritual power” that comes from wholesome living and making healthy choices? Not warm fuzzies – but actual spiritual power as stated and agreed to?
Is hunting sin now a sin? Because if it is…I think you all might be guilty, and now I am for noticing that.
That’s the thing about sin, hunting sin, and all that kinda stuff. We are all guilty. we are all completely dependent upon the grace of Jesus. The kind of person who crucified Christ? Yep, that’s me. And you.
Crack-smoking is unhealthy and will kill my spiritual life as well. You will never meet a spiritually healthy crack-head. There, solved that case.
London back at 3 and 4 nailed the human condition to a “T”.