Love your neighbor
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31
How often do we get this wrong? Because we are busy, or just don’t care or here it comes…..we don’t want to offend anyone. I am afraid that the Gospel has become politically correct.
- In public we now have a “moment of silence” instead of boldly coming before His Throne
- We don’t preach the truth for fear of folks feeling condemned
- It is nearly illegal to say that Jesus is the ONLY way, so we say He is one way.
- We refer to God as a “higher power”.
And so on and so on. And we forget we are eternal beings. And that long after someones feelings are not hurt, he will still be gnashing his teeth, in eternal fire. FIRE that never ever ends. No forgiveness, no hope, no prayer, no changing there mind. Eternity without God. I saw the best church sign yesterday. It said, “Hell is Real.” That about sums it up.
Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. Ephesians 4:25
So why are we so afraid to tell the truth. When was the last time you heard someone say in love, “hey brother, that is sin?” Why can’t we say it? Nobody even uses that word anymore. Oooh, big bad word. Sin. That might hurt someones feelings. We don’t want them to feel condemned now do we? But what is condemnation? It means you are guilty, and there are consequences. So if someone is in sin, or condoning sin, or rationalizing sin, or thinking about sin, or even heading towards sin, aren’t they already condemned? I mean the wages of sin is death right? So it would seem to make more sense to tell them the truth and save them from condemnation. It would seem to make sense that we ought to be telling folks everywhere, Jesus is not A way, He is THE WAY, the only way.” And that His path is the Only Path. And yes that might hurt their feelings to find out they have been believing a lie. But you know what? I believe that once their eyes are opened they won’t be focused on their own feelings anymore and He will heal them.
We can love sinners or those in sin and still proclaim what is true. We can and we had better start proclaiming the name of JESUS while we still can. Because if we don’t then we are no better than the ones we need to share with. A true Christian has true love. And friends don’t let friends burn in hell. I love you enough to tell you.