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HOLY INTOLERANCE
| "shake off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them" |
| Jesus said: | |
| 1. | Luke 9:5; |
| 2. | Matthew 10:14; |
| 3. | Mark 6:11; |
| 4. | Luke 10:11. |
of the Spirit', in meekness and patient endurance in the Christian life,
do not mean putting up with any treatment!
Understanding the representative nature of humanity made 'in God's image' means acting accordingly, and therefore there are necessarily times when a holy intolerance of disrespectful and hypocritical behaviour must be openly demonstrated.
Moral behaviour always requires accountability.
This is the meaning of Biblical repentance. It does not mean grief for being guilty.
It means fully accepting responsibility for one's own attitudes and actions.
Confessing one's sins to God does not mean telling Him what He does not know.
It means fully accepting personal responsibility for one's own behaviour and this also includes
the behaviour of organisations, groups and persons with which one is or has been personally associated.
Accordingly, Christ's stern public corrections of the Scribes and Pharisees (Jewish religious leaders) were public for their misrepresentations were public.
needs to be remembered that Christ's deliberate bracketing of His public ministry (Jn.2:15; Matt.21:12), at its beginning and at its end, with a violent 'cleansing' of the Jerusalem temple had absolutely nothing to do with the stone building itself. Jesus made this clear is His response to His disciples' admiration for the temple building (Matt.24:2). It was the people in the temple, not the stones of the temple, that held Christ's attention, affection, and provoked His response.
| NO RACIAL or CLASS DISTINCTION |
own values are required to reflect God's values, as was so demonstrated by Jesus –
| "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'?" |
Trading was tolerated in the so-called Court of the Gentiles because, even though they were circumcised converts, they were treated as inferior, and this was not acceptable to Jesus.
are directly stated for our understanding when the Bible says that "God so loved the world that He gave His unique son [a Jewish messianic title]". The term "world" is from the original Greek word 'kosmos' (κόσμος) which same word is used later by the Lord Jesus in the same Gospel to mean non-Christians (Jn.14:17). So those who dare limit God's affections, and therefore the atonement sacrifice of His Christ, to Christians alone (as did Augustine and Calvin) do not know their own Bible.
the same light of God's affection for all, Jesus needed to correct His own disciples when, in their sincerely carried responsibility for crowd control in His open-air ministry, they prevented mothers bring their infants forward for His attention during His preaching.
Mark 10:13; Luke 18:15.
God-appointed Social Responsibility for us ALL:
Jesus reiterated it, when He said – "Love your neighbour as yourself"
And this simply means treating the community as if it were your own family.
Matthew 19:19; 22:39;
the Bible also tells us that "it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God" – then every and any Church activity or process which conflicts with this, and which in any way treats the community as less than one's own family, must be directly confronted and dealt with until it is fully corrected.
kindness of God, when fully reflected in Christian conduct, will always at some stage conflict with attitudes and actions of those around us both within and without the Christian Church, because the endemic self-interest of human nature will always find an excuse for not confronting and so avoiding conflict – 'for the sake of peace',
and so continues a betrayal of the revelation of God in each circumstance.
God is not religious!
He is the Creator of all and therefore all is His business. Herding Christian conduct into a religious category is a deception of the god of this world.
He is the Creator of all and therefore all is His business. Herding Christian conduct into a religious category is a deception of the god of this world.
Christians are called to care for all in all circumstances, regardless of whose weighty opinion may pressure our self-interest to do otherwise.
"For the love of Christ controls us,
because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;
and He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves
but for Him who for their sake died and was raised"
because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;
and He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves
but for Him who for their sake died and was raised"
And when it involves the welfare of our spiritual family in Christ, our response must go even beyond any personal identification of it being as 'family', for the Word of God instructs us that –
| "By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and [therefore] we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers." |
Therefore even at total cost to ourselves confrontation is inevitable in this present world as we represent Him truthfully
if we are to be faithful to Him who has called us to walk each day in His shoes.
if we are to be faithful to Him who has called us to walk each day in His shoes.
