Principles of Judging Part 7

We’ve discussed allot throughout this series, beginning with scriptures that discourage us from judging, to scriptures that encourage us to judge, from what not to judge, and what to judge, and today I want to dig a little deeper, and discuss three aspects of what we are allowed to judge within a body of believers, namely moral standards, disputes among the brethren, and the big one, especially given the times we are living in, teachings and doctrines.

1 Corinthians 5:9-13, “I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner – not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore ‘put away from yourselves that wicked person.’”

The Word of God is consistent when it comes to the moral standards we as beliers ought to uphold and practice. It is not vague, it is not uncertain, it is clear and vivid, and it reminds us time and again that we are not to live as the world or practice the things that the world practices. What God called sin two thousand years ago, or four thousand years ago for that matter, He calls sin today. Even though society has become more tolerant and accepting, even though those things which even to the world were perversions once upon a time have wormed their way into normalcy, for us as children of God, they are still sin, they are still evil and they are still unacceptable.

The issue of sin in the church is not a new one, it has been around for as long as the church has, and in Paul’s words to the church of Corinth, he affirms this truth by telling them that he certainly did not mean that we should not keep company with the sexually immoral people of this world, because we would need to go out of the world in order for that to occur, but with those within the church, those who call themselves brothers, yet continue to live in sin, whether it be idolatry drunkenness, covetousness or fornication.

There must be a standard in the house of God! I realize I sound like a relic of a bygone era at this point given the libertine posture many churches have adopted toward sin, but we can either go with the flow, and follow the masses, or stand our ground and follow the truth of God’s word. Sin is sin, and no matter how many pompous fools get on television and try to tell me otherwise, I revert back to the Word of God, and realize that it has not changed. God didn’t take a magic marker and blot out the verses about fornication, idolatry, adultery, sodomy being sin; neither did He blot out the verses about the wages of sin being death.

Paul knew the history of the Corinthian church, he knew what they once were, and he reminds them as much. However after saying, such were some of you, adulterers and idolaters, and fornicators and sodomites, he continues and says something glorious indeed: ‘But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.’ – 1 Corinthians 6:11

Change must occur, repentance must occur, we must turn from that which we once were, that which we once practiced, and be washed and sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God. Just showing up in church every service will do nothing to save your eternal soul if you continue in the same sins and in the same addictions that have kept you in bondage all this time. Jesus came to set us free, Jesus came to reconcile us to the Father, and if we are not set free, if we are not reconciled to the Father, if we are not washed and sanctified, then we will not inherit the kingdom of God. There’s no sugarcoating this truth, there’s no getting around it, and anyone that’s not teaching repentance, anyone that’s not teaching that you must be washed and sanctified, that you must be transformed, is not loving, is not tolerant, but rather is a hateful beast whose only concern is that you open your wallet and throw some cash in the bucket.

Will preaching the truth endear me to the masses? Of course it won’t, it can’t, because the world is in direct opposition to the truth of God’s holy Word, but I love you too much to tell you a lie, I love you too much not to wear my heart on my sleeve and preach the truth even at the risk of being despised and hated and mocked and mistreated.

We can’t play games with God! We can’t pick and choose the verses we like as though we were passing through the grocery store and picking up some items we want to snack on later. We either hold to the truth, or we hold to the lie; either we follow after Christ in obedience and humility, or we follow after the world which is headed for perdition. I am sick and tired of preachers treating sin with kid gloves for fear of offense, when they ought to be pulling it out of the ground by its root and dealing with it head on. We’re not doing anyone any favors by tolerating sin in the church. First, those in sin will be judged for their refusal to repent of it, and we the shepherds of the sheep will be judged for not preaching the truth and insisting upon the requisite repentance.

Ezekiel 33:8-9, “When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you shall surely die!’ and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand. Nevertheless if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered your soul.”

Whether you heed my words and repent, or never visit this blog again, I have done my duty, I have warned, and delivered my soul or saved my life. Yes, it would be far easier to do as some of my notable contemporaries have done and say ‘that’s not what I’m about, I’m not about judging sin and all that, I’m about positivity, and being positive, and about teaching people to love themselves and love who they are inside’ but I wouldn’t be doing what the Bible mandates all who preach the Word to do, which is rebuke sin, and warn those who continue to trifle with the Word, those who continue to flirt with sin, and those who continue to be in open rebellion toward God that the day of reckoning is here, and there is no getting around it.

Because Jesus loved us He looked us straight in the face and told us that if we did not receive Him as Lord and King, if we did not repent of our evil ways and have His blood wash us clean, we would go to hell.

‘But brother, that’s so brutal, that’s so callous, that’s so unmerciful and unloving. How could a God full of love send me to hell, He is love isn’t He?’

Yes, God is love, but He is also justice and holiness and righteousness. A loving God sent His Son to die on a cross, a just God will cast you from before His face on that great day if you die in your iniquity.

John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”

One way, one truth, one life, one means by which we can come to the Father, and that is through Christ Jesus! No, not all men go to heaven eventually, for only through Christ will we have eternal life in God.

You cannot come to the Father through your pastor, you cannot come to the Father through your priest, you cannot come to the Father through your guru, you cannot come to the Father through your life coach, the only way you can come to the Father is through Jesus!

Either Jesus was a liar, or these fools penning books on universalism, and these wolves who tell you it doesn’t matter what you do you’re still getting to heaven are. These flattering sycophants are leading people to hell, and undermining the true Gospel along the way.

Stand for the truth, rage against the dying of the light, not in the world, but in the church, within God’s own house, for if this light goes out, then darkness will once more cover all.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.