Freeform Friday Week 9

I have come to loathe these tired clichés we Christians are starting to throw around. ‘It’s time to stand for righteousness.’ Really, is it? Has there ever been a time when it wasn’t the right time to stand for righteousness? Did it suddenly become the appropriate time to live the gospel, and not just talk about it?

Jesus didn’t say, ‘if you love, Me, tell Me so repeatedly, sing it to Me, put it on a t-shirt, or tweet My name ten times per day.’ What Jesus did say, was, ‘if you love Me, keep My commandments.’

The new crop of the stupid and the perverse we are seeing come into their own, is the byproduct of the church’s silence, and unwillingness to live the gospel it preaches.

Sorry to break the news, but a good three quarters of our spiritual betters don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to sin, lawlessness, or other forms of rebellion against God.

You can’t really become a dyed in the wool moralist when you’re on your fourth marriage, being investigated for fraud and embezzlement, and the words righteousness and holiness haven’t passed your lips in at least a decade.

Just this morning I read of yet another mega-church pastor who was fired from his post for having an illicit affair with a sixteen year old parishioner.

The world is evil…the word of God tells us that it will be. The germane issue here is that the church isn’t the beacon of righteousness and holiness that it ought to be. It is not what God calls it, and even demands that it be, and so at best we’re just a bunch of blowhards pointing at the world’s perversions with one hand while trying to sweep our own sins under the rug with the other.

This is largely the reason judgment begins in the house of God. He hates hypocrisy, loathes it even, and when His righteous judgment begins to descend, the first stop on its world tour is the household of faith, where it will thoroughly clean house in a very public, very dramatic, and very complete way.

I’m sorry to burst a bubble or two, but sin isn’t what we define as being sin, sin is what God defines as being sin, and by God’s definition, much of the church needs to first repent before a living and omniscient God, before they begin the herculean task of converting the world.

What made the Apostles so effective in their ministry was not their vast intelligence, their witty repartee, their skills in delivering engaging exegesis, or their mastery of hermeneutics. What made the Apostles so effective was that they lived the gospel they preached, and because they lived the gospel, signs and wonders followed them, and when they opened their mouths to speak the name Jesus, they did so with authority and power.

Man is no more evil today than he was two thousand years ago. The only difference between now and then is that the watchmen have stopped watching, the guardians have stopped guarding, and those who ought to have been lights, and who ought to have stood for truth, discovered the hugely entertaining and mildly addictive game of golf.

We can keep thinking we can wish the world into being a better place, or positively affirm that it’s not as bad as all indicators confirm it is, but the reality of the situation is that change begins with us – with the individual – and as long as we are duplicitous of heart, and only partially committed to truth, the enemy will continue to gain ground and conquer territories the household of faith should have held with little effort.

The persecution that is soon to descend upon the church is not only beneficial in that it will separate the wheat from the chaff, it is vitally necessary, deserved, and long overdue.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.