This is a continuation of Part 1, so if you haven't read it, be sure to check it out back on the homepage. Picking up where we left off, we're talking about God's warning against condemning people. This includes lost people, because none of the people to whom Jesus was speaking were yet "saved":
Paul says it’s OK to associate with lost people, even if they break the law, because we'd have to leave the world not to associate with lost people (1 Corinthians 5:9-12). He goes on to say that there are two standards: the standard of the lost and the standard of the found. Paul continues that we should not even eat with those who claim to be Christian and flaunt God’s commands (1 Corinthians 5:12). I recently lived out this command by failing and repenting of it. I attended a dinner at my former church, and the speaker was full of condemnation and anger. He told us that Jesus was a "man's man," and that the "love" thing was just a sideline topic.
He said he could make a Biblical case that Jesus punched someone in the New Testament. He didn't make the case, he just said he could. He wasn't joking, and a lot of the guys there really ate it up. I took that as a sign not to return. I asked God forgiveness for associating with the people who ate it up. But I still pray for them when I get the chance, including the Pastor who sanctioned the speaker. I pray for him to find mercy especially. Not associating with another Christian in willful disobedience may seem harsh to some, but it is completely Biblical – see Matthew 18:15-17. However, that doesn't mean I've consigned them to a place with the enemy – we are to pray for all people, even if they are doing things that hurt the spread of the true message of the Gospel: love. You can read about this in the previous article I wrote, in which Paul calls “faith expressing itself through love” the “only thing that counts.”
We are not to condemn because it is not loving. We can always come out of self-condemnation by reversing our tendency to condemn people for their sin. God loves the lost, and Paul says that God loved us enough to die for us even while we were his enemies (Romans 5:10). Why would any other lost person be any different? Should we hate a lost person because they sin? Because they commit abortion (God says that when we have anger, we commit murder (1 John 3:15))? Because they are homosexual? Should we hate someone God loves? No, because God says hate is a sin (Galatians 5:19-21), and that we are to forgive sin endlessly (Matthew 18:21-22).
God’s Word says that he who claims to love God but hates a brother or sister (think homosexual, heterosexual, African-American, White, Democrat, Republican, Catholic, or Baptist) is a liar (1 John 4:20). This is what God’s inerrant word says. If we believe it, we must call ourselves as a nation to repent. We are in the midst of a war of words, and a war on each other.
Destruction is a tactic of the false preachers and false Messiahs, who Jesus called “thieves” (“The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy” – John 10:8-10), and we who contribute to the destruction of our neighbor are listening to false prophets. Righteous destruction is reserved for God alone (Romans 12:19). We who contribute to bad-faith propaganda are also embracing demonic power in our lives, because the devil is a liar (“the devil…is the father of lies” (John 8:44), and God never lies. It is not God's power we are accessing when we lie and destroy, because He does not dole out the power of destruction and lying is the devil's power. Perhaps when we focus on our own sin instead of others', we will realize what Jesus means when He informs us that to lust with our eyes is the same as committing adultery (Matthew 5:28).
He means that we all deserve death. Everyone. In the Old Testament, the punishment for committing adultery is the same as the punishment for committing homosexuality (Leviticus 20:10 and Leviticus 20:13). Jesus knew this when he said that those who lust in their heart commit adultery. He means that they commit a sin meriting death. So when we condemn a homosexual, we condemn someone hypocritically, because we deserve the same punishment for merely looking with our eyes. Hence, we condemn ourselves. This is Jesus’ meaning when He tells us that when we condemn, we will be condemned – it is for lack of mercy despite God's mercy toward us.
Jesus gives us further evidence of this in the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant (Matthew 18:21-35). The servant (you and I) owes a debt to the master (God), and the master forgives his debt…think “Forgive us our debts” in the Lord's prayer (Matthew 6:12 KJV). The servant, even though God forgives his debt (his sin), does not forgive the debt (sin) of another servant and exacts punishment. When the master God hears about his wicked servant, he throws him into jail (hell) to be “tortured” until he pays the last penny. Jesus says those who do not forgive will not be forgiven (Matthew 6:15), and this parable is all about unforgiveness and its consequences.
Jesus does not stone the adultress in John 8 because He has mercy for all sinners presented to Him, even though Leviticus (often referenced as the reason Christians should hate homosexuals) states that those who commit adultery should be stoned to death (Leviticus 20:10). If we believe we’ve never committed adultery with our eyes (we have), Jesus one-ups us: He says that anyone who has ever had anger in his heart toward a brother or sister has committed murder, and the punishment in Leviticus is also death by stoning. Jesus does not change the law. He simply shows mercy to we who have broken it, and we are to show mercy in return. He has the authority to show mercy, and mercy is God's will (“I desire mercy, not sacrifice” in Matthew 9:13, Hosea 6:6). I've broken the law of God many times, and His mercy is incredible. When we show mercy to others, God gives us mercy for our own sins (Matthew 5:7). This is the concept He is trying to teach us in the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant.
Amazingly, God submits His son to death rather than the adultress or the murderer Barabbas. Instead of imitating the Pharisees by judging our neighbors, we are to imitate Jesus by dying for them. Even the ones we don’t like. We are to prefer dying to doing wrong to others. We will never be perfect in this, and God knows this. This side of life, no one is perfect. But when we seek the ideal, God sees our effort and grants us peace. And we can always ask for forgiveness. There is always hope and mercy in Jesus, even for we who fall short.
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