Tag: body of Christ

Love Your Neighbor: Part 2–Rights or Responsibilities?

 

Freedom is a word that gets thrown around a lot here in the US.  Especially in an election year.  ESPECIALLY especially in THIS election year.  Vote for (fill in the blank) because OUR FREEDOM IS AT STAKE!!!  Another word that we use interchangeably with this kind of freedom is “rights.”  Our Constitution has a Bill of Rights.  We have the right to do this, or not to do that.  Don’t you dare violate my rights!  But Christians are called to a different, I would even say higher, form of freedom.  While American freedom is preoccupied with individual rights,  Christian freedom is about communal responsibilities.

 

Loving your neighbor calls for the realization that you are part of something bigger, a member of a larger body.  Within the Church, we refer to ourselves as the Body of Christ.  However, any community is also a body, whether it is a household, neighborhood, city, state, or country.

 

No one lives in a vacuum.  What we do affects others, whether we can see it or not.  A HUGE problem in our society is that people have forgotten the basic principle that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  Paul addressed this problem in the church at Corinth in this way:

There’s a slogan often quoted on matters like this: “All things are permitted.” Yes, but not all things are beneficial.  “All things are permitted,” they say.  Yes, but not all things build up and strengthen others in the body.  We should stop looking out for our own interests and instead focus on the people living and breathing around us.  1 Corinthians 10:23-24 (The VOICE)

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Yes, we have rights.  Yes, we have the freedom of speech; therefore, yes, we ought to be able to speak truth, whenever and wherever and amongst whomever we find ourselves.  Technically.  However…

Just because we can doesn’t always mean that we should.

Here is something you might not have considered.  Even if you’re right in what you say, someone hearing it may not have a full understanding of the issue at hand.  If someone questions you out of simple ignorance, you can gently educate them to build them up to where you are.  However, if you argue, shout them down or otherwise dig in your heels to assert your rightness, not only are you failing to get your own point across effectively, you are also making it less likely that the other person will ask other significant questions in the future.

 

Furthermore, they may likely develop an attitude about you as a person, and by extension any group with which you are affiliated, that is closed off and hostile.  Can you see how potentially devastating it can be when Christians behave this way?  Great job Ace, you won an argument that you never should have been in (slow hand clap), and you lost a soul for the Kingdom in the process.  You exercised your Constitutional right to voice your opinion, but you broke God’s commandment to love your neighbor.

via GIPHY

 

It all comes down to the question of rights.  If you’re only focused on your own, sooner or later, you’re going to be depriving someone else of theirs.  Rights are about exercising your freedom.  However, responsibility is the freedom to lay aside your rights for the greater good, just as Jesus laid aside His divinity to come down here with us.

For example, freedom of speech is great until you say something that isn’t true, and it spreads like COVID on the Internet.  By that point (and it only takes hours in this age of technology), it’s too late for an apology or retraction.  The damage is done and is not likely to be undone.

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For this reason, love dictates that the freedom of speech should be in submission to the responsibility to speak truthfully, and to lift others up instead of tearing them down.  As Paul directed the Ephesians:

 

Do not use harmful words, but only helpful words, the kind that build up and provide what is needed, so that what you say will do good to those who hear you.  Ephesians 4:29 (GNT)

 

This is useful advice in any context, but especially on social media.  Here are some questions every Truthseeker should ask themselves before posting:

 

    • Is what I am saying building up orders according to their needs?
    • Do I even know what those needs are?  (I.e., Did I really listen to what they were saying?)
    • Have I tested my own perceptions and beliefs before questioning theirs?
    • Do I for sure know what I’m talking about, or am I about to spout an opinion based on emotion rather than reasoning?
    • What effect might my words have for those lurking on this post or page that aren’t directly involved in the conversation?
    • What is my motivation for making this post? Am I trying to illuminate Truth or win an argument?
    • If a non-believer reads this post, is it going to make them more curious to see what this God thing is all about, or will it make them say, “See, I told you those people were all ignorant douchebags.”

 

The best practice we can all learn is to do everything we can to widen the gap between stimulus and response.  It’s easy to feel anger.  It’s harder, but more beneficial, to take a breath, think things through, and respond constructively.  It requires wisdom to understand that sometimes the most constructive and loving response is no response at all.

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Antichrist

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.  1 John 4:1-3 (NIV)

 

2020 has been a rough year for everybody so far, but especially for Truthseekers.  The media has degenerated from fake news to absolute lunacy.  A pandemic, or at least the fear of one, has gripped the world, but the scientists can’t seem to get their stories straight.  Worst of all, opportunists of the lowest caliber have used fear and racial prejudice to turn us against each other.

 

Why do I say that one is worst of all?  Because if we create enemies for ourselves along the lines of racial differences, we will forget that we have a common enemy.  Which is exactly what our real enemy wants.

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So, what does John mean when he talks about “testing the spirits?”  Some people get a little froke out by this, but it’s not all that weird.

 

Three years ago, we covered this extensively in the Overcoming the World series.  In Part 8, we discussed that when a thought “pops into your head,” it is likely a message from God if it is in line with scripture, illuminates the solution to a problem and leads to a good result for all concerned.  If this out-of-the-blue thought does not meet those criteria, it did not come from God.  So where did it come from?

 

The passage above makes clear that deceptive messages are from the spirit of the antichrist.  Now this is the spirit of antichrist with a lower-case A, not the big baddie of Revelation (more on that later).  John uses this term literally to mean a spirit that opposes Jesus.  You can see from this passage that this is the spirit that controls false prophets.

 

However, the wording above appears at first to be too simplistic.  Every spirit that acknowledges Jesus has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that doesn’t, isn’t.  If discerning the spirits were that easy, then why would we need to test them?

 

Well, have you seen what’s going on in the Church lately?  It mirrors what’s going on in our country.  Just as America’s greatest enemy has proven to be from within, so it is with the Church.  Atheists are the least of our problems, annoying though they may be.  They are a mosquito bite compared to the cancer that is eating away at the Body of Christ from within.

 
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In the Flesh

 

To understand what it truly means to test the spirits, it is important to know that John snuck a coded message into verse 2 above.  “Every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.”    Pretty much every church identifying as Christian acknowledges that Jesus was an actual human born into this world.  Yet sharp division remains on what the Church’s role in the world ought to be.  So, there must be something more to it than that.

 

There is.  It’s hiding in plain sight at the beginning of John’s Gospel:

 

In the beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself.

 

And the Word (Christ) became flesh, and lived among us; and we [actually] saw His glory, glory as belongs to the [One and] only begotten Son of the Father, [the Son who is truly unique, the only One of His kind, who is] full of grace and truth (absolutely free of deception). John 1:1, 14 (AMP)

Jesus is the Word of God in human form.  He is one with God Himself, which means that the Word is one with God Himself.  Jesus is absolutely free of deception, which means the Word is absolutely free of deception.

Are you seeing where I’m going with this?  Remember, the first criteria to judge whether a message is from God is if it lines up with scripture, logos, THE WORD, God Himself.  Therefore, anyone who claims to speak on behalf of God but says something different than what God has already said—this is the spirit of the antichrist at work.

And we let it right in the front door.  Because we didn’t want to be “judgmental.” 

God’s righteous judgment

Wake up Truthseekers!  Put on the armor of God and report for duty.  John has already told us what comes next:

 

Next I saw heaven opened, and there before me was a white horse.  Sitting on it was the one called Faithful and True, and it is in righteousness that he passes judgment and goes to battle. His eyes were like a fiery flame, and on his head were many royal crowns.  And he had a name written which no one knew but himself. He was wearing a robe that had been soaked in blood, and the name by which he is called is, “THE WORD OF GOD.” The armies of heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. And out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down nations — “He will rule them with a staff of iron.” It is he who treads the winepress from which flows the wine of the furious rage of Adonai, God of heaven’s armies.  And on his robe and on his thigh he has a name written:

KING OF KINGS

AND

LORD OF LORDS.

 Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried out in a loud voice to all the birds that fly about in mid-heaven, “Come, gather together for the great feast God is giving, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of generals, the flesh of important men, the flesh of horses and their riders and the flesh of all kinds of people, free and slave, small and great!” I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to do battle with the rider of the horse and his army.  But the beast was taken captive, and with it the false prophet who, in its presence, had done the miracles which he had used to deceive those who had received the mark of the beast and those who had worshipped his image. The beast and the false prophet were both thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. The rest were killed with the sword that goes out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.  Revelation 19:11-21 (CJB)

Can you see now why the spirit of antichrist is so intent on dividing us in terms of race?  Because the devil knows well that when The Word Made Flesh returns, there will only be two kinds of people.  The Army of Heaven, and Bird Food.

Now, I promised that I would get back to the Capital-A Antichrist. 

What I did not promise was to reveal who I think it might be, because that is pointless speculation.  Just as trying to figure out when Jesus is going to return is a distraction, trying to make news headlines line up with Biblical prophecy is also disruptive to the work we are supposed to be doing.

 

Trust God and His Word this much—when the Antichrist reveals himself, if you’re still here to see it, you’ll know.

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