Tuesday 8 April 2014

NO MATTER WHAT WAY YOU LOOK AT IT

In regards to sharing the truth, not wanting to offend others is always a good thing, and a good motive to have. But when shining the truth, it's important to realise that offence will come. That doesn't mean that we seek to offend or that we are pleased when offence comes, but it means that we accept the truth that the Word reveals in regard to how men will react when the truth is preached:
2 Cor 2v14 Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. 15 For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. 16 To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things? 17 For we are not, as so many,[b] peddling the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ.
This also applies to what area of truth we share. Make no mistake about it, EVERY PART OF THE TRUTH will either be an aroma of death or an aroma of life, depending on who accepts it or rejects it. What we as Christians deem 'easier to accept' is just as much an aroma of death to those that reject it, and what we regard as 'hard to accept' is just as much an aroma of life to those that accept it and have themselves been chosen. A clear example of this is seen in the fact that Paul was persecuted by the Jews, not because of preaching about judgment but because of the Good News of the Gospel. Similarly, when Peter preached a message that involved telling his hearers that they were 'wicked' and that they were responsible for crucifying Christ, his hearers took it very well, reacting in a way that showed how much they understood that Christ and His message was an aroma of life:
Acts 2v23:
This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.
v37:
When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"
We often believe that any message of sin, conviction or judgment, will drive men away from Christ, because it is hard for our natural selves to accept it:
John 6:
v60: On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching, who can accept it?"
But Jesus, three verses on in this passage, makes a point of saying just how different the flesh (our natural understand) are to all things Spirit based:
v63: The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.
The only way any truth can ever be accepted by men is if Jesus opens the eyes' of mens' hearts and moves their hearts to accept Him. And thankfully this has nothing to do with just what we deem easy or hard to hear. There is no ability that humankind has and no intelligence and no emotion that can open the gateway of their own hearts. There is only the Spirit that can do that, through what God has ordained via the sharing of the truth.
And whatever truth we share at any one time, there will always be elements of what we deem easy and hard to hear mixed together (try as some might to separate them, it is impossible). An example of this is seen in the sharing of the Gospel, for without sin, grace isn't needed, and mercy and forgiveness is only needed if first we are first made aware that judgment hangs over us and awaits us if we don't accept Him. It is Good News that there is a heaven that men can go to, and part of that Good News is that we are being saved from Hell (the value of the message is found in not simply what we are saved into, but saved from).
For me personally, it was the entire message of the Gospel that drew me to Christ, a message that is overflowing with truths of grace and judgment. The message of the Gospel is incomplete without the truths of sin, conviction and judgment. I needed to not only know that I was a sinner, but that I would be judged if I didn't trust in Christ being judged in my place. It made me love and Christ and respect Him in my life to know that not only was life provided me through Jesus' death and resurrection, but that I had been saved through wrath through Him as well. It was never just one truth or one part of the truth that led me to Christ and made me love Him, but it was all of them.
The Spirit of God is able to make the message of grace and judgment lovely to its hearers, because they are made lovely via the power of Christ to reveal Himself as He truly is, not who mankind would like Him to be (otherwise they will believe in a Christ and God of their own imaginations- a false Christ, a Christ who doesn't exist and who has no power to save from anything). Christians must not seek to make Christ acceptable to others through selecting certain truths at the expense of others, and even if they do this, it will be in vain, for any truth contains the reality of both grace and judgment; for all truth is based upon and emanates from the cross of Christ, and all truth can be understood by being traced back to that act, and via the context of that act.

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