This week’s sermon by RT Stringer was “Confronting Immorality in the Church” based on the text of 1 Corinthians 5. Two points have stuck with me this week: Tolerance of sin is sinful and (paraphrased) As a Christian, when you sin, you are taking Christ with you, therefore you are dragging his name through the mud with your sin.
I don’t want to try to regurgitate the sermon because I wouldn’t even come close to doing it justice because the apostle Paul was such a wonderful teacher and Pastor Stringer brought it home to us this week. However, these points have stayed with me this week and made me think about the state of our society and churches that I’ve either witnessed or unfortunately found myself to be in membership with. There are so many churches and professing Christians in the world today that are willing to tolerate sin in the world in the name of Christ’s love when what they are doing is completely ignoring the Word in which they profess to believe. The argument that I’ve heard used is that they are a “church where all are accepted and loved”–I belonged to one of these churches, and what really happened is that they stopped confronting sin for fear of “offending” others, they stopped preaching the Word for fear of offending others, and they became a shallow church with no meaning.
What these people forgot is that the Word and the Law wasn’t given to us to hold us back, wasn’t given to us as a way to make us slaves to His power, but instead as a way to help us to have a closer relationship with Him because He loves us. We will never be able to fully understand how much our Heavenly Father loves, but an earthly example of what Paul is trying to tell us is the rules that a parent sets down for their children. Those rules are set down out of love to keep the children safe! Punishment is handed out for disobeying those rules not out of spite, but out of love to teach the children a lesson in obedience. By continually disobeying the same rule, the children show disrespect to the parents. Likewise, to tolerate and continually commit the same sin with an unrepentant attitude shows disrespect to God.
As Christians, we are to be an example of Christ’s love to non-believers. The way we talk, walk, act, etc reflects on His name. If we repeatedly commit the same sin without any form of repentance or attempt of change, it sets the example (wrongly) that these actions are ok, thereby tarnishing Christ’s image through our actions. We’re held to a higher standard by his example and by our calling!
Great blog Scott.