“I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.” John 8:11
I read a disturbing blog post a couple of days ago from a popular and (among certain circles) well-known blogger, a self-professed “20-year Ministry veteran trying to… live out the red letters of Jesus.”
The post begins with a boastful “I’m going to hell.” After a lot of judgmental-sounding opinion condemning fellow Christians, he concludes with “Hell seems like a much more beautiful place.”
Consider that: “I’m going to hell, and that seems like a much more beautiful place than Heaven.” This from a man many consider a “pastor.”
I was unprepared for this.
And then I recalled Genesis 3:1 “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Indeed, has God said, You shall not eat from any tree of the garden?’” Three verses later the serpent says “you will not certainly die.”
Thus began the massive lie. The same lie being retold by popular bloggers claiming Christian credentials based on 20 years of ministry veteran-ship.
Which reminds me of a music video released 33 years left. In March of 1985 an all-star group if musicians got together to record a song called “We Are The World.” The song became an instant classic. The relevance for this post was the sign producer Quincy Jones famously posted on the studio door : “Check your Egos at the door.”
How does an intentionally-provocative blog post from an equally intentionally-provocative societal commentator using “Ministry” as a credentials shield relate to a 33 year-old song about unity?
Without diving into the commonalities of “everyone is ok, no matter what they choose to do” found in both philosophies, I want to focus instead on the idea of “living out the red letters of Jesus” vs. “Check Your Egos at the door.
Follow me here. The “red letters” of Jesus were all about ego. They were all about personal desire and gratification. They were all about pushing down what we believe in order to embrace what God tells us is true. Even when it hurts.
And they were all about “checking” something at the entryway to the Kingdom.
Regardless of whether we call that ego, or desire, or “enlightened Progressive opinion,” Jesus was clear: what we must check at the door of the Kingdom is our sin. We may enter the Kingdom broken by sin, but we cannot bring the love and practice of that sin with us.
What does this mean?
It means that as true Christians reborn in Faith through the blood and sacrifice of God reconciling Himself to us at Calvary, those red letters of Jesus actually mean something. They mean what Jesus intended, not what our modern relativistic interpretations wish them to be.
And the most important red letters are those punctuating two encounters where Jesus heals or forgives: “Go, and sin no more.”
These words were most famously spoken to the adulterous woman following the encounter described in John 8:11: “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.”
Notice the lesson here for Christians: we are not to condemn others for their sins, even as we forgive them. Yet they are also to give up those sins.
Check your sins at the door.
Contrast this with the Ministry Veteran Blogger’s implied conclusion: “If Heaven means I can’t be whatever I define myself to be, do whatever I feel is right for me, I’ll take Hell.”
I’m not checking anything at the door, and if you ask me to you’re just a close-minded (insert favorite insult here).
God’s forgiveness is freely-given, but it is not without cost.
Forgiveness requires a changed heart and a changed life. Ask any betrayed spouse who stays in a marriage what this means.
Forgiveness does not free us to repeat our past mistakes. It frees us from the condemnation of those mistakes.
Forgiveness only comes when we ask for it. Returning to past sins, or falling into new ones, requires returning to our knees and asking God once more to wash away our transgressions.
Forgiveness requires obedience and subservience to God’s Word. The writer of Hebrews 2:1 states: “Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away.” Believing we can rewrite God’s law to suit our lifestyles in the name of “inclusiveness” is a direct act of disobedience.
In today’s increasingly secularized world, Christians are too-often confused
about the role God’s law and living a life of Christian love as defined by Jesus. We’re told the Jesus of modern worship invited everyone to the table, with no expectations or requirements. That God loves and forgives us in our sin rather than in spite of it. We seem to buy the massive lie that God does not mean what He has written on our hearts.
I don’t know what is truly in the heart of the blogger I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I do know this: his love for his own ego and self-defined version of Christian life is infinitely too big to check at any door, even the door of the Kingdom.
Peace.
Colossians 1:17
emboldened by the love of a risen Savior.
Tonight, as you reflect on what a simple act of feet washing memorializes, as we pause to join in the solemnity of a Passover dinner shared by a condemned Savior and his weary followers 2,000 years ago, take a moment to remember. Take a moment to remember not just what this night or even the coming weekend of Easter means, but what it means to be a Christian in the world of the Fourth Day, the day after the Resurrection, the day when 
from childhood,” (
Jesus tells us in this parable to listen for the warning. To turn away from digging ourselves deeper into isolation. To hear the cry of those who need reconciliation with us. To love God with all our hearts and our minds and our strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. No matter who we (or they) are.
This New Year’s Eve, as we celebrate with family and friends sharing hopes and dreams of the coming year, let’s not forget to get deep into the closets of our lives, cleaning out the old ways, the clutter and negative emotions chaining us to behaviors and thoughts we no longer need.
We can fill our hearts with hope. Or we can sink into despair.
What has changed is that we’ve become numb to God’s voice. We don’t want to wait and anticipate, we want to receive and appreciate.
leaving behind our insistence on pursuing the transgressions always whispering to us, the erection of walls to separate us from each other, or the belief that anything we do must be from God and is therefore acceptable in His eyes.
Knowing where God is taking us, knowing what comes after the end of this world, truly understanding that there is a lasting and eternal life awaiting us, we can be at peace and live in confidence. And even if we may not know the day and hour, God tells us to stay vigilant. 
There is a True Church here on earth. That Church has one role: to call Believers and prepare them for eternal life. The True Church is doing God’s genuine work, inviting His chosen to repentance and the Kingdom. With or without the skinny jeans, fitted v-neck T’s, revised theology for a modern ear, or pithy blogs.
Where do we see this today? The halls of Congress? Media moguls and their sycophant followers? The lofty modern cathedrals of megachurch celebrity pastors with their mansions and private jets and overflowing bank accounts? The holier-than-thou congregationalists demanding their self-assigned pews but never speaking a single word to the homeless and broken?
crucifixion was ever documented as confessing – freely or by persecution or torture – the Gospel story of the resurrection was a fake, a deliberate lie. And even in those cases where someone broke under torture, recanted their beliefs and converted to other religions, no Christian has been documented as believing the resurrection was a lie.
Here’s the thing. Believers need never fall into the faulty-logic trap of arguing God over Science. Our God is big enough to provide us brains to hypothesize any Universe we care to imagine. Or, in the words of Baylor University Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and proponent of intelligent design Robert J. Marks: 
Today’s culture seems slavishly obsessed with weight, even as a recent article in the 
John Wesley, the celebrated preacher and founder of the Methodist Church, was a man in whom this flame burned bright and fierce. A life-long opponent of slavery, Wesley remained an outspoken advocate until his death. He not only fought against the scourge of slavery, but as a leader of the emergent Methodist movement he practiced throughout his life a regimen of personal discipline and ordered living.
to sin with the ubiquitous practice of slavery across Palestine in his day. Paul is argues that if we give ourselves over to slavery, we will follow whatever master controls us. As slaves to sin, we are free to righteousness, he writes, yet our reward is death. But now that we have been set free from sin through the atonement and reconciliation of Christ, we are slaves to God, having as our reward sanctification and its end, eternal life.
That sound you hear? It’s the sound of tires screeching to halt. The man simply couldn’t do it. He couldn’t give up his identify in exchange for the eternal life he sought.
Oh, and be sure to tip your 
Many of my friends, especially those people a little *ahem* older than me, don’t “get” the Social Media concept. “Seems like a waste of time,” says one. “Just another form of stupefied TV watching,” opines another. Or this one: “Twitter’s a glorified altar of narcissism from which voyeurs and provocateurs alike can shout ‘here I am! Look at me right this second!’” They clearly haven’t figured out I’m in that business.
In a sense, Social Media is like a pervasive, omnipresent force into which all of us can tap at any time and connect – like, say, electricity.
usually accompanying self-preoccupation, self-obsession, self-absorption. For instance, the buffed and coiffed crowd from the recent Oscars kerfuffle who seem to believe their voices are somehow more poignant than the masses.
breath spiritual truth into ever day life. His mastery of 
He laughed off my answer and we changed the topic to football. Because, you know, 