“The single greatest cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable”  – Brennan Manning

I’d replace atheism with rejection of the message of our Lord Jesus Christ thus: “The single greatest cause of the message of the rejection of the message of Jesus Christ in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable”

Greetings mighty saints of God.

Exodus 20:7 tells us to “not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain;” . We’ve been taught that this means to not use the name of God in common language as swear words or even expressions. The word vain is shäv in Hebrew. The Blue Letter Bible defines its Biblical usage as:
emptiness, vanity, falsehood
a) emptiness, nothingness, vanity
b) emptiness of speech, lying
c) worthlessness (of conduct)

Without discounting any of the above usages, I believe that passage has more to do with worthlessness of conduct than emptiness of speech, lying etc. We are called to be Ambassador’s of our Lord Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:20), we represent and enforce His Kingdom on Earth. Our conduct has to be worthy of this calling.

Is there a specific order of conduct prescribed by which we can stand without error in our representation of our Lord Jesus? In John 13:34-35 Lord Jesus said ” A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

By this ALL will know that you are My disciples, if you have LOVE for one another

This is a commandment and not a suggestion.

I have three children. When they fight, I get irritated, but God forbid, if I ever find that they have no love for each other, that would break my heart. Our heavenly Father feels no different. A long time ago, He asked Cain about the whereabouts of his brother Abel, to which Cain replied “I know not, am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). Earlier, both Cain and Abel had made an offering to the LORD. He was pleased with Abel’s but not Cain’s. Abel had offered a better sacrifice by faith (Heb 11:4). Then the LORD asked a sulking Cain “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? ⁷ If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.” (Genesis 4:6)

King James Version says “… sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.”

I find the similarity between that and the passage in Genesis 3:16 where the LORD says to Eve “…  Your desire shall be for your husband,  And he shall rule over you.” curious.

Coming back to the Cain, we understand that he succumbs to sin and kills his brother. It is when God confronts him that we get the famous reply “I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Let us analyze this

Cain starts by saying “I know not”. This is the first lie said by a human recorded  in the bible. Even when Adam and Eve fell, they did not lie, but just pointed the finger and passed on the blame.

Genesis 3: 9-13

And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

We can say that rather than lying, it can be said that Adam accused Eve and she in turn accuses the serpent of tricking her.  This too is an inherited trait of Satan, who is the accuser of the brothers (Revelation 12:10).

In Cain’s case, the LORD had warned him that sin desires to consume him, and it is interesting to note that the KJV personifies sin as him. Once consumed by sin, the first thing that comes out Cain’s mouth is a lie. In John 8:44, Jesus tells us that Satan is the father of lies.

In other words, after declaring to the LORD who he was with now, Cain goes on and asks “Am I my brother’s keeper?”. What he is asking is

• Is this my concern?
• After all, aren’t you and him good buddies now?
• Aren’t you supposed to take care of him?
• What does all this have to do with me?

Sin had turned Cain against Able and God, as a result he neither had love, care or concern for his brother, not had any regard about what his Heavenly father’s concerns for his brother were.

Coming back to our times, do we have a responsibility to watch out and care for our “brethren”? We read earlier that Lord Jesus commanded us to love another, and that the world will know that we are his disciple by seeing the love we have for one another.

Paul writes to the Romans stating that they must owe nothing to no man but love; that love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:18). Love one another fervently, writes Peter in 1 Peter 1:22.

Other than what Jesus said in John 13:35-35, what touched me most was Paul writes to the Corinthians in 1 Cor 13:1-3

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.  And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

So it is clear that the Lord Jesus tells us that we MUST be known for our love for each other.

It would be dangerous to stop at that without understanding how He expects us to fulfill this command.

This is no “free love”; the belief in or practice of sexual relations outside of marriage. Jesus was no hippy with a harem.

In the Bible, there are specific instruction given to express this love.

Four commands to “Love”:

1. Love your enemies (Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27,35).
2. Love your fellow Christians (John 13:34; John 15:12,17;  1 Peter 2:17; 1 John 3:23; 2 John 1:5; Galatians 5:14).
3. Love the brotherhood (1 Peter 2:17).
4. Love your brother (1 John 4:21).

Two things not to love:

1. The world (1 John 2:15)
2. Things in the world (1 John 2:15)

Three ways to love:

1. Fervently (1 Peter 2:22)
2. With a pure heart (1 Peter 2:22)
3. As brethren (1 Peter 3:8)

Ways to show our love to one another.

1. be reconciled to one another  – Matt 5:24)
2. “receive one another” – Rom 15:7
3. “edify another” – Rom 14:19
4. “serve one another” – Gal 5:13
5. “bear one another’s burdens” – Gal 6:1-2
6. “forgiving one another” – Eph 4:32
7. “submitting to one another” – Eph 5:21
8. “exhort one another” – Heb 3:12-13
9. “consider one another” – Heb 10:24-25
10. “hospitable to one another” – 1 Pet 4:8-10

Remember

1. All will know we are disciples of Christ by our love for one another
2. This is the fulfillment of the Old Testament
3. It is a new commandment (not a suggestion) given by the Lord Jesus
4. Without love expressed Biblicaly by faith, we are nothing but a clanging cymbal, or full of hot air
5. Without this, we are nothing.

An interesting point to note is that all the 10 ways  is addressed to believers, the Church. We are called to be Ambassador’s of our Lord Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:20), we represent and enforce His Kingdom on Earth. Our conduct has to be worthy of this calling. Let us not cause the message of Jesus Christ  to be rejected by the world through our denial of Him in our lifestyle.

with love in Jesus

J.S.Kodiyil
Pastor
The Father’s House Church, Cochin & Ooty

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison” Henry David Thoreau.

Thoreau wrote this on an essay on non violent civil disobedience that inspired a certain lawyer in South Africa about a 100 years later. This lawyer, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, took this to heart and went on to become the father of my nation.

Being resurrection Sunday, my meditation took me to the time right after Pentecost in Acts 5. The freshly anointed apostles had already been in jail once for preaching about Jesus, had then been sprung out of jail by an angel, got caught again for talking about this Jesus and now are in front of the Jewish authorities who decide not to throw them in jail but order them never to say Jesus’ name in public.

We live in a world warped by the influence of sin. The Devil has put in systems in place which ensure that it becomes very unpleasant for anyone to open their mouth and talk about Jesus. In some countries, he has made it illegal, punishable by death, and in others, he has made it culturally irrelevant where people have heard of this Jesus and it is nothing new to them. They do not know the power behind the name. How can they?

The very people who are supposed to be called to demonstrate this power sit passively thinking only about what God can do for us and not what we can do for the one who purchased us with his very own blood.

The truth is that Jesus is the only way, the only truth and the only access to eternal life with our father in heaven. We can not apply the six degrees of separation theory to this.

This means that people are going to perish unless they get a chance to know him. As Paul said in Romans 10:14, how can they believe in the one of who they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?

The fact is that we live in a culture which makes us feel bad or which even make us a criminal if we say that the ‘unsaved’ who does not know Jesus is bound for hell.

However unpleasant or socially unacceptable that might sound, that simply is the truth.

This was the message the apostles preached in Acts and nearly all of them ended up in jail for that.

When we who have been justified and made the righteousness of God, the temples of the Holy Ghost and the custodians the spiritual truths of the victory that is in Jesus, proclaim to a world blinded, bound and ruled by the god of this age, we will quickly find that there is no part for us in this system.

From not being given the freedom to speak about the solution that can save mankind from eternal death, to being killed for proclaiming the one who died for us, we will find that there is no welcome mat from those who now rule this world (I am referring primarily to those authorities mentioned by Paul in Eph 6: 10-18). How can there be? What fellowship is there between darkeness and light? 2 Cor 6:14

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison”

Prison need not mean just behind bars, but it could mean anything from that to being a social outcast or to just not being invited to the neighbor’s BBQ. If that is the outcome of our preaching Christ, then why am I trying so hard to stay out of that predicament?

What am I conforming to? Whose law, written or unwritten, am I trying to adhere to for social acceptance?

Who am I trying to not offend by not talking about the consequences of denying Jesus?

To me that is like saying “I’m not really a Christian, but I did see one on TV once”.

–

This is an excerpt from my 2005 resurrection Sunday sermon.

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us…

We are all familiar with this mnemonic for planets in the Solar system.

After Pluto’s demotion some years back, I read this:

“My! Very educated morons just screwed up numerous planetariums.”

My take on this is that humans, educated morons or not, came up with this classification system in the first place, and therefore inherently have the right to change it as necessary.

CRIRES model-based computer-generated impression of the Plutonian surface by ESO—L. Calçada, with atmospheric haze, and Charon and the Sun in the sky

Sentimentalism is another thing, but that is not the issue here.

Officially a “planet” is a celestial body that:

1. is in orbit around a star or stellar remnants;
2. has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape;
3. is not massive enough to initiate thermonuclear fusion of deuterium in its core; and,
4. has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.

Change any of these parameters, and that celestial body ceases to be classified as a planet.

In January 2007, the American Dialect Society chose “plutoed” as its 2006 Word of the Year, defining “to pluto” as “to demote or devalue someone or something“, “as happened to the former planet Pluto.”

Don’t get plutoed!!!

God has set down some parameters too. It is all in the Bible.

The difference here is that God does not need to hold a referendum to adopt a new resolution because he has discovered something new, or because he now has a deeper revelation of something which he did not have before.

If we choose to live according to God’s parameters, then we qualify to receive what he has to give; both now and eternally, and I gladly add that he is only too happy and willing to give to those who comply and ask.

If we do not live according to God’s parameters, then we get to live with and as others who don’t; both now and eternally.

Another point to note here is that we are composed of materials that disintegrate if we choose to change the parameters set by our creator.”

–
This entry first appeared on my old blog site on Sept. 05, 2006