May 19, 2014
Putting Out the Welcome Mat
After a year of consideration
a church in a neighboring community adopted the statement declaring they were
an “Open and Affirming” (ONA) church body. Claiming that Jesus taught
inclusiveness, the congregation “makes a public covenant of welcome into their
full life and ministry to persons of all sexual orientations, gender
identities, and gender expressions.” Well now, all sexual orientations, come as you are without the need for
change? I assume their inclusiveness must then apply to pedophilia, polygamy, incest,
bestiality, rape, etc. Jesus is inclusive, but he does not include those who
practice sexual immorality. Paul reminds us, “…The body is not meant for sexual
immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Cor 6:13b NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Actually Jesus was very inclusive. People like this church of a neighboring community make that inclusiveness to be about ideologies. Jesus was not about our ideologies. He knew His Father. His Father knew all things, saw all things, and designed all things. What else was there to know? Therefore Jesus taught, preached, and exemplified the ways He knew to live from knowing His Father. This is why He was called the Truth. He did not learn anything additional from man. He did not expand any of His concepts with other men’s ideas. In fact, He dissolved the fallaciousness of the leaders’ ideas by asking simply rational questions, and He outright rebuked His disciples for their idiocy quite often. Jesus was not inclusive of ideas, He was the Truth which dissolved all error.
-----As such, He was a shock-jock, but not like those morally demented ones of today. His invitation to life was an invitation inclusive of everyone. But that invitation was an invitation to death, inclusive of everyone. So, if you did not want to die, you did not want to live. For we all inclusively live in the fallaciousness of being human (Rom 3:4.) That fallaciousness even exhibits itself profoundly in our calling this we do today “life” when it is actually death. And if the extension of fallaciousness for eternity is what we seek in Christ, then we seek neither Christ nor His Father, and we have no inclusion in His church.
-----But inclusion in His church and His eternal life is for anyone who dumps his fallacious baggage for the righteousness Christ’s Father knows. Here is inclusiveness for everyone willing to go baggageless. From here is where the soul proceeds alone, stripped bare and clothed in righteousness given to it, not brought by it. Yes, anyone can be included; yes, their errors are excluded. If this neighboring church were His church, it would know this.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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