Is calling out sin the same as judging people?

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”” (John‬ 8‬:11‬ NIV‬‬)

Most people quote Matthew‬ 7‬:1‬-2‬ as commanding us not to judge sin in someone’s life. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” But the thought and command expressed in those two verses is continued and completed in the next five verses: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 5.3-7 NIV)

Jesus is quite clearly saying that we should not judge someone else’s sin if we do not first address any sin in our own life, but after we do that, then go ahead and warn others of sin. Paul expressly told Christians to point out sin in the world: “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” (Ephesians‬ 5‬:11‬ NIV‬‬)

Now, just as important is to recall that the Christian has extra responsibility to call out sin within the church. In fact, we should deal with that first. And always…always…remember that calling out sin is not about judging people…it is about helping them turn to a righteous, loving God. 

Say good things about your Savior and His Church on the Bluff.

“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah‬ 53‬:5‬ NIV‬‬). I listened (not for long) as a preacher used the last part of that verse to claim that God will heal any and all Christian’s of their physical maladies.  He stated that when we say that if God doesn’t heal us here, in this life, He will heal us in heaven…we are speaking gibberish (his words). He claimed it was just a lack of faith. Honestly, he said if you are sick God will absolutely heal you.  Really?

I know lots of Christians that got sick and the sickness resulted in death.  Did they die because of weak faith?  Did they pass away simply because they didn’t believe God would heal them? Absolutely not.  If you read the whole verse of Isaiah 53:5 you will see that Isaiah is clearly speaking in the spiritual sense. It is for our spiritual self…our sinful nature… that Christ was pierced, crushed, punished, and wounded.

Can God heal physical sicknesses? Yes! He has done it in the past and He will do it in the future.  He is, indeed, the Great Physician. But God heals whom He chooses and for what reasons He chooses.  You will never convince me that the Christians that I have known only tasted death because their faith was weak and they didn’t believe the Word of God. 

When Eve took that first bite of forbidden fruit our eventual death was sealed.  “Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many…” (Hebrews‬ 9‬:27‬-28‬ NIV‬‬) Christ’s sacrifice, His death on that cross, was about sin, not sickness.

Say good things about your Savior and His Church on the Bluff.

I recently heard a person say (and her companions were nodding in agreement) that most republicans were Christian nationalists who wanted to impose their beliefs on folks through laws. Now, we need to acknowledge that the majority of conservative voters are Christian, but does that mean conservatives want a nation where Christianity is the state recognized religion and no other is allowed? Absolutely not. State/Church partnerships have been shown to fail as political power soon infiltrates the church.

Do we Christians really want to impose our beliefs on others? Christianity, by design of God, negates force or intimidation to become a Christian.  Salvation is a choice.  No amount of government policy will ever change that fact. But do we want laws that we feel reflect the character and purpose of God?  We sure do.  But…and this is a fact…a lot of our laws already reflect that!  Can you think of a civilized, government-backed law that would not fit under the umbrella of the last six of the Ten Commandments? If you think you can, then it is not civilized.

Take the issue of abortion, for instance.  Is a law against it a Christian-based assault on women? No.  It would be a law against murder.  “The predominance of human biological research confirms that human life begins at conception—fertilization.  At fertilization, the human being emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic living human organism, a member of the species Homo sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop. The difference between the individual in its adult stage and in its zygotic stage is one of form, not nature. This statement focuses on the scientific evidence of when an individual human life begins.”  (American College of Pediatricians) Science says life begins at conception/fertilization.  Ending that life would be murder.  Even non-Christians agree that murder is wrong. Right?

The objection to The Ten Commandments is not to the last six, but to the first four:  love and obey God.  Proverbs 29:18 says that without a word from God, people cast off restraints.  That’s what the problem is: people do not want restraints.  They want to live how they please without thought of the consequences.  When they disregard the first four commandments, they will then water down, weaken, and violate the last six without worry or thought.

When you take God out of the picture, you remove restraint.  Your moral compass is merely your selfish, uncivilized desires.  That never works out well.

Top secret government files concerning UFOs were recently released with a promise of more to come. That created quite a bit of discussion about the existence of extraterrestrial beings, or aliens. I expected that, among Christians, there would be a general discussion about living beings on other planets and what that might mean to our beliefs and understanding about God. That is quite natural. I have given it thought and I’ll tell you what I believe.

Do I believe it is possible that other beings live on other planets?  Yes, it is possible.  God could have created a hundred planets across the universe and created beings to populate them. Do I think He did? I do not.  Let me explain why.  I live by God’s Word. I believe what He says through that Word.  I believe He tells us all we need to know about Him; His purpose and His character. He mentions no other creations that can and should have a relationship with Him. The scripture says he loved the world (singular not plural) and that He created the earth (not plural) and all that is in it. 

I know that people who want to believe in extraterrestrial beings find things in the Bible that they try to tie into alien activity…the flaming chariot of God in Ezekiel, certain angelic visitations, and some of John’s visions in Revelation, but in my humble, but accurate, opinion, they are wasting time trying to make the Bible back up their personal wants and desires.  I don’t have time to look for aliens and UFOs.

And then, miraculously, the government calls together certain “pastors” to warn them to prepare their audiences for events that could challenge every Christian belief and change the world’s perception of God. Interestingly enough, the few that were called to be debriefed by our government all fall into the Pentecostal, prophecy, prosperity category. Not a conservative evangelical Baptist preacher or leader among the chosen few. And we would be getting the warnings out to over 12,000,000 people in the U.S. and about 50,000,000 worldwide. That’s a pretty significant chunk of the population to be ignored by our government, don’t you think?

My advice is to live your life glorifying Christ, stay in the Word, and even if an “angel” speaks of another gospel…ignore it completely.  

Think things can’t get crazier?  Think again.  I came across a video of a clearly transgender person gleefully affirming that being transgender is part of the plan of God because God is transgender.  You read that right. This person had evidently been reading a gross mistranslation of scripture that has been making the rounds lately, saying that the Holy Spirit is a female.  Therefore, it stands to reason that God is transgender. This is just another attempt of humans twisting the scripture to say what they want it to say.

In ancient writings words were said to be masculine, feminine, or neutral.  In Hebrew, the word “spirit” is said to be feminine.  In Latin it is masculine.  In Greek it is neutral. But the chief liar has grasped hold of the “feminine” thing and is deceiving folks with heresy…again. When Jesus spoke of the coming of the Holy Spirit, He called the Spirit “he”.  Case closed. 

God has presented Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  But we can barely fathom the fullness of His essence. He is not a created being with a particular sex or gender.  But He did create two humans with somewhat of His image inherent in their creation. But because He created two (and only two) genders doesn’t mean that He vacillates between sexes at His whim. He created Adam…a male…and Eve…a female.  They were created differently for a reason. Satan is doing all he can to deceive mankind into thinking God has human characteristics and thus acts like us and thinks like us. Therefore, we can, and will, create a God in our minds that approves all human vanities and desires.

God is not “non-binary”, “transgendered”, “bi-sexual”, “queer” or any sexual term.  He is the great I AM, creator and sustainer of all that exists.  If He presents Himself in the masculine in each of His manifestations, then we had better stick to that.  To do otherwise is pure blasphemy.  And there is a dire warning to those who teach such falsehoods: Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.” Luke‬ 17‬:1‬-2‬

Can one discipline of science of contradict another discipline of science and they both be correct? For instance, can psychology and biology disagree and both be right? Common sense says no, of course. But evidentially, common sense is not a flower that grows in everyone’s garden. 

Biology tells us, with no doubt or uncertainty, that a person born with certain physical proponents, has XY chromosomes, and certain DNA, that person is a male. People are now trying to say that gender is different than sex: a person can be physically a male and psychologically a female (and visa versa). The Latin Phrase is “swinus bathus”.  Hog Wash.

The first question that comes to mind when a man says that he feels like a woman is this:  what does a woman feel like? Do you mean you want to wear a dress? Do you want to wear make-up? Just what action(s) do you want to take that would appoint you a female? And, if the whole world said “OK.  You’re a female”, would you begin seeing a gynecologist for your health needs? Would you need a mammogram or a PAP smear? Of course not…you are not a female.

But being a female includes much, much more than physical attributes. A person can surgically add or remove body parts and would still remain the person they were when born: either male or female.  God had a plan and He put that plan into place when He created humans as male or female. He had purpose when He designed and designated male and female.  

I read a while back where a man who wanted to be a woman married a woman who thought she was a man. The natural woman became pregnant, and headlines show up that said that a man was pregnant.  Honestly.  People actually said that.  All I could think of was Romans 1:22, written to a people that had given themselves over to every kind of unnatural lusts and desires, “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools”. And, with a broken heart, I thought of children born into such lunacy. But the most frightening part of that passage of scripture is what follows in verse 24: “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.” 

I fear the Lord giving us over to that which is contrary to His character and purpose.  What a terrible world to live in.

I recently watched a documentary about a Reformed Latter Day Saints community in the west and their new leader (referred to as Prophet).  The community had lost their last Prophet when he was arrested and convicted of child sexual abuse. Sent to prison, he eventually lost contact with his followers.  They went several years without a Prophet, thus without a leader.  Things were chaotic for a few years until a former member of the community appeared and claimed the former Prophet was now speaking through him.

He showed up with several wives and children.  Soon he had command.  Men actually “gave” him all of their daughters as wives…a couple of them even “gave” him their own wives. I asked myself how such a thing could happen. I can somewhat understand how grooming a female from birth (brainwashing) to believe she must always obey men, and especially their husband, then keeping them isolated from the real world, could lead to some of the ungodly practices, but grown men; Smart men with successful businesses?

 There are several reasons, but the most important one is that, in all cults (and this is a cult), there is one leader who wields all power and authority.  His “revelations” from God may be different from the last Prophet and the people accept that. Their current Prophet is never wrong. By the way, most new revelations somehow seem to benefit the Prophet more than the common member…this new one went from being evicted from a house several years before to owning two Bentleys, a Range Rover and two large homes.  He also married several underage girls and is serving a 50-year prison sentence.  I wonder if his time with power, wealth, and multiple molestations was worth it.

There will be no new revelations and no new scriptures.  And there will be no one with power and authority over you except Jesus Christ. As Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5:21: “but test them (prophecies) all, hold on to what is good.”

I was sitting in a lawn chair, throwing tennis balls with our dogs one day last week and I bent over to retrieve a returned ball.  A tiny movement in the grass caught my eye (and I do mean tiny). What I saw was a minuscule spider-like insect making its way across a patch of dirt.  It was so small that I wondered how I even saw it at all.  As I sat back up, I had this thought: “Why does that exist? What purpose does it serve?”.

Every living thing has purpose, doesn’t it?  Every living thing contributes something to life. But if every living thing supports life, what purpose is there to human life?  Why do humans live, anyway? That’s a deep philosophical thought, isn’t it? I look at it this way:  all natural, living things would continue to live even if humans didn’t exist. The sun would still shine, the clouds would still release their moisture, trees would still grow, and so on. 

But if all of nature didn’t exist, humans would not survive. Right? No food. No water. No sunshine. No oxygen.  There would be no human life. Now the theory of evolution cannot explain the process of “purpose”” as things supposedly evolved at various times and without relationships to other lifeforms. Something not alive just became alive and started doing stuff and through sheer luck and unbelievable timing…here we are.

But…but…what if there existed a “creator” (God) who decided He wanted to create humans, so he first created everything needed to sustain human life?  Then he created us….ready to be sustained? That philosophy is a lot simpler and more easily reconciled with the existence of living things.

That, however, begs the question “why were humans created…what is our purpose?  Simple, also.  We were created in God’s image to have a relationship with Him and to worship Him. He is our creator; our maker.  We owe Him everything. He is worthy of our worship, our praise, and our obedience. So…let’s focus on that purpose for which the Lord God created us. Having, and accomplishing, a purpose brings incredible peace and satisfaction to life.

Easter is on April 5 this year.  It was celebrated on a different date last year, though.  The method chosen to recognize the Resurrection is based on the Spring Equinox, a full moon, and a Sunday.  We celebrate it on the Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. According to that logic and method of calculation I would have celebrated my birthday on January 2nd this year.  Why?  Because I was born the day before the first full moon of 1952.  That was on the 11th of that year. It was on the 2nd this year. Perhaps I’ll start celebrating my birth on both days every year.  Twice the presents!

But our calendars and historical events are pretty easy to keep up with in these “modern times”. Not so much 2026 years ago.  There have been some serious calculations done to cement the actual day of the Resurrection, and yet, there is some disagreement.  I look at it in two ways.  First, it isn’t as important when we celebrate that life-changing event as it is that we celebrate it. So, I’m not going to get into any deep discussion about the exact date.

Secondly, though, we celebrate the Resurrection every week, in that we call Sundays our Sabbath, because of the resurrection.  We meet, worship, and rest on the day of the week that our Lord rose up from the grave. For Christians that adds a deeper New Testament layer on top of the Old Testament command for a Sabbath. 

Say good things about your Savior and His church