Proverbs 12:5
The thoughts of the righteous are just.
How you think determines how you act, which determines your results, the fruit of your life.
What kind of person you really are is determined by what and how you think–which only God and you know.
How do you think of people?
All people.
When you’re in your coffin, you’ll be judged by how you loved people.
It is time for Christians to cease being selective of who we love. Jesus’ standards for us in this area are pretty darn high. He basically told us that if we love those who love us, who are kind to us, who give us a sense of significance and worth, then “la de frickin’ da.”
It is time for us to stop our contemptuous, looking-down-on, secret desire for eugenics, bigotry. It is unhealthy. It is unChristian. It is anti-Christ.
Here is an example of what is heard often: “If you want some entertainment, you should check out the people at the Beech Grove Wal-Mart!” And this is from Christians.
Really?
Why would that be entertaining?
Are they not made in the image of God? Or de we subconsciously believe they were made in the image of Trailer Park Satan?
Did Jesus die for them, just as He did for you?
Do you know them? Their stories? Each of them? Do you care for them? Have they harmed you in any way? Do they want and need to be known, cherished, and loved? And who should do that?
Sure, I see the humor. I’ve laughed at it before. And yeah, I get a little nervous at truck stops in small Indiana towns, especially with my Mexican wife. But isn’t there something better? Something higher for we who follow Jesus? As we mature in Christ, should we not start to see all people differently? With more love?
It is the love of God that changes the world and is the healing of the nations. It is His love thru the church–which is not a building nor a 501-C-3, but it is people. It is us. It is you and me, loving the world with the actual love of Jesus thru us.
The greatest gift we can offer the world is to be one with God, so that His love may flow thru us and supernaturally touch all with whom we come into contact with.
What else is there?
Matthew 12:31-32
The “Unpardonable Sin.” Or “Unforgiveable Sin.”
What is it?
Here is some helpful commentary from The Gospel Transformation Bible:
Jesus speaks alarmingly here of a sin that cannot be forgiven (see also 1 John 5:16–17). It is important to consider this statement within its broader context in order to understand what it means. Jesus is responding to the claim of the Pharisees that he casts out demons by means of demonic power instead of the power of God’s Spirit (Matt. 12:24; Mark 3:28–30). This is the second time in the Gospel that the Pharisees have said this (cf. Matt. 9:34; see also 10:25), and between the first and the second occurrences of this verdict on Jesus’ exorcisms, they have hatched a conspiracy to kill him (12:14). Their “blasphemy against the Spirit,” then, is not an impulsive action or statement. It is rather a determined course of godlessness arising from a settled conviction that God’s chosen servant, on whom God has put his Spirit (v. 18), is an agent of the very demonic powers Jesus came to defeat.
Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the unchanging conviction that Jesus is evil. In essence, the only “unforgivable” sin is a conclusive rejection of Christ rather than a contrite reception of him.
Matthew 12:33-37
A tree is known by its fruit.
It is interesting to note that whenever final judgement is spoken of in the Bible, it states that we will be judged on our works. We are saved by faith, but will be judged on our works, and not just in the big, sexy areas, but on how we actually lived the ordinary day to day, how we treated all others–especially those at the Beech Grove Wal-Mart and small town truck stops.