Quote:
Originally Posted by YP0534
Oregon:
Given that what you say is true, what is your response, if any? How do we relate to our brothers and sisters who do what you say they do? I'm mostly concerned that I might be one who could be subject to such a charge on some issue or other and I'd like to know, if I could, how I might discern the Spirit's leading in the circumstance as opposed to just having to choose between my own logic and another's presentation of verses.
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Good questions, and relevant to any topic on which there are varying weights placed on varying sets of scriptures.
My own take is this: when I base my oneness on the necessity of the other one coming to meet me, rather than vice versa, then I am in for a long and cold wait in the dark. Here is the old complaint: "When the others just see my way (my logic, the primacy of my crucial verses, etc), then we will all get along. Then all problems will be over and we will have heaven on earth." It will be some variation on this theme. "You must come to where I am."
Then I see the action of God. He loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son. (John 3:16).
While we were yet sinners, God loved us anyway. Christ died for us in our wretched state. (Rom. 5:6,8).
God manifested His love for us by sending His only begotten Son, that we might have life and live through this One. (1 John 4:9).
Herein is real love, not that we loved God [we could not], but that God loved us and sent His Son as a propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10).
Any attempt by man to bridge the gap, to cover the lack, to make up the lost ground, are illusion and vanity. From Adam and Eve's fig leaves to the tower of Babel and right up through. God alone can bridge the divide.
So to assume we are in the truth, and to expect others to come to our stand, our "ground", is perhaps a tad presumptuous. Rather we see the sending God. We have the real truth, God's love come into our hearts (Romans 5:5), that we might also be the ones stretching forth.
This is why I so strongly disagree with the events of the past few years. Let's assume Titus was wrong and the Anaheims were right. Let's assume the GLA churches with a cacaphony of electric music and dramatizations were in error.
But cutting off believers who are not in sin, but merely in subjective interpretational error, is to me not the love of God. We should take a stand for the truth (scripture, logic, the testimony of history, and even our own experiences and subjective "feelings"), but I believe the greatest truth of all is love. God has commended His own love to us, in Christ Jesus, and we therefore can commend God's love to one another. Cutting off one another over disagreements may in fact be love, but I have yet to be persuaded of this by any of the means I have listed above.