Never Tolerate Sin, But Respond To It Accordingly
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, My servants would fight to prevent My arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now My kingdom is from another place.”’ (John 18:36); ‘<Jesus said,> “Whoever has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me. The one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I too will love them and show Myself to them.”’ (John 14:21)
Obviously, we need to go deeper into the Word for clarity on this issue, but Jesus is not ‘woke’ and was never ‘woke’ with regard to Earthly social issues. The social issue of Jews in Jesus’s time on Earth was the Roman occupation of Israel. Many Jews wrongly believed, between the time gap of the Old Testament and the New Testament, that the Messiah would come as a conquering king, who would remove the Romans and all other foreign influences and ‘Make Israel Great Again (MIGA)’.
The extracanonical 3 books of the Maccabees (written in this time gap that was roughly 350 to 400 years) discuss this in abstract. However, Jesus clearly stated in His appearance before Pontius Pilate that He was not an earthly king, but an Eternal King over all realms. He is not concerned of earthly matters from the perspective of the secular viewpoint but of the eternal matters of the Spiritually Eternal viewpoint.
Jesus did not go against the Roman Empire on matters of ‘social justice’; He did not end the subjugation of the Roman people, He did not end the discrimination or segregation between the Jews, the Romans, or the Samaritans. Jesus did not end poverty or endorse any taxation, or removal of said taxes – only to pay taxes as required. He did from His Eternal status as God Manifested feed the multitudes, heal the sick, talk equally and without reservation to the rich, the poor, the lawful, the lawless, and the minorities as well as to the Jewish community, but he did not take on any social platforms, except for His Gospel message.
John 14 clearly is a message to His disciples to follow His Father God’s Laws, and not stray from them. In this, there can be no tolerance from God’s Word, thus in this perspective tolerate cannot be a Christian virtue. Jesus then would not be one to back the LGBTQ movement of today, as His Father laid out sexual deviation is a sin in the Levitical Law. Does this mean Jesus would ‘smite down’ anyone He met who was sexually deviant? The answer is ‘not necessarily’. Determining the ambiguous answer is if those who sinned would repent or not.
We find in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah where the populace (save for Lot and his family) were so indwelled with immoral and indecent debauchery that God wiped them out with a massive firestorm. On the opposite end was the adulterous woman, who was about to be stoned and Jesus intervened, stating ‘He who is without sin cast the 1st stone’, meaning He would be the only one who could do so.
The crowd left and Jesus forgave the woman, who obviously was very remorseful for her actions. Jesus did not approve of her actions, and He would not approve of the LGBTQ movement. He forgives those who ask for forgiveness but if their sins are without repentance, He will not intercede when God judges them into ‘Hell’. Jesus does not favor any one people group over another, and would not promote any racial disharmony or inequality.
Nor would He promote ‘white supremacy’ as much as He did not promote ‘Jewish elitism’ in Nazi Germany, as this would go against His own Gospel edict within the Great Commission to reach all people groups. While He did not promote equality from a mortal nature, He demonstrated equal rights from the Spiritual realm, giving equality in stature Spiritually to both slaves and masters, Jews and Gentiles, and the rich and the poor.
Jesus is loving but He is not a pushover. Never tolerating sin, He responded accordingly to those who sinned. Jesus forgave the adulterous woman with compassion, but ‘layeth the smackdown’ on the moneychangers and con artists in the temple courtyards with great physicality. We as well must respond accordingly as Jesus did; sometimes we need to ‘turn the other cheek’, but Jesus also said to prepare to ‘go to the sword’ to defend ourselves from sin. Never confuse ‘meekness’ with weakness’, or Jesus’ loving nature as being ‘woke’. Jesus is not ‘woke’ but is about His Father’s business, which is just and without prejudice or precondition, except for the acceptance of Jesus as Lord!
