HOW SHALL WE STAND AGAINST SIN WITHOUT OBLITERATING THE SINNER?

We continue to struggle in a most basic area.  I would add that if you aren't wrestling with it then you might want to take heart-inventory for possibly you should be.  I speak of sin, the sinful, and the church that encounters both.

The world news is having a heyday reporting of a Church of Christ in Tennessee that has disciplined a member who stands beside her lesbian daughter.  Media seems to get a high when it has opportunity to church-bash.

What and how that particular congregation chooses to deal with their issues is surely and appropriately their call.  However, such a move sets the stage for an important consideration about sin and sinners.

I have experienced times when our congregation disfellowshipped some; usually because they no longer attended church. It just happened that none making such a decision were guilty of the same.  Stubborn unbelief, American greed, dangerous lust, and judgmental divisiveness were never marks which needed in-front-of-the-church correction for much of it, coincidentally, also lived within several of us leaders.

It seems both absurd and ironic that to any of the above charges we would give a shrug by saying, We were born this way.  Thus my/our hypocrisy.  And the world loves to parade our hypocrisy.

Yet sin is sin and it is grievous.   We have not surrendered the grievousness of others' sin; but we have our own.  The problem with the church picture is we do not take our own lusts, greed, and self-serving seriously.

What is the answer?

It is not to be found in formula nor equation.  It is only found in the Son of God.

Jesus dealt with sin and sinner.  He became the sin that the sinner might be set free.  Our call is to stand in the sinner's place by being executed upon our own cross for his or her sin.  This is the only way we were healed and the only way they will be healed.

When we accepted Jesus' rescue he did not hand us a diploma; but asked us to lean upon a new world-evangelism tool.  That tool is a cross.  It is to be used to save lesbians and thieves and elders and preachers and Sunday School teachers.

A quote that came from one observing the Tennessee situation says, We must make a strong stand on this issue for the sake of our families and our nation.  This is THE issue of the next generation.  We can't let them down.  We must lovingly fight sin.

THE issue of the the next generation is not same sex-attraction.  It is the same THE ISSUE which has always been since the garden; the self-attraction.  We are all a dilapidated, ugly mess.  All of us.  Jesus would fight sin and fight for the sinner.  He did it by dying to himself that others might live.  

Ours....our call is to take up our crosses and die for the repulsive sinner....for such already happened for us when we wore similar garments.  

Where are we....how are we to stand?  

We are not to stand.  We are to hang.