A WORD TO THE WISE. Proverbs 28: 4

Proverbs 28: 4     Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but such as keep the law contend with them.

Proverbs 28:4. We have to be careful with “positivity.”  It’s naïve and dangerous to blindly support our friends no matter what they decide to do.

I mean, a crowd standing behind you encouraging you to take the next step in a life-changing decision you’ve made sounds like a good thing.  But, what if you’re standing on a ledge and you’ve decided to kill yourself?

As a Christian, I have to love you.  I have to forgive you when you wrong me. Jesus commands me to suppress the impulse to judge the worth of your soul, to presume that I can tell the what you will or won’t make of your potential.    

What I don’t have to do is tell you that’s it’s O.K. when you do something wrong.  It isn’t.  I am not supposed to praise you for the strength of your commitment to sin.  If you are a skilled and bold criminal then I should respect your gifts and your courage while simultaneously condemning the evil for which you employ your gifts and courage.

And you must do the same for me.  I don’t get better when people enable my faults and encourage my character flaws in the name of love or grace.    

As a Christian, I am commanded to pursue perfection.  Freakin’ PER-FEC-TION!   (Matthew 5: 48)

It’s a high mark, and I’m faaarrr from it, but it is what it is.    To get there I need help.   To get there you need help.   Helping one another grown in Chirst is sometimes more complicated than just hollering, “Good job!”

Sometimes you have to argue with the ones you love.  Paul argued with Peter (Galatians 2: 11).   Jacob wrestled with God/ The Angel of God (Genesis 32). 

As the people of God’s kingdom we have to learn how to wrestle with one another without drawing blades and devolving into civil war.    Christians must be able to hold Christians accountable, or the devil will have an ever longer list of hypocrites with whom to misrepresent the Christ’s church to the world. 

When we fail in this key aspect of Christian love, we become a nation of accomplices to each other’s sins.

It’s not O.K.  to say it’s O.K. when it’s not O.K.

Leviticus 19:17 You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him. 
----- Anderson T. Graves II

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is the pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church

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Hall Memorial CME Church
541 Seibles Rd.,
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