Don’t judge me, but…(Podcast 10)
This podcast is about judgement within the church.
As Christians, we’re not to judge those who have a differing worldview/ heart.
We’re to share God’s grace with people outside the church as grace has the transformative power that softens hearts, while judgement is for exposing deception.
This is a simplistic, logical view of the difference between judgement and grace.
Christians are to judge those who have confessed and believe in their heart that Jesus is Lord, for the purpose of building up the body of Christ (the church community). They aren’t to judge those outside the church:
For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
1 Corinthians 5:12 – 13
Spiritual wisdom of God applied through judgements will seem like foolishness to anyone of a different worldview/ heart:
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
1 Corinthians 1: 18 – 25
And this is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
1 Corinthians 2:13 – 14
Holy judgements or opinions will appear like rubbish to those of different worldviews / hearts and may even provoke them to tear us apart verbally or physically:
Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
Matthew 7:6
We can see from the following Scripture how to utilise sound judgement in the church:
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
2 Timothy 3:16
Judgement is the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions / An opinion or conclusion.
All four aspects of 2 Tim 3:16—teaching, reproof, correction, and training—are forms of judgement.
To teach works with judgement. It works with the judgement of God based on faith in God, that what is being taught is holy, righteous, the ultimate truth, and for the greater good of eternity. This is to build up the church.
To reproof is to express disapproval or rebuke someone over something. This is clearly a judgment and in Biblical application, this is to expose evil so that someone can be brought to correction.
Correction, is for edification of the church. Correction can often mean a Christian returns to the fold stronger than he or she was before, having learned through the exposure of their sin and a desire to seek God more fervently.
Training is the consistent activity in which the church learns how to operate in righteousness – the right way by God’s standard. This is an operation founded on the judgement that what God says is right above all things.
Please check out Newsletter 10 (2021.3/4) for more about this journey…
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