In my youth I often heard my parents say, in response to an unprecedented issue, “Now I’ve seen everything.” Not many days would pass before they were forced to concede, “I thought I had seen everything,” as they reacted to yet another cultural surprise. As I observe the issues that confront us today, I wonder what their reaction would be if they were still with us.
We are faced with opposing forces around us, and are seeing increasing attempts to have their ungodliness forced upon us. We desire to respond with compassion, which is right and Christ like. However, compassion toward mankind can never be tolerance and acceptance of Biblically defined sin. Our compassion must be Godly compassion, which is unsurpassed in its love and understanding, yet unwavering in its commitment to His own Word. It cannot be human compassion, which however well intended, will be subject to human weakness, emotion, and corruption. If our compassion ever abandons loyalty to Biblical directives, it is no longer of God and has become compassion with compliance.
Christ before us stood and wept over a sinful Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37), yet He did not alter His message, mandate or mission in order to accommodate them, or in hopes that they would accommodate Him. We must be similarly heartbroken over a deceived world, reaching out with His long arm of love. At the same time we can never attempt to compromise His Word, which is the standard of His holiness. As we herald God’s love, we cannot compromise His holiness. It will not be compromised. The last word will be His, and it will be unchanged from His initial and eternal Word.
As we see the continued invasion of the human womb to the peril of the unborn; as we see a minority group of our society march its sexually perverted values upon us; as we see a growing number reject the gender of their creation and insist upon correcting God’s mistake; we are simply witnessing the age old rejection and rebellion toward God who “made man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). Man without God is ultimately man against God, and will eventually be man against God’s people. Nevertheless, we stand upon His Word and speak the truth in love, knowing that love may not be returned. We speak, knowing that He warned of the world’s hatred (John 15:18; 1 John 3:13). We will not remain silent, for it is more than our words that are hated by the world, it is the Living Word within us. Our silence that the world desires will not bring their admiration or regeneration, so we speak the truth in love. When Jesus spoke, it ultimately invited the anger and hatred of those who would not receive Him. His silence would not have changed that. When He finally “spoke not a word” (Isaiah 53:7; Matthew 27:14), they did not become calm and loving. They crucified Him. We are crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20).
Stand strong, children of God, the day is upon us. May we remember that men will not spend eternity apart from God in torment because of what they do, but because of what they are. No one will be eternally punished for being a murderer, rapist, liar, or homosexual. These are mere manifestations, symptoms of the greater problem. A person will spend eternity apart from God for one reason, for ignoring and rejecting His saving grace found only in Jesus Christ. While the blatant sins of the world understandably frustrate and even anger us, our hearts mourn with the Father over the doom that awaits the unrepentant (Luke 13:3,5). So were we all before we accepted His grace.