The Cruel Church

I heard a very sad story recently. A precious man of God who has been in ministry for well over 50 years is being cruelly attacked by a church he planted a few years ago. He and his wife are, effectively, being put out of fellowship from a church he founded by the present pastor, with whom this precious old saint had served for a few years. Just how cruel can the church be?

Yet this story is not a new one. The church has hurt more people than we can possibly imagine with its legalism; its fundamental ignorance of Jesus’ command to love one another. No wonder our Lord called the Pharisees ‘whitewashed sepulchres’ and a ‘nest of vipers’. No wonder He made a whip and drove from the temple those who had ‘made My Father’s house a den of thieves’.

Are you one who talks about how you sang and shouted praises to God on Sunday and yet your tongue rips & tears people to shreds during the week? Are you one who will not fellowship with a brother who has committed a minor ‘sin’ – perhaps he bought a bottle of wine for a friend?

Matthew 7:3-5 (NIV)
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.”

The church is a very cruel place to be deemed imperfect. So please, in future, John 8:7 “But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

Where is our love for one another? Where is our hatred of the sin but our love for the sinner? Oh I know that people will be people wherever we find them but, please, can we stop being so religious, so legalistic, so very, very cruel to our precious brothers and sisters in Christ? What must the world think of us as it watches our every move? What we show the world is what it believes of us, and what we show in terms of mercy is scant indeed – to the point of none at all.

For all our preaching and telling of the Gospel, can we at least try to start living the Gospel as well?