Is Reconciliation More Important than Worship?

Mike Hosey, An Elder

You are likely going to sin against your brothers and sisters at some point in your Christian walk – either intentionally or not. You will say something, do something, or be a part of something that will damage others in a way that will harm your relationship with them.  These sins against others can range from major events, such as sexual infidelity in a marriage, to relatively minor events, such as revealing information that a friend wanted kept secret.  There’s no way to categorize these kinds of things with precision because everyone is different in their sensitivity to slights, wrongs, or offenses, and there are far more wrongs that can be done than we can even imagine. 

But one thing is rather precise, and that is that God expects us to live in a loving relationship with other Christians. 1 John 4:19-21 puts it in stark perspective.  It’s there that we’re told that anyone who says he loves God but hates his brother is a liar. How can we love God who we’ve not seen, and not love our brother who we have seen? Anyone who loves God, must also love his brother.  The bible is packed with verses that teach the same general thing. Another verse, Romans 12:18, tells us that we are to live peaceably with others as far as it depends on us.  Paul’s teaching here is that we are to take great care to promote peace to the best of our own ability. 

In fact, God is so serious about this particular idea that Jesus gives us another stark perspective.  In Matthew 5:21-26, Jesus describes some actual serious sins in which one person might physically or verbally assault another person in anger. Flowing from that discussion, In Matthew 21:23-24, Jesus commands that if we are at the altar and we remember that we have sinned against a brother (or sister), then we are to stop our act of worship and go quickly to our brother (or sister) and be reconciled.  Jesus is saying that in that moment, reconciliation with our brother or sister is more important than the worship! There’s an immediacy to the words of Jesus here.  When you realize that your brother, sister, neighbor, or friend has something against you – that is when you have sinned against them – you are to immediately go to them and do your best to make things right. This means that you are not to wait on them to come to you, but rather you are to go to them.  This is a spiritual act, and it will take supernatural resources to accomplish. But thank God, he’s given us those resources (2 Timothy 1:7, Philippians 4:13).

Don't RelationSLIP Your Parents.

Mike Hosey, An Elder

To honor your mother and father is the fifth commandment in the famous Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:12).  It is different from all of the other commandments in one way, and set apart from 8 of them in another way.  First, it is the only commandment that comes explicitly with a promise (Ephesians 6:2).  If you honor your parents, you will have long life. Although the bible doesn’t say it here, you also generally will have a blessed life.  Giving us parents, and expecting us to honor them, and then to bless us with a long and generally healthy life is one way that God mirrors man’s relationship with himself and his expectations regarding that relationship. 

However, the second way that honoring one’s parents is set apart from most of the others is a bit more curious. Eight of the other commandments are negative.  For instance, in most of the other commandments, we are charged with a “thou shalt not . . .”  So instead of saying to us “don’t do this,”  in the fifth commandment, God tells us to take action.   We are to live our lives in such a way that our parents are honored, revered, set apart, or recognized for our behaviors and actions. The way that we do this honoring, chiefly, is by obeying them during those times in which we live under their direct authority.  However, that, by far, isn’t the only way that we honor them. We honor them by living Godly lives and being functional members of our communities. Our parents are to be recognized, not so much by our successes, but rather by our goodness. Further, we honor them by loving them – that is by being committed to their wellbeing in all of those ways that we are able.  It means being committed to their mental, spiritual and emotional wellbeing by calling them, visiting them, being there for them, and by showing them that we love and appreciate them. All of these are active “thou shalt do” behaviors. 

Finally, one of the most important ways that we honor our parents is by taking care of them when they no longer are able to do so on their own.  Of course, this makes sense.  After all, they took care of us when we were too young to do so for ourselves.  Reciprocation seems more than fair.  The bible puts very great importance on it.  For instance, consider Paul’s discussion of the topic to Timothy. In 1 Timothy 5:3-9 Paul is training the young pastor on how the church should manage widows.  In the context of that discussion, he says that a person who doesn’t take care of the relatives in his own household is “worse than an unbeliever.”  Paul recognizes that children should take care of their parents when they are able, rather than the church, and that if one doesn’t do so, then one’s standing with God might be in question. 

So respect the 5^th commandment, and take care of your parents in an active way. Love them and honor them with your life.  Doing so is a reflection of your relationship with God!

Dont RelationSLIP Out of Diversity

Mike Hosey, An Elder

If you take a moment to look around your environment and think about it, you will quickly see that you are surrounded by diversity – meaning that our world is not monochrome, monolithic, or mono-anything in its general physical composition. Consider animal life for a moment. There are many, many kinds of animal species, and within any given animal species, there are many, many different kinds of that particular animal.  This is true of plant life, bacterial life, or almost any kind of life on earth.  The planet itself is diverse.  There are rocky mountains, forested mountains, muddy rivers, clear rivers, deserts, rain forests, arctic tundra, swamps, plains, hills, meadows and just about any kind of environment you can imagine.  This is because the God who created it is a God of diversity.  If none of that is enough to convince you that God is a God of diversity, just contemplate on how he designed humanity’s reproductive process. Every time two people mate, the process takes genetic information from one person and combines it with the genetic information of the other person to produce a brand new unique individual who will then repeat that process when he or she comes of age.  This ensures that there is a never-ending and always changing supply of new people who are diverse in some respect from the people from whom they came!

God so much loves this diverse world of men that he created, that he redeemed it at the cost of his son Jesus, the only sinless and perfect man to make it off of the planet (John 3:16). For those who might be tempted to think that it is not true that he has a bias toward diversity, take a review of Revelation. Revelation 5:9 tell us that the blood of Jesus ransomed people from every tongue, tribe, and nation. And Revelation 7:9 depicts a great multitude of people from every tongue, tribe and nation clothed in white robes and standing before the throne! It’s a very good guess that Heaven will be a diverse place as well. 

But God is more than just a God of diversity. God is also a God of unity.  His intention was never that all of this diversity on earth, and in humanity be at odds with one another.  Instead, his intent was that everything be unified around him. When Adam and Eve fell after the original sin, that unity was broken.  But it is God’s desire that it return.  In Galatians, Paul tells us that in the church there should be neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave or free.  Instead, Paul tells us we should all be one in Christ. In other words, you may have diversity of form, but you should not have diversity of spirit or allegiance. Jesus reinforces this by example in the profound and famous prayer that he makes for his followers (John 17:1-26). In the midst of that prayer, he asks that they be made one just as he and the father are one (John 17:11).