Are You Winning Souls to Jesus, or to Your Point of View?

If I can be honest (and this is my blog/journal, so I can be), I’m sad this morning. The thing that is making me sad is the way Christians spend more time trying to win one another over to their points of view rather than winning souls to Jesus Christ. Seriously. The Church is divided up by denomination, and within denominations you have viewpoints, such as Calvinism and Arminianism, and for years, I have witnessed more and more dissection, more and more folks trying to win people to a viewpoint than to Christ. Denominationalism, certain theological viewpoints, most of our arguments are based on what we use to understand God, man’s way of understanding God.

Each side picks and chooses the Scriptures that fit their standpoint, and build bunkers and fortresses, forging weapons of war against those who should be brothers. Quite frankly, there is not a biblical basis to argue with one another, we do it because of the traditions that make us feel most comfortable. Our positions make us prideful, make us despise those whom Scripture says should be our brothers, and even makes us call one another heretics and apostates, again, not based on Biblical thought, but based on our understanding of things. This ought not to be!

We need to examine the Scriptures. I mean this: absolutely set aside OUR preconceived notions, or this or that teacher’s notions, and take it for what it is. We need to stop being Pharisees and Sadducees, trying to control religion and God by the traditions we’ve set up, and just take God at His word, understanding that we won’t understand everything this side of heaven. Unless someone outright is in denial of Biblical truth, we need to have Grace toward one another, setting aside our arguments that we might get back to the work set before us: that of the Great commandment, and the Great commission. There is a world that needs Jesus. They need to see the Body unified. It is Christ on the Cross and Empty Tomb He walked out of that is the foundation of our hope, and no philosophy or man-made doctrine can hold a candle to it! Set aside the non-essentials. Be unified in Christ.

Ephesians 4

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says,

“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,

and he gave gifts to men.”

 (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.