I Guess You Might Say I’m Intolerant

The world has no place in the Church. Everything I’ve studied and read today has pointed me to this. You might say “Brian, you’re just intolerant, and your religion causes you to be intolerant.” According to one preacher I heard this morning, we’re ALL intolerant in certain spaces. You wouldn’t tolerate smoking in a hospital for lung health, you wouldn’t allow child predators to be Kindergarten teachers (I would hope), and you would not tolerate someone coming in to your home and telling you how to live. Tolerance is not a Christian virtue, loving your enemies and doing good to those who hate you is. We do not change the world by looking like it! We do not draw hearts to Christ by imitating the rest of the world! (this is not an argument about music and similar silly things we say are wrong with the Church, so let’s not start on that).

Loved ones, we’re called to Holiness. We are called to imitate Christ. Jesus had no tolerance for sin; He loved sinners, but He condemned sin. He hated it so much that He offered His body, bearing the wrath of God on Himself because of Sin. He hates it so much that some day He’s coming to reconcile all things, and Sin will no longer have a place in the New World that He is bringing with Him. The world has no place in the Church. It has no place in me or my home. Christians, let us all, together, as sojourners and exiles, walk in such a way that we glorify God in every place He sends us, not imitating the world, but looking like the One who died that we may be free from it.

1 Peter 1:13 -2:12

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for

“All flesh is like grass

and all its glory like the flower of grass.

The grass withers,

and the flower falls,

but the word of the Lord remains forever.”

And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

2 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture:

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,

a cornerstone chosen and precious,

and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone,”

and

“A stone of stumbling,

and a rock of offense.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.