Love and Forgive Your Enemies?

Love and forgive your enemies. This is often either ignored or misinterpreted by many churches. Again, as in other articles I've written here on similar subjects, people often think to love and forgive your enemies means to let everything go along it's course, especially the wrong, and you meekly accept it all, hoping things would come out better in the end because "all things work together for good."

And more and more church people today seem to avoid conflicts, confrontation, and "judging" to preserve what they think is "harmony" or "peace" that they have, especially in fellowship. They'd rather pretend nothing's wrong when something is wrong, and sometimes keep wrong things secret, talking about them in secret meetings and careful not to leak the thing in church--to give the church denomination an immaculate image. 

That's not the glorious church, for sure. That's the clandestine synagogue of Satan.

For instance, I've often seen corruption and sexual immorality issues kept mum in church, even protecting the identity of the offender and victim. When truth about it is given light in the church by some who expose it they call it "gossip." They scare people who ask what's going on to keep them mum because talking about the issue, they warn, makes people gossips. So, they pretend nothing's wrong and wish the issue would just go away--which never happens. 

You see, as long as you avoid or skirt a sin issue or choose to just forget about it--without using God's justice to expose the truth and the culprit and discipline the guilty in front of the church (as my Jesus says we should), nothing will just go away or be forgotten. It's all recorded in God's Book and the issue is sure to give birth to another issue. Unresolved sin and wickedness issues are like free radicals--they multiply and spread fast, producing gangrene--gangrene spiritually blind people do not see. 

Lots of church people today misinterpret God's love and forgiveness as just forgetting about sin and wickedness issues, "and let's just worship the Lord and enjoy our fellowship and do the ministry." If you confront the issues, they scare you as being judgmental and unforgiving and having a contentious, quarrelsome spirit which, they say, is not of God's loving and forgiving Spirit. You lack God's grace, they add.

Well, there are people who are quarrelsome in church and gossip and judge without God's justice. That's not what we're talking of here. But there are also those who, like some churches I've seen, simply ignore sin in people's lives and continue to use such people in ministry, giving them "another chance" because they claim that that is in keeping with God's grace and mercy.

Giving unrepentant people another chance at ministry, because that is according to God's grace and mercy? Where is that in the bible? And they wouldn't like to hear about the unrepentant being useless in anyway to God in church (probably because they're unrepentant themselves). They want these unrepentant people seen active in ministry because they say that's a sign of spiritual restoration. God is working in them to be spiritually better, they claim. "Keep them busy in church and they'd somehow meet God there and be restored." They like to think that God is in it when they make the unrepentant active in church.

I've seen how pastors who committed sexual immorality (or other sin) and remain unrepentant but still get ordained or installed into a major church ministry. The leaders who install them say we shouldn't be magnifying the negatives but instead looking for the brighter side of things--look for good things in people, not their bad sides--so they can be given a chance. That's God's mercy and love, they say, and we shouldn't judge these unrepentant church people.

Moreover, they say that we should hurry up spreading the Gospel and planting churches because we're losing time by majoring on disciplining spiritually erring church people and leaders. If we get too concerned about cleaning up sin in people's lives, we'd never get anything done because, fact is, you can't get sin out of people's lives--even ministers. So, let's just count on God's grace to take care of on-going sin in them.

What a rotten mind...what a rotten heart.

No wonder church today is so powerless. Yes, they plant churches everywhere, but they're all powerless. Many of them have even turned into Satan's synagogue. They do marvelous worships every Sunday (even very lively and "anointed" ones that you feel God's presence, many claim) and they got lots of money and beautiful and comfy church buildings--but they're Satan's synagogues nonetheless, haven and breeding grounds for wickedness because it remains untouched there, enjoying safety. Sin grows quietly there without interruption or disturbance.

How did Jesus Love and Forgive?

Unconditional forgiveness? God never forgives sinners unless they repent. Paul always reminds in his letters to "forgive as the Lord forgave you." The Lord will NEVER forgive you unless you repent and naturally produce the fruit of repentance. And that's how we should forgive others. We should apply the same principle.

My Jesus prayed on the cross: "Father, forgive them because they're not aware of their wrongs." Did the Father forgive them? If they had repented, he would have. Without repentance there's no forgiveness. Even Jesus taught that. Jesus said that on the cross to demonstrate how he had no personal hatred or grievance against his enemies. He is willing that they would be forgiven. 

Give unrepentant sinners another chance at ministry? What do you think God's work is, a playground for sinners? God showed in the Old Testament (OT) that even if you were a priest, if you touched the Ark unworthily or touch it against HIS holiness principles, you'd die. God showed this in the OT several times, and Paul said in one of his letters that these things had been written to give us warning today. Meaning, OT principles are still applicable to the church age. We are not under Law but we uphold the principles in it [Rom.3.31]. 

My Jesus loved his enemies by lambasting them in their spiritual ignorance and wicked lives. He rebuked them mercilessly. "Unless you repent, you too will die!" he warned without mincing words. That's God's love as demonstrated by Jesus. Remember, my Jesus is the real and final interpretation of Scriptures. If you want real meanings of God's Word in the bible, look at how Jesus lived them out. Jesus is the Word--Word made flesh so we can interpret the bible accurately and not depend on human theology and denominational doctrines. 

When my Jesus called them fools, hypocrites, unmarked graves, fox, weeds to be pulled up by the Father and things like that, it was God's love. He had to warn them in the strongest possible terms (because of their stubbornness) because God loved them. He didn't want them to go to hell--and mind you, these were God's people in Israel, not gentiles or pagans. God disciplines whom he loves. In fact, souls are in hell because of God's love and justice for them. His justice is his love and his love is his justice.

The OT once declared that Israel kept producing illegitimate offspring. This was because they did things against God's Word and Kingdom principles. Today, the church keeps producing illegitimate "children of God." There are too many Ishmaels in church who will never share in the inheritance of  legitimate children (Jacobs). Many still cannot believe this truth--can you be "born again" and yet be a child of the devil? 

There are those who think they're born again but really, nothing happened to them in the spirit. They got scared of hell and wanted a quick option out of it, heard the Good News formula of a way out, grabbed it, and "accepted" Jesus in their minds. They just got smart about it, not really repentant and enlightened. Then they joined the church and wreak havoc there with their "growing" ministries. They're Ishmaels.

They worship and pray superbly, attend church faithfully, give their tithes and offering, and mouth church linggo and memory verses so well (many of them post nothing on their FB but bible verses--oh wow), and yet they're unrepentant. They're doing this because they're either scared of hell or want recognition. It's not for love. God will never forgive them unless they genuinely repent. And the genuinely penitent have the fruit of the Spirit always manifesting, have Jesus himself manifesting in their lives and bodies, and you see them naturally have the Jesus meekness and power without effort. They have God's flesh, God's very DNA in Christ. And they understand everything I'm talking about here on this blog.

Love and forgive your enemies? Don't listen to how denominational churches interpret it because they use it to control and easily manage people into docility, not freedom. Listen to how Jesus lived it out with his life. That frees you to genuinely love and forgive your enemies, the Kingdom way.

Unconditional Forgiveness: A Simple and Proven Method to Forgive Everyone and Everything