God of All Comfort and Everything Else
There are comfortable verses and not so comfortable verses. We tend to think of our God as a God of peace and kindness, love and forgiveness–which is true. However we forget that His goal is not our comfort. Christian love is not to be sweet, gushy, syrupy love but truth bearing love. We are to love one another in truth and with gentleness not smother them with syrup.
Ephesians 4:15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.
If we are too willing to cover each other’s (and or own) sins with sweet words we will begin to believe the lie, that our sins are little, that they don’t really count, that a little white lie won’t hurt. Jesus died on the cross for all of our sins. He is Holy and any sin is a blemish in His eyes.
We need to hate the sin and love the sinner and while we celebrate the birth of our Saviour we need to keep our eyes on the cross, for that was the goal. His birth would have been nothing had He not come to die for our sins, and when we don’t recognize our sinfulness we mock the cross.
Heather this is so true, and it is an easy trap to fall into. Especially if you love the sinner. So many times it can be easy to make “justifications” why that person did something, but in reality we are just making things worse by “justifying”.
I live by the love the person, hate the sin.
Merry Christmas.
The truth in love. We manage to do that so rarley. May God help us master this skill. At the same time we must trust the Holy Spirit to work in people’s lives. It will be Him convicting and changing a sinner that will make a difference ultimately.
Heather,
Living in the truth… not the syrup.. Great words!!
You are right, Heather. He came to us as a babe to able to take the sin for us on the cross. We have to look past the manger, ahead to the cross to understand why He came…
Thank you for your wise words.
No matter how big or how small, a sin is a sin and our eyes must be kept open to that fact! Beautifully written!