Socialist Sushi

Someone brought it up again tonight. How the church today is so far away from the the New Testament church. “We just need to love people.”

What’s interesting to me is, the people in the early church tended to get themselves killed. Now, in general, you don’t kill people for being nice. They didn’t crucify Jesus for being nice. They killed him for speaking the truth, for being Truth.

It bothers me when people think they can disconnect the proclamation of truth from loving people. As if it’s possible to love without being faithful to Jesus, as if following Christ means hiding the truth.

Jesus told people they needed to repent, that they were risking hell fire. His love was shown in healing people, but also in caring for their souls.

In Acts 7, Stephen said:

You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.” (ESV)

For this they killed him.

Yes, we’re supposed to love people: Feed the hungry, help the sick, clothe the naked. And through all this, we are to tell them the gospel of Jesus, that they can come to know Christ and love him as well.

I pray we’ll stop this nonsense about loving without the proclamation of truth.