.. do not even sit down to eat with him...

church this morning... such a great service, as always. this week dwelling on 1 Corinthians 5: 1-13, quite challenging, harsh words leaving me with some questions.. answered and interpreted clearly by my "shepherd"..  truth is that as a Christian that professes that the Bible is God's Word to us, inspired literally by God Himself, I have to be willing to accept even the more difficult passages as His Word to me... to us as a congregation... to His followers.

a challenge to call our fellow brothers and sisters  on their sin , because we love them and because like it says in this passage a little bit of leaven will work it's way through the whole lump of dough...   after following the process of dealing with sin in a  fellow believer's life, as laid out by Jesus Himself in Matthew 18, and if the brother or sister does not repent, we are to have nothing to do with this person... he or she needs to be kicked out... wow, this is harsh, this, as my pastor pointed out this morning goes so against what we think Christianity stands for that hardly anyone even dares to do this anymore....

what happens as a consequence is that "sin" slowly becomes accepted and works it's way through the "dough", contaminating the whole and making the church ineffective... ineffective because we are becoming hypocrites, preaching one thing yet doing and tolerating another..

no one ever said that following Christ would be easy... picking up your cross daily and deciding to live a holy life, because He is holy and He tells us to, is a struggle, daily.. 

I love how black and white the Word is in the important places.. I think we all need the reminder once in a while.... there is Grace and there is Mercy... and over all this is the love that made the Father sacrifice His own Son, but once we receive His forgiveness and the Holy Spirit as a counsellor, we are held accountable to a higher standard... we still mess up, and Jesus died for these sins as well... we definitely though need to be willing to humble ourselves, admit our struggles to each other and accept the help we can get from our fellow believers..  to justify away our sin and lower these standards instead is dangerous and needs to be dealt with... that's what this passage was all about today. difficult truth but truth nevertheless...

love how serious a Christian my pastor is... so blessed to have had him as a preacher for the last 13 years..