We Must Choose Between this Apostate Generation or Christ

I remember a joke many years ago that described our culture very well.

There were two psychiatrists walking down the road together. They saw a man in the ditch broken and bleeding, having been beaten by a mugger. They looked at one another in dismay and said: "The man who did this really needs our help."

This is the way our culture is dealing with offenders, they are encouraging people to forgive an offender because he might be hurting, never mind that he leaves a wake of broken people behind him who have done nothing to him.

A rational reasonable and godly response to someone who has been victimized would be to weep over their pain and chastise the offender to repent and make amends. Then, rather than chastising the one who was harmed to forgive, we would comfort them as we become their "wing man", coming alongside to support and believe the offended party.

Our God is concerned about the victims and angry with the perpetrators, but our culture spends more time coddling the one who is rude and mean, thinking it will cause them to change their ways. This is the devil's lie.

When we coddle and comfort wrong doers we are enablers giving rise to more frequent and worse conduct.

Ephesians 5:11 "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them."

We take part in the evil deeds of offenders when we refuse to chastise and discipline their behavior.

James 4:7 "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

God never said to ignore the offenders, He said to "resist" them. Resisting something means to combat and withstand them. If the sin is done in the open then the rebuke should be in the open for all to see what happens when anyone harms others.

1 Timothy 5:20 "

Those who continue in sin, rebuke in the presence of all so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning."

In our apostate generation preachers are chastising people to confront in private a sin that was public. They disallow someone in a church gathering from calling out wrong preaching as though the comfort of the people is more important than God's truth.

Preachers get away with a lot of false doctrines because the congregation is not allowed to speak openly during the teaching. In the Brehtren assemblies everyone is encouraged to interject as led by the Holy Spirit, no one is so prominent that everyone else is silenced. This is biblical, to silence others is not biblical.

Romans 12:9 "Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good."

When we hate evil we will be concerned about the victims of it more than the perpetrators of it.

The victims need our comfort and encouragement, the perps need our correction to learn bad behavior will not be tolerated in the body.

1 Corinthians 5:13 says, "Remove the wicked man from among yourselves".

In our day when someone is confronted about their attitude or rudeness the one who challenges them is the one who is chastised by the rest, this is the opposite of what God says to do and has caused arrogance and sin to grow in the body.

Isaiah 48:22 "“There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”

The wicked are allowed to remain as they are without challenge causing sin to grow within the body. We have more sinful attitudes and actions within the body in our day than we have righteousness because of this backward and perverted unbiblical stance of coddling the sinful person.

The more we focus on the principles of Christ and His love the more dark the sin appears.

Ephesians 6:13 "Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm."

We will cave to the dictates of this apostate generation when we do not stand strong no matter the consequences.

Are we more interested in having many people love us more than we care about what God thinks? We have to choose between our generation or Christ.