When thousands were asked in a survey “why is there so much indifference and apathy in the world today?”, the #1 answer was “I don’t know and I don’t care”.  And this is the mantra of the day … “whatever goes and leave me alone“.  The “demanding” voices in the world today are not demanding that we repent of sin, honor God and live by faith according to God’s righteous standard but they are demanding that everyone shut-up about sin and “coexist” with sin.  People today, more than ever before want to “suppress the truth” of God’s word and suppress the truth of the “real” Jesus Christ!

And it is not only people who do not have a personal relationship with Jesus that are lost and confused about the “real” Jesus but the lukewarm “poser” Christians of the Laodicean Curch Age are lost too.  Instead of preaching a gospel of repentance from sin and the abundant life that is found in pursuing holiness, the Church of “what’s happening now” convinces people to come and hang with their “homeboy” Jesus who will give them whatever they want, including acceptance of their sin.  This is the day of the “be nice gospel”, which teaches that man is basically good, so all you have to do is tap into your inner goodness and that will allow you to go along with everything and get along with everyone.  To people who preach the be nice gospel, Jesus is just a good moral teacher like Gandhi, Buddha or Mr. Ed and the purpose of Jesus’ life is merely to teach us to “be nice” to everyone.

Look, desiring to “get along” with your fellow man and be nice to your fellow man is a “worthy pursuit” but this pursuit becomes “unworthy” when you tolerate sinful behavior or accept sin in order to get along and make peace with others.  Compromising with sin may produce short term relief from the effort it takes to restrain and confront sin but in the long run the failure to deal with sin and turn from sin leads to a “rotting from within (the soul)” and a “rotting from without (society)”.   This is because failing to deal with sin is a sin itself.  It is the sin of “omission”, when you know something is sinful but you remain silent. 

This is the wise advise TV deputy Barney Fife often echoed, “Nip it, Nip it in the Bud!” because dealing with sin when it first is identified leads to the fastest road to recovery from sin.  Continuing to “give in to sin” increases the appetite for sin and the destruction of sin while it decrease the pleasure and satisfaction from sin.  Eventually, the desire to sin becomes “insatiable” and a person is left tormented in their soul and unable to “get along” with anyone, not even their own self.  And the ultimate danger from compromising with sin is that a person’s mind can become “reprobate” and their heart can become “hardened” beyond the ability to repent from sin and therefore their future will be eternal torment in the Lake of Fire.

And this is what is happening today, right before our eyes.  America has been steadily compromising with sin and this has created an atmosphere of conflict and destruction.  It has all happened so slowly, we are like the proverbial frog that is being cooked to death in the slowly heated pot.  The tension and anger among people today in America is due to increasing amount of sin in America and increased tolerance for sin.  Those who want to see God’s moral standard lifted up and honored are being ridiculed and called bigots, haters and criminals.  It is just a matter of time before Christians who up hold a Godly standard will be persecuted and locked up, unless America repents and returns to the God.  Our founding fathers would be alarmed to see how far we have strayed from our Godly foundation.  And if we continue down this Liberal road to ruin, we will soon be living in a country that is ruined and lost.  I pray God will deliver American by revival but my discernment leads me to think God is going to deliver His people by “Rapture” and leave the world to be judged by seven years of Tribulation.

So you see, compromising with sin is a loose-loose situation.  Jesus didn’t die on a cross so that we would tolerate or accept the sin that He died to save us from.  Jesus did not come to make bad people good or good people better …. He came to make “dead” people alive!  You are dead in your trespasses of sin before God. 

“Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” – John 8:24

This is a “radical” statement that Jesus made!  You are “dead” in sin!  A band-aid from the “be nice” gospel is not going to cure your sin sick soul that is leading you to eternal death and separation from God!  You need a heart transplant, a new born-again life in Christ.  You need to “deny” your sinful self, not tolerate sin or “feel good” about the sin in your life.  You need to allow God to do His good work in you by putting a born-again person of Jesus Christ in you and then increasing that born-again person, until you are the person God created you to be, a true child of God.  You must first “die to self” to get the new life of Christ and then you must “live in Christ” in order to live the new life of Christ in you.  That is the message of this web site “Die2Live“.  The last thing you want to do is “embrace” self and feel good about your sinful self.

In this day and age people understand what “radical” Islam means.  It means there are “mad men” that are loose in the world with a ruthlessly pursuit and passion to kill anyone who does not bow and confess that “Allah” is God.  Many people tremble and watch their speech to make sure they don’t say something offensive about the pedophile prophet Mohammed, especially in countries where the Islamic religion is dominant and Sharia law rules the nation.  Well, I have news for you … Jesus is MORE RADICAL than Islam.  Unlike Mohammed, who under the influence of demonic control claimed to find the one true god, Allah, Jesus claimed HE WAS THE ONE TRUE GOD IN THE FLESH (John 9:35-38).  In other words, Jesus made a more “radical” claim than Mohammed made!

Yet, today the radical Jesus that walked the earth and convicted people of their selfishness and sin has been replaced by a man made Jesus who strokes a person’s ego and approves of their sin.  Today, people don’t want the “real” Jesus who will give them a new Spiritual birth and free them of their sin but they want a Jesus who is will make them feel good about them themselves and approve of their sin.  It is alarming that the deception of Satan is working so well that the majority of Americans today no longer believe it is necessary to repent from sin to have fellowship with God.  Moreover, misguided “love” that tolerates everything is “killing us softly”, keeping us slaves to sin and bringing the judgment of God’s wrath down on the world.  It is our sinful self that deceives us and keep us from becoming the person God created us to be.  We don’t need to ignore sin or tolerate sin or embrace sin but we need to turn from sin and embrace a new life in Christ.

Look, I am writing this article to try and even the score concerning the historical Jesus.  Yes, Jesus is loving and kind toward us, long suffering, forgiving us of our sin and dying because of our sin.  He is our redeemer and our friend, no one who loves us more than Jesus does.  Jesus saves from the uttermost to the gutter most.  And the saving power of Jesus is the most wonderful and powerful truth about Him.  It is because of God’s amazing grace and Jesus’ wonderful saving power that we can come to Jesus “just as we are” but God’s amazing grace is NOT meant to “keep us just as we are” but transform us into the image of Christ so we “leave as He is“.  The real historical Jesus came to save sinners … to save us from the “penalty” of sin and to save us from the “power” of sin and to one day free us from the “presence” of sin.  Yes, Jesus loves me but He doesn’t love my sin.  Yes, Jesus will set you free but He will piss you off first … when you realize you are a sinner in need of a Savior.

Therefore, if a person says he is saved by Jesus, yet he is unconcerned about his sin, I can’t help but wonder if that person is saved at all.  And if you claim to be a Christian, but you are not willing to be transformed by the Holy Spirit which is the power of the new life of Jesus Christ in you that allows you to overcome sin, have you come to Christ at all and received His new life?  Jesus didn’t come to make you feel better about your current sinful self but He came to allow you to loose your sinful self, so you can become the new born-again Christ person that God created you to be.  Jesus came to give you a new Spiritual self that dwells in inside you and communicates with God through the Holy Spirit.  It is the person of the Holy Spirit working within you that enables you to be transformed us into the image of Christ, a person freed from the power of sin and full of God’s joy.  A born-again Christian who continues to sin and ignores the conviction of the Holy Spirit concerning his sin will be “miserable” instead of experiencing God’s joy.

Note, I am not advocating a “works Salvation” where you must do good works to prove your Salvation or you will loose your Salvation.  This is the doctrine of Legalism and “fear”, not Liberty and faith.  God’s Grace that saves a person will complete the work (Philippians 1:6) …. the doctrine of Once Saved Always Saved is the gospel of Jesus Christ.  What I am saying is that you cannot prove you are saved by doing good work but you can prove your Salvation to yourself if you have a change of mind concerning the danger of sin after you have called on Jesus to save you … this is the testimony of the Holy Spirit that lives in the born again believer!  If you are not concerned of the dangers of sin in your life or in the world then you better examine yourself to see if Christ dwells in you.  Jesus came to make you holy but holiness is not something you will desire or something that you can obtain without the Grace of Jesus living in you providing you the strength to overcome sin in your life.  

1 Peter 1: 13Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 14As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, 15but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; 16because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.”

The bottom line is that instead of tolerating everything and everyone, Jesus “demands” that we deny everything and everyone that gets in the way of coming to Him, especially our sin, in order that we may be like Him.  Matthew 10:39 “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.”.   And instead of “coexisting” contently with all the lies and deception of the world we are called to “contradict” the lies of man with the truth of Christ.  Let’s look at what Jesus really said so we can define the true historical Jesus and discover the new person we are meant to be “in” Christ.

1. Jesus was “judgmental”

He said all men and women are all born slaves to sin and under a death sentence.

John 3:18  “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”   John 8:24 “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”   We are born sinners, already judged for both physical death and Spiritual death.  We need to judge rightly.  John 7:24 “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”  This fact demands a response from us or we will die in our sins.  

2. Jesus was “convicting”

He said that you sin not only in what you do but in what you think.

Matthew 5:21-22  21“You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ 22“But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell”   Matthew 5:27-28  27“You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; 28but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”   Sin is a serious problem, it is not something we can not overcome by ceasing to “act” upon our impulses but we have to cease from ever having a sinful impulses which is an impossibility.  Sin is a serious deep rooted condition that we are afflicted by and it demands a Savior, outside our self, to free us from sin.

3. Jesus was “narrow minded”

He said there is only one way to be saved from sin.

John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”  Jesus demands that He is the only way to the Father.  He is the narrow gate to salvation.  John 10:7 “So Jesus said to them again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.”  There is no other way to be saved, no other religion or good works or sincere cry of desperation will save you, other than the name of Jesus.  John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.“

4. Jesus was “demanding”

He forgave the woman and told her to sin no more.

John 8:10-11 10Straightening up, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” 11She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.”  Jesus forgave the woman but also demanded that she sin no more.  This is the teaching the gospel of “nice” omits.

5. Jesus was “offensive”

He warned about the danger of the Pharisees’s teaching and confronted them for their false teaching.

Matthew 16:6 And Jesus said to them, “Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”   Matthew 23:13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.”  Jesus demanded that we learn how to discern and refute the fallacy of the teaching of the Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees.  The fallacy is that we can not be saved by doing good works.  Good works are the essence and the root of all religions.  Note, Christianity is not a religion but a relationship with the God (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit).  No amount of good works can save you, only by grace through faith in Jesus Christ can you be saved from your sin.

6. Jesus was “challenging”

He always tried to thin down the ranks of His followers to His true believers.

John 6:26-27 26Jesus answered them and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. 27“Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.”  The crowd was always demanding that Jesus give them another sign that He was sent by God but Jesus was always demanding that they give their life to Him.

7. Jesus was “radical”

He told people that following Him causes you to come under attack.

John 15:18-20 “18“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. 19“If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. 20“Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also.”   We will be hated by the world if we truly follow Jesus and if you are not hated by the world it is probably because you are tolerant of sin and afraid to offend anyone.  But Jesus didn’t come to make the world feel at ease with sin but He came to bring a Spiritual revolution to overcome sin!  Jesus demands that we put Him and His teaching anything else in our life, even before the loyalty we have to family and friends.   Matthew 10:34-29  34“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35“For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; 36and A MAN’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD.   37“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38“And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39“He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”

8. Jesus was “practical”

He taught His disciples to attack with the Spiritual Sword and defend with the physical sword.

Matthew 10:16 “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.”  Jesus defeated Satan by quoting scripture to him.  Jesus taught us to be as gentle as a dove, without intent to harm anyone and wise as a serpent, knowing that evil dwells in the heart of men to harm us.  God’s word, the sword of the Lord is the only offensive weapon we need in this life.  If someone has wronged us, we are to forgive them, pray for them and turn them over to God’s justice, which is much better than anything we can dish out.  Luke 22:36  “And He said to them, “But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one.”  And here is practical advise from Jesus, since Jesus is no longer physically present to provide protection from robbers or murders, we should be armed to defend our self and our family against attack.  It would be a tragedy if my wife was killed by a murderer and it would be a tragedy if I caught the murderer in the act and killed him first.  God is the giver of physical and Spiritual eternal life, He alone has the authority to give life or to take life.  For this reason, I pray that God will grant me the grace, wisdom and courage to do His will if ever I am tested to take a life in order to save another one.

So we see that Jesus was judgmental, convicting, narrow minded, demanding, offensive, challenging, radical and yet He was practical too.  This Jesus sounds more like a tough football coach than the happy hobo the gospel of “nice” has cooked up.  And based on what Jesus said He is either a liar for saying He was the Son of God or He is a lunatic who thought He was the Son of God or He is in fact Lord, the real Son of God.  You can even say He is a legend that was dreamed up by the writers of the Bible but you can’t say He was just a “nice” guy.  That is an insult to common sense and a blasphemy towards God.  Jesus “demands” a response to who He said He was (the truth, the life and the way) and what He told us to do (believe in Him and be transformed by a new life in Him).  If you do not know Jesus as Savior and Lord of your life, then now is time to believe that Jesus can save you from you sin for we are not guaranteed tomorrow to make the decision or even our next breathe.  For one day every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.  Some will do it from heaven in joy because they loved God’s will more then their own will and some will do in from hell in agony because they loved their will more than God’s will.

– Rogersings

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