Judge Others So You Feel Better About Yourself

One of my biggest weakness, and honestly many Christian’s weakness is to judge others. What does it mean to judge someone else? When you look at another person in a position to decide if they are sinful, guilty, and deserve punishment. To do so is such a dangerous game that Paul lays down a serious rebuke to the church in Rome he oversees:

” ¹ You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. ² Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. ³ So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment?”

We see Paul teaching the early church that to judge others actually calls down judgement on yourself. You “condemn” or in other words, damn yourself! He even catches them in the fact that the very things we judge, we are probably guilty of! He reminds us that God judges based on Truth, because God invented the Truth to base in on.

Why do we judge? Why do you judge?

I know for me it usually makes me feel better about myself…which is incredibly wrong! We judge because it can be fun to belittle others. We judge because we have been judged by others. We are essentially spiritual bullies. Bullies hurt others because they are hurting. The same is true for us as we judge others.

So what do we do to stop?

You need to remember your own sin. What?! I thought when God forgives us we forget it?! Find that in the bible for me and I’ll buy it. That’s not the case. Have you ever seen how often even Paul reminds his readers of his own sin, his past, his thorn in the flesh? Let me put it this way, do we forget History because it is in the past? NO!!!!!! We remember History to learn from. Do remember who you WERE so that you can take joy in who you ARE today! And in remembering the past sin, the past man or woman, you will be sensitive to others and put down the Judge Judy act.

What do you think? How do you deal with this issue?

Validity of the Scriptures – Part 1

If you profess yourself a follower of Jesus Christ, and His teachings, you also profess total faith in what we call “The Bible.” I thought it would be fun to post a few blogs over the next couple of weeks on:

• how the bible was made
• how it works
• and why we need it so much.

For some of you this may seem like elementary teaching, for others, some of this information may be new and useful in your walk with Christ.

A quick history of how the Bible became the Bible:

The modern Holy Bible consists of many smaller books combined into one big book. Those books are broken into 2 groups: Old Testament (or old covenant) and New Testament (or new covenant). There are 39 old testament books. The first 5 are those written by Moses (Gen-Deut). The New Testament has 27, the first 4 being the Gospels of Jesus. There are a total of 66 books.

The Old Testament has been passed down very meticulously for many years. The New Testament’s history is shorter. The Old was copied by scribes (professional human copy machines) The New Testament were letters. They were not copied by scribes, but anyone who had the ability to write at the time or parchment or papyrus. Because the Old Testament has a rich history of meticulous copying there is not much debate to its validity. However, the New Testament is another story. Lets Focus on the New Testament for a while.

How 27 letters or books became the New Testament

The first time someone recommended that the various letters written about Jesus should be combined and used as a “testament” was in 367ce by Bishop Alexandria Athanasius. He wrote a letter to the churches he oversaw, stating the 27 books of the modern New Testament become the only books allowed to be in the “canon.” Canon is the cooler word for Bible.

Canon Facts: Here’s where it gets interesting…and maybe controversial.

• We do not have any original copies of the New Testament manuscripts (the original letters)
• We have copies of copies of copies of the original.
• Most copies are hundreds of years removed from the originals
• Earliest copies date around 200ce
• Most mistakes in the copies were orthography (spelling mistakes)
• Comparing all know manuscripts and copies tells us there were probably 200,00 – 300,000 mistakes
• Most of the books or letters were written in the first century of the common era (ce).
• Athanasius was the first person to advocate a common collection of letters to be canonized.
• A council of Godly men in Trent in the mid 16th century set the modern cannon (collection of books and letters)
• By the 5th century most churches agreed on what we read today as the New Testament

So there are some cool facts on the cannon or Bible. But how did the men at the council of Trent decide that the 27 books we have today were worthy of being “The Bible?” There were 4 criteria for canonization:

1. The letter had to be ancient (written around the time of Christ)
2. The letter had to be apostolic (written by an actual apostle or companion of Christ)
3. The letter had to be catholic (not the denomination, but catholic means universal, so the letter had to have widespread usage)
4. The letter had to be orthodox (it had to have common theological characteristics)

On my next blog I will go into more about the “4 rules” and how they shaped our Bible and beliefs today. But, I would love to hear from you! Leave a comment below!! You can also sign up to receive these blog posts in your email inbox by going to the very bottom of our website and typing in your email address. Thanks for reading!

 

Who Do We Really Please

In Today’s Lifejournall.cc online devotional we read:

“We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts.” 1 Thess 1:2b

Observation: Paul is writing this because the church in Thessalonica was obviously questioning his motives (how do we know this? because when he writes, he addresses issues raised through letters sent to him that we may not have today). They (the church) were not confident that his motives were completely pure. They perhaps thought he was preaching and teaching for some kind of personal gain, pride, power, or fame. So Paul reminded them that in his suffering it would be silly to do such a thing, unless completely inspired to do so by God.

Application: Has anyone ever questioned your motives. As a man, sometimes we are extra nice to our spouse because we want something in return. Or you bought a cup of coffee for the boss to get in the right position, or you were kind with hopes of something in return. What Paul is teaching us today is that when it comes to loving and serving others, our motives must be completely pure, otherwise it has no baring on how you are serving God and His kingdom. So ask yourself today, what are the things you do because of pure love and obedience, and what are the things you do to gain something. If you only have time for one make sure you drop the one that has selfish motives.

Prayer: God, give me pure and absolutely unselfish desires to serve you today!