Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Love vs. holiness (was Let's end...) Message-ID: Date: 16 Jul 90 06:44:13 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 39 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Tim Hoogasian writes: ---------------------------------------- We push the Gospel of the love of Christ (which certainly should be stressed!) at the expense of stressing the Holiness and Justness of Almighty God! (Listen to a copy of John MacArthur's tape on God's Holiness, and I *GUARANTEE* you'll get convicted, no matter how righteous you think you've been lately...) ---------------------------------------- Many people make this dichotomy between God's love and his justice and holiness. It seems to me that there should be no such dichotomy. God's justice and holiness are aspects or projections of his love. God takes us seriously; he gave us significance when he made us. As a result, what we do, for good or evil, matters. When I hurt another person, that action is of eternal significance because both I and that other person are meant by God to be eternal beings, children of God. (Read C. S. Lewis' THE WEIGHT OF GLORY for a better exposition of this.) God's refusal to forgive sin without the death of Christ is simply his refusal to take away our significance. Our evil actions are so meaningful that they cost God the experience of death to redeem. On the other hand, we have only one message, the ``Good News.'' So often it seems that Christians feel the need to preach the bad news of condemnation to prepare people for the good news. But the conviction of sin is the job of the Holy Spirit, and if he is not preparing the way it does no good to try to prepare it for him. The best we can do is to announce the fact that actions are meaningful, that they have consequences, and to insist on the eternal significance of our neighbor. Paul's decision to ``know nothing among you except Christ, and him crucified,'' seems quite appropriate for evangelism. The message of the God who loved to the death is powerful enough. -- Fred Gilham gilham@csl.sri.com So long as the heaven of THOU is spread out over me the winds of causality cower at my heels, and the whirlpool of fate stays its course. -Martin Buber