Jesus' Intolerance
Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds. -Revelation 2:20-23, NIV
“Every generation of Christians must face the question, ‘How far should I accept and adopt contemporary standards and practices?”- Leon Morris
“Non-participation with evil is not enough to justify one before the Lord, not if we have tolerated it and we could have done something about it.” – Mark Barnard and Kenneth Quick
“Nothing we do or think will get by the Lord, and he will reward or judge us accordingly.” – Grant R. Osborne
The perception we have of Jesus is so important. One of the rewards of studying carefully the book of Revelation is the imagery of Jesus which fills the book. If we give it proper consideration, it will do much to help us in understanding who Jesus is and what He is like in reality. Our text this week gives us an important aspect of Jesus’ character which often gets pushed aside in our time. It is the serious and startling image of Jesus as all-knowing Judge. He is the searcher of hearts and minds. He knows all. He will repay each of us according to our deeds. He sometimes strikes his own with suffering, sickness, even death.
I wonder if our neglect of this aspect of Jesus is related to our own lack of diligence and obedience or our general fascination with antinomianism (that is the view that the moral law no longer applies to us because after all we are under grace). I tend to think it is a mixture of these two which has led to the current state of affairs in the church. We love the view of Jesus eating with the tax collectors and sinners and rightly so because, once that was us. And we endanger ourselves greatly if we ever forget that bedrock reality. But, this is not what we now are to be. Jesus has rescued us. He has redeemed us. He has given us a new family. He has brought us from darkness and into light. And He has done so that we might live as “children of the day.” His impartation of salvation and Holy Spirit indwelling and empowering, is not so that we might stay stuck in sin or have anything to do with the deeds of darkness. Rather, He anticipates that with all that we’ve been given, we will “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” (Romans 12:1) This does not mean that we don’t mess up. We all do. That is where repentance and forgiveness become so life giving. It does mean though that what we DO in our new lives in Jesus matters to Him immensely. And it means that we will answer for that which He has entrusted to us.
To think of all of this from another angle, to see Jesus like this is another way to call us to live a holy life. Not to earn our salvation mind you, for that is an impossibility. But, to demonstrate good stewardship of all that with which Jesus has entrusted us. So, let us not grow weary in doing good but press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus has taken hold of us. I leave you with a postlude of sorts- an A.W. Tozer quote which always leaves me thinking harder about how I see Jesus and what aspect(s) of His personage I am missing to my detriment. Keep looking to Jesus and keep living for Him. The Judge is soon to return and when He comes, will He find us faithful?
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. ... Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.
For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech.” ― A.W. Tozer (The Knowledge of the Holy)