Favorite Bible Verse of Unbelievers

Kopp Disclosure

(John 3:19-21)

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Favorite Bible Verse of Unbelievers

So how do you feel about sneaking around to get your hair done?

Before suggesting my hair styling needs prompt that sarcastic interrogative, I know like anyone paying attention that the only people who think hair salons are not “essential” have been social distancing from women for too long.

Of course, if you’re the Mayor of Chicago, you can forbid the herd from getting haircuts because you need to look pretty because you’re such a much more important person by rationalization of your sense of entitlement.

What’s that song?

“You’re so vain.  You probably think this song is about you.  You’re so…”

So how do you feel about sneaking around to get your hair done?

Somebody told me that New Hampshire is thinking about changing their license plates to “Better Red than Dead.”

“Give me liberty,” the echo evolves, “or, uh, the Chinese Communist Party as long as I can, you know, get cheap flashlights, cellulars, fireworks, pharmaceuticals and other stuff.”

“I’d walk a million miles for one your smiles, NAAAAAAAHHHHHHHNNNNNNNY!”

Baaaaaaah!  Baaaaaaah!

So how do you feel about sneaking around to get your hair done?

Are you prepared to trust a government that says it has our best interests at heart as it murders 4K babies a day?

Are you prepared to trust a government that has pretended to know so much about this CCP COVID-19 and been so inconsistently overstated, overreached and wrong with “experts” so diametrically contradicting each other on its magnitude and duration?

Are you prepared to trust people whose truth changes more frequently than a baby’s diaper?  Mark Twain comes to mind: “Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”

Believers hear another echo: “Some trust in princes, presidents, professors, preachers, governors, mayors…but we trust in the Lord!”

Believers hear another voice – a voice inspired by the spirit of Antichrist who is anti everything that’s sacred and holy according to Jesus by the book as enlightened by the Holy Spirit who never contradicts Jesus by the book.

“Judge not!”

As the old demon said to the young demon in The Screwtape Letters, the best work of the unholy trinity of satanos, Antichrist and the false prophet(s) is at the steps of the chancel.

Taking the words of Jesus totally out of context to rationalize their bad behaviors, they are the passive-aggressive Christians who make excuses for those behaviors as they blame others for bringing up their bad behaviors.

Lombardi remains right.

The best defense is a good offense.

“Judge not!”

It’s the favorite Bible verse of unbelievers.

Let’s take a closer look at that part of our Lord’s glorious gospel so distorted by unbelievers in 

Matthew 7:1-6.

Let’s get right to the punchline and then we’ll flesh it out.

Jesus is saying, as Martha Young taught me years ago in North Carolina when I got hate mail for ordaining her as the first African-American elder of FPCWSNC, “You love ‘em, let God judge ‘em and love ‘em enough to tell ‘em that God’s coming back to judge ‘em.”

God is the only Judge that matters in the end.

Only His standards – so clearly, concisely, comprehensively and conclusively communicated in Jesus by the book – determine who qualifies as Christians.

Anything other than God’s standards is opinion, prejudice, as trustworthy as the latest CCP COVID-19 models and usually invented by passive-aggressive phoney-baloney posers in sheep’s clothing in witting or unwitting conspiracy with the spirit of Antichrist to undermine the Body of Christ aka Church to steal souls and destroy nations.

It started in the garden with that original sin of the Adamsons being seduced by the serpent to trust something/someone other than God when it comes to behavior: “Did God really say that?  Did God really mean that?  Nah.  What do you think?  How do you feel about it? Trust yourself.  You wanna be a god.  Do your own thing.”

There’s been nothing original about sin ever since.

People have this feeling or notion – spiritual indigestion – that they can box with God, contend with God, charter life apart from God and do whatever the anything but heaven that they want to do to satisfy their most beastial behaviors and it’s O.K.

And people are getting away with it even in churches that should no better by 2K years of exposure to divine revelation in Jesus by the book.

So many churches are preaching and practicing unholiness in the very sanctuaries formerly consecrated to God and inching, no leaping, past the abominations that lead to the desolation/profanation of holiness unto God.

The Shorter Catechism of the early 17th century’s first sentences tell us what we’re supposed to be all about: “Our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever!”

That’s not horrify and annoy God!

Summarily, “Judge not” does not mean we get to set the standards of behaviors by our loins and lusts.  God is sovereign!  God reigns!  God rules!  God judges!

Jesus goes on, “Don’t judge so you won’t be judged by the standards with which you judge others.  Be careful because the measure you give will be the measure that you get.”

I like how Paul explained it: “If you call yourself a lover of God, don’t assume you can lean back on your religion and take it easy and make excuses for not loving God by the book…Here’s what I mean.  While you tell others to obey God’s Word, do you?  Do you practice what you preach?  Do you steal when telling others not to steal?  Do you gossip when you tell other people to hold their tongues?  Do you whore around when you tell others not to do that?  How about idols?  How are you doing on that?  How’s your collection of trinkets and relics and ornaments and religious costuming and…?” (see Romans 2:17ff.).

The point is simple, as Jesus said, “Don’t elevate traditions and religion and prejudices and personal idiosyncrasies to the level of God’s commandments” (see Matthew 15 and 23).

Jesus goes deeper, “Why do you see the splinter in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the log in your own?  If you’re going to help your brother, you’ve got to take out the log in your eye so you’ll see clearly enough to take out his splinter.”

Jesus is telling us to start with ourselves before taking on everybody else; or as Francis Chan wrote in Crazy Love, “Honestly, it’s hard enough for me to discern how to live my own life?”

Wash up before opening a cleaning business.

Nota bene!

Their splinters are made of the same sin-stained-inclined stuff as your logs.

Logs are just a bunch of splinters.

In other words, we’re all just…human…and all of us need Jesus as Lord and Savior no more nor no less than anybody else.

And if you think you’re somehow better than anybody else and not needing Jesus to save you as much as He needs to save them, you have just committed the only unforgivable sin which is denying Jesus as Lord and Savior by grace through faith.

“All have sinned and fall short and need Jesus to save them,” wrote Paul, “Not ya’ll not me have sinned and fall short and need Jesus to save you not me because I’m doin’ it on my own.”

Before we can help others to start getting right with God, we’ve got to start getting right with God.

Then Jesus really takes on the unbelievers who have passive-aggressively twisted this text to rationalize their bad behaviors: “Don’t give pearls to pigs.  Don’t give what is holy to dogs.  They won’t appreciate it.  They’ll step all over it.”

Let’s go back to Martha Young’s exposition of this text: “You love ‘em, let God judge ‘em and love ‘em enough to tell ‘em that God’s coming back to judge ‘em.”

Jesus did not give pearls to pigs and what is holy to dogs.  

As we’re reminded in Matthew 13:58, Jesus did not perform miracles for many people “because of their unbelief.”

There is a big difference between believers and unbelievers.

Let’s cut to the quick.

Believers esteem Jesus as the one and only Lord and Savior by grace through faith in Him and try to be “more better” in their behaviors according to His perfect pattern for life as prescribed in the Bible.

So when Jesus is telling us not to give pearls to pigs and holy things to dogs, He is telling us to use His standards not our traditions and religion and prejudices and personal idiosyncrasies when evaluating the behaviors of others and trying to discern who’s side they’re on after we check in with ourselves and confess how we’re not pure and perfect in every way and need Him to save us too.

I’ll never forget Buff.

She came in to see me, uh, complain to me, uh, berate me, uh, and worse because I kept saying Jesus is the answer to every question and the only way and truth to existential relief and eternal life by grace through faith.

Because I learned long ago not to get into tinkling contests and kept thanking her for sharing her thoughts with me without retorting, she snorted, “Well, Jim…[her husband]…told me that you wouldn’t listen to me.”

I interrupted, “No, Buff, I’m listening quite well.  I’m not agreeing with you.  I believe Jesus is Lord and Savior.  I believe we express our gratitude by loving Him by loving like Him.  I don’t believe there is any other way to live happily ever after.  I don’t believe, as you are showing me right now, anyone can have personal and perpetual peace while being at war with God’s greatest invitation and gift.”

“You are so hateful,” she said, “to say Jesus is so much better than…”

That’s when I interrupted sternly: “I am not being hateful.  I am being loyal to the only One who really loves you and me and everybody else and just dies to save us.  He is calling to you right now and if you don’t receive Him into your heart as Lord and Savior, you are going to continue being miserable and putting your soul at risk.”

The favorite Bible verse of unbelievers is a lie.

I won’t repeat it.

Instead, I’ll repeat what Martha Young counseled long ago which she got from Jesus and gave to me and you and everyone else in the family:  “You love ‘em, let God judge ‘em and love ‘em enough to tell ‘em that God’s coming back to judge ‘em.”

The favorite Bible verse of believers is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth here and now and forever: “God loves the world so much that He gave His Son Jesus; so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but live forever in paradise.”

Blessings and Love!

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