JustPassingThru said:
I have been slogging through the muck of this thread looking to see if anyone was ever going to cite this passage of scripture. The late John Claypool used to refer to this passage as God's Final Exam. The thing that has always interested me about it is that both groups are surprised about their reward or punishment. I take from that that the righteous had responded to the needy on their own merit. They didn't view them as an opportunity to share the gospel. They viewed them as people in need. I've had a lot of problems reading this thread because of the negativity, the judgmentalism, and the use of doctrine as a club to bash other posters.
The way this church has been bashed reminds me of the story of Jesus teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath. He healed a woman who was bent over and unable to straighten up. The leader of the synagogue said that she should have come to be healed on some other day beside the Sabbath (Luke 13.10-17).
The history of Christianity is, among other things, the history of division, the history of people who can't get along with each other. And, in the last 75 years, baptists have raised the bar. It is no wonder that we have such a bad reputation and that baptisms and membership are down. We are letting our doctrinal disputes and our religion get in the way of our living out our faith. Paul Tillich called this elevating trivial matters to the level of absolutes. Now that is sin. We need to watch this church because they are binding up wounds in a broken world and setting an example that other churches can follow.
Tim Reynolds
