That brings us to love. The final portion of this defense. I have heard it offered time and again that these business owners say that they love the very people they are refusing service to. Once again however that shows they must not understand love at all. As we noted earlier, God loved us so much He sent Jesus to die for us while we were yet sinners. He did not wait until we stopped sinning. Thank God He does not choose to love us according to our definitions. I chose the key verses today to highlight yet another biblical point. The Apostle Paul was a businessman too. He was a tradesman just like the baker, florist and pizza maker. He made tents for a living. The key verses teach us that when he went to Corinth, he associated himself with Aquila and Priscilla because they too were tentmakers by trade. He may have reasoned with the Jews and the Greeks in the Synagogues about the things of God but he also plied his trade to the sinful world. Corinth was as sinful if not more than modern day Oregon, Washington or Indiana. Scripture gives us no indication that he refused to service people based upon their sin. If he did so, I assume he would have had very little business to conduct. There is an accepted old saying, "to act like a Corinthian" essentially meant to be sexually immoral. It was this church that was plagued with such sins, including documented incest. And that was within the church! Yet Paul still plied his wares to the general public in this sinful city. Never once refusing to service someone because they were a sinner. Perhaps because Paul always remembered where God found him on that dusty road to Damascus:
For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. - 1Corinthians 15: 9 (ESV)
Paul never forgot how far down God had to reach to save him. He persecuted the church and presided over the deaths of the early Christians, including the first martyr, Stephen. Decades later he was the preeminent Christian. He was writing all of these great theological letters. He had evangelized the entire known world. Yet he never looked at a sinner as being less than him because he remembered where God found him. We should strive for no less in modern Christianity. We ought to always remember where God found us.
Many do not know that the government of Washington tried to reach an acceptable solution. They offered the owner the chance to either service everyone or she could stop doing all weddings and thus satisfy her moral convictions. She refused even though weddings were only about 3% of her business. She did so by making an absurd comparison to the betrayal of Christ by Judas. As if refusing to provide flowers for a wedding is now akin to turning over our Lord and Savior to be crucified. What a cheapening of the Gospel for self-servicing. I understand that these are difficult and controversial situations. I understand the fleshly desire to want to push back. We cannot however be governed by our passions or our flesh. Only by the Word of God. The Word cannot be clearer. I do not mean taking half a verse here or there and stretching it to fit our pre-disposed hatred.
Step back and look at the entire canon of Scripture beloved. The Bible is about redemption, not condemnation. Redeeming souls and the time left between now and the end. The Bible is about God loving us so much that He would do anything to save us. Yet we operate like James and John wanting to hurl fire down from heaven because someone does not accept Jesus Christ as we do. We can wrap ourselves up in pseudo-piety and biblical fragments but at the end of the day it is simply hate. Disdain for the sinners of this world whom we are supposed to look upon with compassion. As sheep without a shepherd. We ought to be weeping over them, not casting them out of our stores and then running to World Net Daily as if we were the victims. They are supposed to know us by our self-righteous stands against the sins of others? No. They will know us by our refusal to be civil towards sinners? No. They are supposed to know us by our love. There is enough hypocrisy and hate in this world. The church should not be leading the charge for more.
Reverend Anthony Wade - April 4, 2105
Reverend Anthony Wade - April 3, 2015
