This freedom is what we are testing these days in our post-modern civilization. The difference between nature and morality is that human beings are given freedom, and your freedom includes the freedom to disobey the law-but not to escape the consequences! How much freedom? Freedom from the constraints of nature? Freedom to choose our own morality? Free to continually redefine ourselves? The natural law is that causes have effects. That actions have consequences is the moral law. To enter the Kingdom of God is the better deal. ![]() Maybe that Supreme Court seat for which you are most qualified is what you must give up. Full repentance means to reckon with the consequences of what you’ve done, and it’s better to not to stand upon your rights. You may well be forgiven of your sin, and by the atonement of Christ be freed from your guilt, but that does not exempt you from the long-term consequences of your sin upon the lives of others, or even of the effects of its shadow on your personal development while you were denying it. An immature immorality from high school will find you out. You don’t want to have to do this twice! Is that why the warning is extreme? There is a cost to your discipleship.Īctions have consequences that you can’t escape, no matter how far back your actions were. One strike and you’re out! But you’ve only got two hands, two feet, two eyes. Better maimed or crippled or half-blind than to miss out on the resurrection. If you stumble by what you do–cut it off, if you stumble by where you go–cut it off, if you stumble by what you see–cut it out. That only helps a little, and what the Lord Jesus says is still very hard. Such a deceased would have no part in the resurrection of Israel or the life of the world to come. Gehenna became a metaphor, though not for eternal torture, but for exclusion, shameful destruction, annihilation, and unmourned oblivion. Gehenna was a disgusting place, and if the corpse of any deceased was tossed there instead of decently buried it was an end of ultimate shame. In garbage dumps the fires never stop smoldering and maggots flourish. Our Lord did not actually say “hell,” he said “ gehenna,” and by “gehenna” he did not mean “hell.” Gehenna was the garbage dump in the gully behind Jerusalem. Where’s the gospel in these sayings of Our Lord? It’s rather all law, all judgment, all condemnation, and hellfire. ![]() A millstone on your neck and mafia-style be cast into the sea. Mutilation, amputation, pull your eye out. Jesus! This Gospel lesson is a tough one.
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