WHOEVER YOU ARE
A sign I recently saw on a church board: “Whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done—you’re welcome here.”
I wonder why I love it?
I wonder if it’s really how the congregation feels and believes or is it just another one of those things they put up on boards because there is a church board and they must put something up on it.
Hmmm.
So here sits several hundred people all looking toward the table on which sits the bread and the wine about which Jesus said that night, “This is my body…This is my blood.”
The sign said: “Whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done—you’re welcome here.”
I wonder if there are those in that assembly who are thinking of others they know in that assembly—others they judge are not welcome.
The sign said: “Whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done—you’re welcome here.”
Are there people in that assembly who think the sign should say: “Whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done—you’re welcome here if…”
Hmmm.
We can hardly have Jesus welcoming the impenitent child-molester or adulterer or embezzler or the smug and arrogant believer, can we? Can’t have him welcoming the strutting preacher or the swaggering deacon—can we?
Well, maybe we can allow him to welcome those who sin “respectably”. Respectably—I mean the kind of sins “everybody” sins, the kind of sins that are so common that we can hardly take them seriously any more. Bless me, if he will invite only the completely spotless to “Sunday Dinner” he’ll be there alone on Sunday morning—true?
Bad enough that we should glare at visitors who are sinners of the vile kind, but what has happened when we give the cold and callous treatment to those who have been called by the blessed Lord Jesus in the gospel and who have given Him all they’ve got? “The Lord Jesus may sincerely invite them but they’ll get no sincere welcome from me.”
Very nice!
“And now let us pray as we eat the bread and drink the wine and remember again that the Lord Jesus said, ‘This is my blood of the new covenant shed for……..' ”
????
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.