Well here it is Monday again and I have not written my blog. So here we go:
Verse 4: Those who despise persistent sinners
and honor the faithful followers of the Lord
and keep their promises even when it hurts.
This first phrase has cause me a great amount of prayer and seeking to find an acceptable answer. In light of 2 Peter where it says,"...but (the Lord) is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." And the many times we have heard that the prayer of importunity is the way to deal with stubborn unbelievers it is hard to accept this command to despise sinners. The second operative however comes to our rescue when confused with this injunction, That word is "persistent." I chose to let the Word define the Word at this point and went to my collection of Bibles to see how others handled it. The most direct scripture regarding this is in The English Version which says,"... despises those whom God rejects." So if I listen to "persistent" and understand those are the people God rejects I can sleep at night in comfort. I am not violating my conscience. Other translations of the original texts use words like vile, reprobate, and wicked to identify the despised.
"...the faithful followers," are easier to ingest into my theology. All disciples who can honestly say they are hungry and thirsty for righteousness know followers whose lives demonstrate faithfulness. They are the ones who are proven through testing and are ready in season and out of season to share the love of Christ in appropriate ways to the lost and the hungry disciple. The faithful are generous givers, salty, ripe with the Word, kind and merciful always adding to their relationship with Jesus. they know who they are in Christ and live like they do. They always have time for me and you. Hebrews Chapter Four tells us that grace is available to us when we need it. Faithful followers are often that grace.
"...and keep their promises even when it hurts." God really knows how to test the spirit. But we have no excuse, our Teacher is the best example of this phrase and we cannot argue with him. So when we tell our children we will take them to the park on Saturday and the opportunity comes for us to do an adult thing we cannot brush off our commitment to our kids. They heard us give them a promise and they expect us to keep it. When we don't keep the promise we have hurt them and they remember for years that broken promise. The same is true with our relationship with God. When we make what the International House of Prayer calls a Sacred Trust with God to do something that is the same as a promise. We set the conditions to be fulfilled nobody forced us to do it. We said we would follow, we would pray or we would testify of His goodness. We made a promise and we must keep it even if it hurts.