“Now I know full well that at this point there already will be some angry Christians – angry not at her, but at me – for daring to even point out the marked inconsistencies between her walk and talk. They will drag out the old ‘you are not supposed to judge anyone’ baloney and seek to condemn me for even discussing this. … Um, of course we are to judge. We are under biblical obligation to do so. We are to counsel and warn those who claim to be Christ’s to live a life worthy of those claims. Our walk must match our talk, otherwise we are just deceiving ourselves. And no one wants to hear those frightening words of Christ one day.”
(Bill Muehlenberg – Culture Watch) This is a shocking case of a believer’s walk not matching their talk: Often a divinely-appointed confluence of events will lead to a new article. Last night two things occurred at roughly the same time, and the result is this piece. I was reading (yes, not surprising) a famous Christian preacher and came upon an important quote which I copied into a document.
At the same time the tele was on in the background. An ad for an upcoming television show offered a very powerful contrast with what I had just read. That which was found on the ad was a perfect illustration of what the writer was warning against. It was as if the timing of the two events was well beyond coincidence – much more likely a God thing.
So I better speak to each, and clue you in. I had pulled out the five somewhat thin volumes by the great Welsh preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Life in Christ: Studies in 1 John. Like so many books bearing his name, this is a collection of his sermons. The volumes, published in the US by Crossway in 1993-1994, feature a number of sermons he preached around the late 1930s or early 1940s.
In volume one, Fellowship with God, we find chapter eight, “The Holiness of God,” which deals with 1 John 1:5. There we find these vitally important words:
Research