 God changed enemies into friends, Rogers says By Paula R. Kincaid The Layman Online Monday, June 17, 2002
Using 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 as his Scriptural base, Rogers said "our viewpoint of others changes when we look at them through the viewpoint of Jesus Christ." "How easy it is to judge others by our standards to their detriment," he said June 16. Rogers referred to Romans 10 – which includes such phrases as "And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?" and "That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." He said those verses, in times past, were used to exclude deaf and mute people from membership in the church since they could not "hear the Word, or speak the Word. … We often think we know what the Bible says." "Jesus touched and talked with Samaritans, women and people with disabilities. Jesus says all are God's children," he said. The message we need to share, Rogers said, comes from the 2 Corinthians passage – that God changed enemies into friends. "Jesus Christ gave us the only thing that made him different from us. He was sinless and he shared our sin so we can have the righteousness of God in us," he said. "Being able to put differences aside because of our relationship with Jesus Christ – that is reconciliation. The ministry of reconciliation is not a ministry of judgment; it is a ministry of making friends out of enemies." Then, he said, we are free to keep the spirit of the law out of thankfulness. Rogers spoke of a recent trip to Egypt, where he said the Egyptians had been told that the people of the United States gave total support to Israel. "We told them the PCUSA side," he said, about Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick's letters to the president and others deploring the Israeli occupation and the right to a separate Palestine. "That news was met with joy." |
||
Respond to this article |
||
| 2002
General Assembly news index Home · News · PLC Publications · The Presbyterian Layman Online Reviews · Archives · History of the Lay Committee · Feedback · Links |
||