For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Listen! I, Chad, am telling you that if you let yourself be manipulated by your own selfishness, Christ will be of no benefit to you. I’ll tell you right now that if you want the government to be hands off of money, then you should force them to be hands off in every way. You want to go at it by yourself? Fine. Pay the government back for your education, k-12, as well as any scholarships you got. Pay the government for the roads that took you places when you were a kid. Pay them back for the infrastructure that allows you to get water. Pay your parents back for any inheritance you got, and for all the things they gave you growing up. Pay the families of firefighters who died saving people close to you. Pay back Jesus for what he did for you. Until you can, as a Christian, you have no right to join political parties that don’t do their utmost to advocate for the poor. How dare you!?
For in Christ Jesus neither small church or big church counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.
You were doing so good at one point; who stepped in and barred you from obeying the truth? That kind of talk didn’t come from God. A little bit of poop spoils the entire brownie. I trust you still have at least a little decency left to see that. But whoever is whispering in your ear will get theirs. But listen, my friends, why am I still getting so much push-back when try to help the cause of the poor? Am I not on God’s side? If the message were not radical, then everyone would be a Christian! If you want economic anarchy (deregulation), why don’t you just go take a bunch of guns, leave the poor behind, and found your own nation built on anarchy!
God has called you to be as free as you can, my people; just don’t use your freedom to seek yourselves in everything, but use the love you learned from Jesus to give up your freedom to each other. Everything you need to know is right here, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If you can’t love people long enough to stop attacking the ones trying to help, watch out because similar attacks will likely come back at you someday.
Live like the Spirit taught you, and don’t think so much about your own money. These are polar opposites: what God wants and what you want. So try to do the opposite of what comes naturally to you. Now, your selfish nature produces the following, don’t do this: cheating on your spouse, impurity, a disregard for morality, putting other things above God, chemical dependency, hate, division, jealousy, anger, fighting, dissensions, factions, envy, alcoholism, bad behavior, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not be part of the community of God.
On the other hand, if you do what God leads you to do, it will look like this: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. No one is trying to tell you to stop this stuff. Those of us who are Christians are trying to put away our selfishness. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, growing bigger primarily because smaller churches go under.
Really enjoying this, Chad.
Thank you, sir. I just posted the last one in the series.