As our President likes to say, “Let me be perfectly clear.” Sin is missing the mark — separation from God’s standards. I am saved by the Grace of God and the Blood of the Lamb, not by my morality. However, my relationship with Christ makes moral issues more clear to me. If there was a campus club which supported strip clubs at Liberty, would you also encourage them to permit that club to meet? Abortion, homosexuality, and strip clubs– are all reflections of sin, and, along with scores of other “causes,” should not be encouraged or tolerated by a Christian Organization.

I am currently reading an excellent book called “The Myth of a Christian Nation, How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church” by Dr. Greg Boyd, senior pastor of the Woodland Hills church in St. Paul. His major point is that Jesus repeatly made it clear that He did not come to establish a kingdom here on earth but rather a heavenly kingdom. Kingdoms of this world, even the best of them like the United States of America, derive their control over their citizens and their power in the world through the use of the sword (automatic weapons, fighter aircraft, nuclear weapons, etc.) These worldly kingdoms have nothing in common with Christ’s Kingdom of Heaven.

Christ’s Kingdom, which He established for Christians not only in Heaven but here on earth, is radically different. It derives its power from loving God and our fellow man, not just our neighbor but also our enemy It always turns the other cheek. It submits to persecution even to crucifixion . It forgives not seven times but seventy times seven. There is never any justification for Christ’s Kingdom to take up arms and kill the nation’s enemies in the name of Christ. Those who suggest this are much like the zealots in Jesus’ time who wanted Him to lead a revolt of the Jewish people against Rome. Christ gave the “religious right” the final answer on this dream of theirs. He simply did not come to do that. He came to seek and to save that which is lost. The two objectives are completely incompatible. How can you hope to save someone who you are attempting to kill for the “glory of God?”

Christians need to wake up from this long nightmare. We need to obey Christ’s command that we must be in this world but not of this world. Rather than murdering Muslims we should be sharing the gospel with them.

The preceding says nothing about what the defense policy of that kingdom of this world, the United States, should be nor should it. We should be good citizens of our nation, the home of the free and the brave. But please, please never forget that we are really aliens in a strange land. We literally must march to the beat of a different drummer. By attempting to use the methods of the kingdoms of this world to advance Christianity we have done incalculable damage to the Kingdom of Heaven.

I preached a message just the other Sunday night on Forsaking Sin to Live a Righteous Life Before God. Eph. 1:1-9. Not that we are righteous but because we that are saved (Us that have excepted the Lord as their Savior) and our sins are covered by the blood of Christ. We can live a Righteous life before Him by Forsaking the Sin That So Easily Beset Us.